Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022)

edited by Ilan Kelman

Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is experienced around the continent and by those watching from afar. These understandings explain how the Antarctic is viewed and managed while identifying aspects that should be more prominent in policy and practice.

The authors and artists place Antarctica, and the perceptions and knowledge through Antarcticness, within inspirations and imaginations, without losing sight of the multiple interests pushing the continent’s governance as it goes through rapid political and environmental changes. Given the diversity and disparity of the influences and changes, the book’s contributions connect to provide a more coherent and encompassing perspective of how society views Antarctica, scientifically and artistically, and what the continent provides and could provide politically, culturally, and environmentally.

Offering original research, art, and interpretations of different experiences and explorations of Antarctica, explanations meld with narratives while academic analyses overlap with first-hand experiences of what Antarctica does and does not – could and could not – bring to the world.

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Climate change is real, and extreme weather events are its physical manifestations. These extreme events affect how we live and work in cities, and subsequently the way we design, plan, and govern them. Taking action 'for the environment' is not only a moral imperative; instead, it is activated by our everyday experience in the city. Based on the author's site visits and interviews in Darwin (Australia), Tulsa (Oklahoma), Cleveland (Ohio), and Cape Town (South Africa), Ihnji Jon's Cities in the Anthropocene: New Ecology and Urban Politics (Pluto Press, 2021) tells the story of how cities can lead a transformative pro-environment politics. National governments often fail to make binding agreements that bring about radical actions for the environment. This book shows how cities, as local sites of mobilizing a collective, political agenda, can be frontiers for activating the kind of environmental politics that appreciates the role of 'nature' in the everyday functioning of our urban life.

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How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play in how we belong to places? Atmospheric Knowledge takes up these questions through detailed analyses of practices that generate atmospheres and in which knowledge emerges through visceral intermingling with atmospheres. From combined musicological and anthropological perspectives, Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr investigate atmospheres as a compelling alternative to better-known analytics of affect by way of performative and sonic practices across a range of ethnographic settings. With particular focus on oceanic relations and sonic affectedness, Atmospheric Knowledge centers the rich affordances of sonic connections for knowing our environments.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

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Charles Watkins joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Trees Ancient and Modern (Reaktion, 2025). This delightful new book explores the relationship between trees and people and reveals how people have used, valued and understood forests over time. While trees are celebrated as symbols of natural beauty, they are increasingly at risk from climate change, disease, fires and urban expansion. Trees Ancient and Modern explores humanity’s deep connection with trees and woodlands, highlighting their beauty and importance and the challenges they face. The book looks at debates about creating new woodlands, exploring questions of location, ownership and management.
Using diverse sources such as literature, art, historical records, scientific surveys and oral histories, Charles Watkins reveals how people have used, valued and understood forests over time. He also assesses modern threats to woodlands and considers how best to conserve them. Richly illustrated, this is a global social and cultural history of forests that provides valuable insights for future management.

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Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes.

From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged.

This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines.

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GeoAI and Human Geography: The Dawn of a New Spatial Intelligence Era (Springer, 2025) outlines a comprehensive journey into how geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) is reshaping our understanding of people and places. Merging traditional geographic inquiry with AI technologies, it offers a holistic view of digital tools and advanced algorithms that redefine human geography. Across twenty‐eight chapters, the book chronicles the evolution of geographic thought into the GeoAI era. Innovative methodologies--from explainable spatial analysis and natural language processing to human-centered computer vision and high-performance computing--reveal new patterns and relationships beyond conventional approaches. Each contribution highlights both technical strides in data processing and enriched perspectives on cultural, economic, political, health, and urban studies. Showcasing diverse applications in disaster management, climate change adaptation, and urban planning, the volume demonstrates GeoAI's transformative potential. It also engages with ethical, sustainable, and social challenges, emphasizing that technological innovation must serve real-world impacts and inclusivity. Ideal for researchers, students, and practitioners alike, this volume invites you to explore new frontiers at the intersection of technology and human experience.

