Colonialism

• It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.
• For the Vatican, the traditional family will be ruined and children are now vulnerable to “ideological colonization”.
• And for right-wing politicians and heads of state, (from Liberal senator Alex Antic, who believes gender dysphoria is a “trend”, to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vladimir Putin), gender is a weapon of social destruction.

• Butler’s overarching argument is that “gender” – the overdetermined concept to which “anti-gender ideologists” object –  is really a nightmarish bogeyman, a “phantasm with destructive powers, one way of collecting and escalating multitudes of modern panics”.
• Read more:
  Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained

Misplaced fears and misunderstandings

• The first, to which much of the book is dedicated, is to expose the absurdity of arguments against gender ideology.
• Butler demonstrates the ways “gender ideology” critics invert, externalise and project the very harms they claim “gender ideologists” pose.
• Then there’s the supposed threat of sexual violence to cisgender women if transgender women are allowed into single-sex spaces like prisons.
• Read more:
  'Toxic masculinity': what does it mean, where did it come from – and is the term useful or harmful?

More than two sexes

• Feminists like Butler reject “sexual dimorphism”: the belief there are two, and only two, sexes.
• But we expect to find two sexes because that is how many sexes we have learned to see.
• And we look for two sexes because we only recognise two genders.
• And because we expect to find two sexes in humanity, we automatically start to explain away any evidence (like intersex diversity) that would contradict this received truth.

Fighting back

• These rules, we think, apply both to ourselves and others.
• To critics, “gender ideologues” are breaking all the organisational rules of gender, inverting all sense and order.
• When we question gender as an organising principle, it introduces further questions about the right way to live.

• Ultimately, Butler’s point is that while gender seems scary to many, the reality is: it’s not.
• Take a pause and ask, they suggest: what are the agendas of those who may try to convince you otherwise?
• But in imagining a shared future together, we can “emerge into a world committed to cohabitation and equality across difference”.

Louise Richardson-Self receives funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects: DE190100719: Hate Speech Against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures; and DP200100395: Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate.

• Problems in Canada’s food system are being felt from field to fork — and they are increasingly hard to swallow.
• After a year of skyrocketing food costs, Canada’s Food Price Report 2024 predicts a further increase of 2.5 to 4.5 per cent for grocery store price tags.
• One cause for these higher prices — apart from corporate greed — is attributable to more difficult environmental conditions for farmers.

Agroecology

• Around the world, this approach to farming is often called agroecology.
• Agroecology refers to the use of specific farm management practices that recycle nutrients and resources and benefit from interactions between multiple species of crops and animals in the same area.
• Agroecology differs from other, perhaps more familiar, farming systems like organic or regenerative.
• However, farmers in our study offer glimpses into their visions for agroecology as they attempt to translate its principles onto the prairie landscape, despite overlapping challenges.

Prairie agroecology

• In our recent study we interviewed farmers from 19 farms across the Prairies — during the 2021 season — and found that with enough commitment and support from their surrounding community, agroecology can be a viable path forward.
• Burnout is a serious issue for farmers practicing agroecology.

Bringing more people to the land

• Additionally, policies must be developed that support and encourage farmers who use ecological farming practices — especially young farmers.
• Bringing more people to the land should also respond to this historical context.

Prairie agroecology can help a just transition

• However, a transition to ecological farming on the Prairies is not just a matter of agricultural practice, but also of social justice.
• These are huge challenges and we feel agroecology can help address them while also building better relationships between people and the land.

Evan Bowness receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Jessie MacInnis receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canadian Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral program.

• AMSTERDAM, March 7, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has awarded the Erasmus Prize 2024 to the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh.
• Ghosh has won various prizes, among them the 2018 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary prize in India.
• The Erasmus Prize is awarded annually to an individual or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the field of humanities or the arts.
• The Erasmus Prize consists of € 150,000 in prize money.

• This is a serious problem – counterfeited specimens can mislead palaeontologists into studying an ancient past that never existed.
• In a new study, my colleagues and I reveal a surprising truth about a fossil celebrated for decades as one of the best preserved fossils from the Alps.
• The Tridentinosaurus antiquus was a small lizard-like reptile that lived during the Permian period (299-252 million years ago), where the Alps are today.
• The fossil has been reported in books and articles but has never been studied in detail with modern techniques.

The circumstances behind this forgery are unknown, but we know that it took place before 1959 – the date of the official scientific description of the fossil. However, this discovery is a reminder of how important it is to report such specimens and combat fossil forgeries.

The history of fossil forgeries

• The history of fossil forgery goes as far back as the dawn of palaeontology itself, with early reports dating back to the late 18th and 19th centuries.
• This was mainly driven by the lucrative market of selling fossil specimens to private collectors and museums.
• Scientists have discovered that natural history museums around the world have counterfeit specimens in their collections.
• The fossil trade in Morocco alone is worth US$40 million (£32 million) a year and supplies fossil shows all over the world.
• We might not be able to put an end to the making of fake fossils, but we are here and ready to unmask them and protect our marvellous fossil heritage.

• Valentina Rossi is currently affiliated with the University College Cork.
• 11/34; CUP H32F20000010003) awarded to Prof. Evelyn Kustatscher (Museum of Nature South Tyrol, Bolzano, Italy).