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During Week 7, when we discussed urban natures and identity, I found it particularly interesting to learn that wild boars are present in other parts of the world as well. Coming from Islamabad, Pakistan, I was familiar with the presence of wild boars in my city, but I noticed that the way people responded to them was quite different. In Islamabad, due to religious reasons, people often put up prize money as an incentive for those who could get rid of the boars. It was fascinating to see how these animals influenced both the people and the surrounding environment in distinct ways across different cultural contexts.

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I think the most important thing that stood out to me was week 5 which was on capitalism. It really caught my attention because I had never deeply thought about it before; growing up with it, it had always been just a part of life. Learning about it as a topic made me realise how pervasive and influential it is in shaping society. It made me question, how much of my daily life is shaped by capitalism without me even realising it? How do we even begin to imagine a world that operates differently when capitalism has been so deeply ingrained in everything we've known?

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I was interested by Indigenous Representation in Conklin’s text on how Amazonian indigenous activists strategically use traditional visual markers such as body paint, feathers, and traditional dress to assert their cultural identity in global environmental and human rights movements. Which has sparked a curiously surrounding how visual imagery plays a role in human rights movements.

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it made me question what nature means to us individually - it has the incredible capacity to bring people together but also to displace us . similar to how nature is not a fixed category, it, like people, is constantly shaped through culture, memory and experience

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White's paper explores the concept, Ecofeminism, which highlights how women face intersectional oppression, dealing with ongoing environmental issues such as deforestation and patriarchal structures. It provided me with valuable insights.

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One of the weeks talked about bodily connection to the environment, and how the health of a mountain was connected to the health of its inhabitants. This makes sense in that a clean environment is important for health, but I was initially reluctant to the idea due to being raised with biomedical perceptions of the body. It made me think about my own beliefs a bit more.

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I was most interested in epistemology, who gets to produce knowledge, which knowledge is considered more 'correct' and why certain knowledge looks the way it does. It made me reflect on the way in which I believe and how I believe. It also made me think about what is left after we deconstruct knowledge production and scientific knowledge. Do we construct something anew? Can something be constructed anew with intentionality, will the past linger?

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Personally meaningful thing

I found exploring different conceptions of relationships with plants and landscape has expanded my understanding of what it means to be a 'person', and how this can help affect our appreciation and respect for non-human entities.

Furthermore, I found the classes themselves to be really fulfilling in terms of the possibility to bring in personal experiences and emotions in open discussions, relating them to the topics of each week.

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from this module i really enjoyed thinking about our relationships with food and what constitutes edibility, especially around preparation and reciprocal rituals that are followed to honour the food. particularly, the writing exercise that allowed us to think and connect with a food experience in a non-academic way - in a way that builds a parasocial rapport with a reader and ourselves. personally, i feel as though the less traditional ethnographic methods assisted in the personal experience with the food.

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Being more aware when eating meat, feeling less casual about it and more grateful since seeing how different groups around the world interact and have intimate relationships with nature. taking it seriously!

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Week 2 - we looked at boundary transgressions between humans and non-humans in xenotransplantation, and men and women in bullfighting. In both cases, essentialising discourses in media contributed to a narrative that justified and maintained power imbalances between groups, appealing to what is 'natural'.

Week 3 - we looked at how personhood is emically defined in different contexts, especially in relation to whether non-humans (both animals, plants and geographical features) are granted personhood and under what conditions. Exploring the Marind, we looked at an understanding of personhood that was communally focussed and centred around social activity.

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week 3

Marind emic definitions of hunger

feeling weak due to a lack of food

loss of access to traditional foods and land creates a different type of 'hunger'

a feeling of being consumed spiritually by external forces such as corruption and destruction of eco systems

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week 2-

discourses regarding boundary transgression maintain certain hierarchal structures

tensions between hybridization and purity and the medias influence on this

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Themes for week 4/5: Kin and capitalism - how they intersect - Capitalism often exploits non-human species for profit through practices like industrial agriculture, deforestation, and overfishing.

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central in this module i feel are the themes of protecting environmental legacy against neo-colonial and capitalistic ploys, maintaining a kinship connection with non-humans and understanding what constitutes as living.

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week 9/10

Food insecurity (in the documentary we watched in class last week as well as Chao's paper)

colonialism (in Ives' paper as well as White's paper about ecofeminism)

food authenticity (The authenticity of Kyoyasai is not an inherent trait, but a socially ascribed quality)

ecofeminism (in White's paper)

Urban gardens

Farming

Cultural Heritage

Globalization

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One key theme from week 8 is authenticity and identity as components of one’s construction of ‘race’ and belonging.

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the damage we are doing to our environment - selective blindness - what is obvious to some is invisible to others interlinks with multiple weeks

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Week 7 , the relationship between infrastructure and belonging.

Week 8 , I found how the amazonian tribe used essentialised identity(??)/stereotypes to their advantage interesting.