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Based on two years of extensive fieldwork, Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China (Cornell UP, 2023) examines ecological policies in the People’s Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China’s ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm for global environmental governance, Jesse Rodenbiker argues that ecological redlining extends the reach of the authoritarian state.

Although Chinese urban sustainability initiatives have driven millions of citizens from their land and housing, Rodenbiker shows that these migrants are not passive subjects of state policy. Instead, they creatively navigate resettlement processes in pursuit of their own benefit. However, their resistance is limited by varied forms of state-backed infrastructural violence.

Through extensive fieldwork with scientists, urban planners, and everyday citizens in southwestern China, Ecological States exposes the ways in which the scientific logics and practices fundamental to China's green urbanization have solidified state power and contributed to dispossession and social inequality.

Ecological States is freely available with support from the Henry Luce Foundation. The link to the book is Ecological States by Jesse Rodenbiker,Foreword by Albert L. Park | Paperback | Cornell University Press.

Jesse Rodenbiker is Assistant Professor in the Geography department at Rutgers University. He is a human-environment geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist focusing on environmental governance, urbanization, and social inequality in China and globally. His email address is [email protected].

Yadong Li is a socio-cultural anthropologist-in-training. He is registered as a PhD student at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, development studies, hope studies, and ecological anthropology. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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A vital account of the state of the Arctic today--emphasising the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds examine the state of the Arctic today, showing how the region is becoming a space of experimentation for everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption. Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building. The consequences of this emerging Arctic Anthropocene are truly global--from rising sea levels due to melting glaciers to tensions between great powers determined to protect their territory and resources, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples who have fought for centuries for rights and recognition.

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Ice animates the look and feel of climate change. It is melting faster than ever before, causing social upheaval among northern coastal communities and disrupting a more southern, temperate world as sea levels rise. Economic, academic, and activist stakeholders are increasingly focused on the unsettling potential of ice as they plan for a future shaped by rapid transformation. 

Yet, in Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity in the Arctic (Duke UP, 2025), Jen Rose Smith demonstrates that ice has always been at the center of making sense of the world. Ice as homeland is often at the heart of Arctic and sub-Arctic ontologies, cosmologies, and Native politics. Reflections on ice have also long been a constitutive element of Western political thought, but it often privileges a pristine or empty “nature” stripped of power relations. 

Smith centers ice to study race and indigeneity by investigating ice relations as sites and sources of analysis that are bound up with colonial and racial formations as well as ice geographies beyond those formations. Smith asks, How is ice a racialized geography and imaginary, and how does it also exceed those frameworks?

Works mentioned in the episode:

Darcie Bernhardt, an Inuvialuk/Gwichin artist from Tuktuyaaqtuuq whose work is on the cover of Jen Rose Smith’s book, Ice Geographies.

“The Arctic is Not White” by asinnajaq in Inuit Art Quarterly, 35 (4), Winter 2022.

Borealis, by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Jen Rose Smith is an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies and Geography at the University of Washington. She is a dAXunhyuu (Eyak, Alaska Native) geographer interested in the intersections of coloniality, race, and indigeneity. 

Chrystel Oloukoï is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, Seattle. Their upcoming manuscript, black nocturnal explores imaginations of the night in Lagos and the afterlives of colonial technologies of temporal discipline.

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Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires.

In the fight against climate change, lithium's role in reducing emissions by powering green economies is a mixed blessing. Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork in Chile, Nevada, and Portugal, Riofrancos explores the environmental and social costs of the global race to expand lithium mining amid supply chain concerns. With haunting descriptions of vulnerable ecosystems, she examines how mining harms landscapes, provokes protest, takes center stage in national politics, and links countries on the peripheries of the world economy to huge corporations, commodity markets, and powerful investors. Riofrancos traces the history of global extraction from colonial conquest, to the 1970s energy crisis, to the still uncertain green future.

While an unregulated mining boom could inflict irreversible harm, Riofrancos offers compelling ideas about how to harmonize climate action with social justice. Across the world’s extractive frontiers, we encounter the most brutal aspects of capitalism—but also witness inspiring visions for our planetary future.

Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College and the Strategic Co-Director of the Climate Community Institute

Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP)

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