In the wake of COVID-19, this dossier, edited by Bhaskar Sarkar and Rahul Mukherjee, reflects on the deep fault lines that the pandemic has revealed for India and speculates on the futures of the country. Cover image by Shailesh B. R., courtesy of the artist.
What if we understand natural history not simply as the study of nature, ecosystems, or premodern cultural traditions, but as a site of struggle between two incommensurate relations to the world—one governed by a logic of extraction and enclosure and another that relates to the world as a world in common that cannot be enclosed? Edited by Not An Alternative as part of the collective’s ongoing project The Natural History Museum, this dossier features texts by Indigenous historians, theorists, and ethnobotanists, as well as critical geographers, landscape architects, artists, and activists.
Contributors include Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet/Métis), Andrew Curley (Diné), Ashley Dawson, Kai Bosworth, Natchee Blu Barnd, Billy Fleming, Alberto Acosta, and Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes).