About the reading group
Associate Professor of Anthropology Kristina Lyons based at University of Pennsylvania. Kristina will present two chapters from her book, Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics (Duke University Press, 2020. See details below, and readings will be circulated via the SOILS e-mail listserve.
Readings
- Chapter 2: The Theater of Life Is Also a Stage of Death, & Chapter 4: Decomposition as Life Politics: On Reclaiming and Relaying, from:
- Lyons, K. M. (2020). Vital decomposition: soil practitioners and life politics. Duke University Press.
Location
This will be a hybrid event and we encourage as many to attend in person if they can!
Zoom-link
Click here to attend Zoom meeting
Meeting ID: 681 1723 0225
Passcode: 655544
About the presenter
Kristina Lyons situates her research at the interfaces of the environmental humanities, feminist and decolonial science studies, socio-ecological justice and experimental ethnography.
Her book, Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics weaves together an intimate ethnography of two kinds of practitioners – state soil scientists and peasant farmers – who attempt to cultivate alternatives to commercial coca crops and the military-led, growth-oriented development paradigms intended to substitute them (Duke University Press, 2020).
Lyons is the recipient of the 2017 Cultural Horizons Prize by the Society of Cultural Anthropology. Her current work focuses on the memory and mourning of water, geological processes, participatory forms of territorial planning, socio-natural disaster, and water-inspired subjectivities.