close this window
Complete the following form to e-mail a copy of this event to a friend.
Hello, The following event may be of interest to you: Effervescent Publics: Ancestral Liberation and Pollution in a Digital Age Thursday, December 3, 2015 This paper approaches climate change as a long-standing political struggle from below, rather than a new crisis to be solved by scientific expertise, corporate accountability, or governmental efficiency from above. I examine how the urban poor in South Africa manage air pollution that is at once chemical, spiritual, and technological. I focus on a tension between breathing and being unable to breathe, a characteristic state in historically segregated townships and shack settlements. A key practice mediating these states is what residents refer to as “coughing out” (ukubhodla in isiZulu). Ukubhodla is when you clear your lungs to breathe – whether to sing, pray, or speak to ancestors – in effervescent collective space. The local and global networks produced, in spite of their fleeting and ephemeral qualities, give substance to public solidarity between residents. Broadly, I argue that breathing, the most taken-for-granted of human activities, is a highly differentiated practice. As the first and the last gesture of politics, breathing embodies innovative challenges by the urban poor to climate change consensus. Time: 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Location: Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Sponsor: Anthropology Program; Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs Contact: Laura Kunreuther. E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 845-758-7215 If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL: http://anthropology.bard.edu/events/