Peer Reviewed
Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawaii, by Daniel Lewis,
Lewis offers innovative ways to think about what it means to be native and proposes new definitions that apply to people as well as to birds. Being native, he argues, is a relative state influenced by factors including the passage of time, charisma, scarcity, utility to others, short-term evolutionary processes, and changing relationships with other organisms.
Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, ed. Michael Bravo, Joanna Radin, Emma Kowal
The contributors examine how and why low temperatures have been harnessed to defer individual death through freezing whole human bodies; to defer nonhuman species death by freezing tissue from endangered animals; to defer racial death by preserving biospecimens from indigenous people; and to defer large-scale human death through pandemic preparedness.
Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation, by Juno Salazar Parreñas
Drawing on anthropology, primatology, Southeast Asian history, gender studies, queer theory, and science and technology studies, Parreñas suggests that examining workers’ care for these semi-wild apes can serve as a basis for cultivating mutual but unequal vulnerability in an era of annihilation
Ecology and Recovery of Eastern Old-Growth Forests by Andrew Barton & William Keeton
Many of these ancient stands retain surprisingly robust complexity and vigor, and forest ecologists are eager to develop strategies for their restoration and for nurturing additional stands of old growth that will foster biological diversity, reduce impacts of climate change, and serve as benchmarks for how natural systems operate.
“Endling: the Power of the Last Extinction-Prone World,” by Dolly Jørgensen
Endling (n.) The last surviving individual of a species of animal or plant. Since that appearance, the word endling has slowly seeped into popular culture, appearing in symphonic music, performance art, science fiction stories, comics, and other artworks. This paper examines the cultural power of the concept of endling as the last of a species and the history of its mobilization in a world facing extinction around every corner.
Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction by Thom van Dooren
Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead… No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life,
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