I have officially been in Japan for one week, but it feels like it has been at least a month. Each day is packed with something new, be it stumbling upon a small town’s sacred ritual, meeting with Japanese experts, eating an octopus pancake, or exploring the many wonders of Tokyo. The day’s adventures always […]
The Consequences of Modernity: from L.A. to Tokyo
Anthony Giddens’ book, Consequences of Modernity, explores several important points of transition between the past, modern, and post-modern worlds. His writing includes discussions of time-space separation, symbols, and expert systems related to trust, confidence, risk, and danger. After traveling for around 20 hours yesterday, I was struck by how many concrete examples of these topics […]
Mount Fuji: A Look at the World Heritage Site One Year Later
June 23rd marked the one-year anniversary of Mount Fuji becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site. Interestingly enough, this volcano was named a cultural landmark as opposed to a natural landmark, encouraging us to look more closely at our definitions of nature and culture. Mount Fuji is one of the most-climbed mountains in the world, complete […]
French Fries, E-Waste, and Theory
We took the opportunity we had discussing french fries to look into the claims of a local fast food chain, Burgerville. We looked through Burgerville’s website and examined their claim to be local in more depth. First though, we had to define what we thought would even be considered local. We decided on a radius […]
Tuna, Lawns, and Bottled Water
We examined three different hybrid objects this week — tuna, lawns, and bottled water. Each time we took a different approach to exploring them. First we made a concept map that illustrated all thedifferent actors related to tuna consumption. After that, we split off into groups and discussed a specific actor. My group discussed the […]
Rethinking Wolves, Nuclear Power, and Ecoterrorism
Before studying wolves as a hybrid object, I really didn’t know much about them. I was surprised to learn about all the different sides of them, such as being apex predators, pests/threats, symbols of the wild, evil hunters, and management challenges. I especially thought the connection between wolves as evil hunters and as pests and […]