Category: Media

Andrew Flachs Talks ‘Cultivating Knowledge’ and more on Landscapes Podcast

Posted on June 20, 2022August 5, 2024 by Mari Herreras

June 17, 2022

Landscapes with Adam Cato featured a recent interview with University of Arizona Press author Andrew Flachs on his study of the role of seeds on farmer livelihoods in rural India as part of his book, Cultivating Knowledge.

In Cultivating Knowledge Flachs shows how rural farmers come to plant genetically modified or certified organic cotton, sometimes during moments of agrarian crisis. Interweaving ethnographic detail, discussions of ecological knowledge, and deep history, Flachs uncovers the unintended consequences of new technologies, which offer great benefits to some—but at others’ expense. Flachs shows that farmers do not make simple cost-benefit analyses when evaluating new technologies and options. Their evaluation of development is a complex and shifting calculation of social meaning, performance, economics, and personal aspiration. Only by understanding this complicated nexus can we begin to understand sustainable agriculture.

From Landscapes:

An article in Scientific American bringing a science and technology studies lens to Genetically Modified Organisms, provoked louder than normal responses from the pro biotech crowd. What can we learn from the exchange? Dr. Andrew Flachs, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University, studied the role of seeds on farmer livelihoods in rural India as part of his book, Cultivating Knowledge. We discuss the arguments of the article and its malcontents to try and reach a broader understanding of what this debate is really about.

Listen to the podcast here.

KUOW NPR Continues ‘Sound of Exclusion’ Conversation in Interview with Christopher Chávez

Posted on May 2, 2022April 27, 2022 by Mari Herreras

May 2, 2022

Christopher Chávez sat down recently with KUOW NPR’s Soundside host Libby Denkmann to discuss his new book, The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

From Soundside:

Chavez explains that as radio grew to become widely used, it immediately went heavily commercial, despite some organizations and universities producing educational content.

“You had a framework of educational radio, these smaller systems that were meant to serve a social good … The 1967 Radio Broadcasting Act was meant to ensure some kind of framework for these stations. They would provide some sort of funding to basically serve a need that commercial radio couldn’t. They would do it through civic discourses, they would serve disenfranchised publics. They were meant to serve as an alternative to the commercial radio system.”

But Professor Chavez notes that, often, the most educated, socially connected, and people with cultural and economic capital have had easy access to the public media system.

“Even today, those are the folks that tend to be overrepresented in political discourses … so you have the people that are living in rural areas, that are poor, that are ethnic minorities, that are often not included in those kinds of civic discourses.”

To listen to the full conversation, go here.

Roberto Rodriguez Featured in 5 CALÓ Questions

Posted on April 28, 2022April 27, 2022 by Mari Herreras

April 28, 2022

CALÓ News, a groundbreaking news initiative of the Latino Media Collaborative (LMC), featured University of Arizona Press author Roberto Cintli Rodríguez on his work with the Raza Killings Database Project to find a more accurate number on how many Latinos are being killed by law enforcement nationwide.

Rodriguez’s book, Yolqui, a Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World: Testimonios on Violence, describes his own experience one night in March 1979 after a brutal beating at the hands of L.A. County sheriffs. It also includes testimonies from other victims and survivors of police brutality and state-sponsored violence.

From CALÓ News:

When I researched, I went to the 1950s, 1940s and 1930s. You’re talking about mass lynchings, you’re talking about mass deportations of Latinos. All that history most people don’t know. All that land belonged to Mexican peoples or Native peoples. How did they lose it? A lot of it was literally by force. It’s an ugly history for African Americans, Native peoples and Mexicanos. That’s our history.

So it’s not a recent thing. We’ve all been fighting it and the media in a way is clueless because they think it’s a competition or something new.

Our struggles are not only related, but we’re related to other struggles, too. The connections were already there, the American Indian Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Chicano Movement, and you go back, also in Mexico with the Mexican student movement, the Mexican liberation movements at the time.

In this country, there’s three groups that have always been under attack. For the longest time, it was indigenous, Black, and Brown people. Now, it’s Asian again. So for me, that is like a natural alliance.

Read the entire interview here.

Watch: Christopher Chávez’s ‘The Sound of Exclusion’ Featured in PubWest Event

Posted on April 27, 2022April 27, 2022 by Mari Herreras

April 27, 2022

PubWest recently teamed up with Vancouver, B.C.’s Massy Books for an author reading and Q&A event with three authors focusing on history and biography, especially titles from underrepresented authors. Included was University of Arizona Press author Christopher Chávez and his new book, The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

Food Bank News Shares Story of ‘Sowing the Seeds of Change’

Posted on April 26, 2022April 26, 2022 by Abby Mogollon

April 26, 2022

A leading newsletter for America’s food banks has shared word of Seth Schindler’s Sowing the Seeds of Change. In an article published by Food Bank News Schindler explains how he came to write about the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona (CFB) and why it was so important to chronicle the history of this important community organization.

“I realized that the story of the CFB was much bigger, more complex and intriguing than I originally thought. I learned about the enormity of the problem of food insecurity in the U.S. and in Arizona, which shocked me; then the surprising massive scale and diversity of the CFB’s operations throughout southern Arizona; and finally its reputation as a national leader and innovator in the food bank movement, admired for its groundbreaking work in attacking the root causes of food insecurity,” says Schindler.

Read the complete article.

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe Featured on OsiyoTV

Posted on April 25, 2022April 25, 2022 by Savannah Hicks

April 25, 2022

University of Arizona Press author Sara Sue Hoklotubbe was featured on the Cherokee Nation’s OsiyoTV, speaking about her mystery novel series and her process as a writer. About Sara 5and her books, Osiyo TV said this:

Sara Hoklotubbe is a mystery writer whose books earn high praise from readers and critics alike. She aims to dispel myths often written about Natives while staying true to Cherokee culture through her characters. Her protagonist, Sadie Walela, does just that as a sharp Cherokee woman with an eye for solving crimes.

Watch the video below!

The Space Review on ‘Discovering Mars’

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Abby Mogollon

April 19, 2022

Discovering Mars provides a broad history of the Red Planet. The online journal The Space Review recently published a review of the new book:

“Earlier this month, NASA marked the first anniversary of the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Since that landing the rover has explored part of the floor of Jezero Crater, collecting several samples intended to be returned to Earth on future missions, and is heading towards the remains of a river delta. The Ingenuity helicopter, a technology demonstration that NASA planned to fly up to five times last spring just completed its 20th flight, having become an aerial scout for the rover.

Perseverance is the latest in a long line of NASA missions to the planet, which itself in an extension of terrestrial studies of the planet dating back millennia. That long arc of observations of the Red Planet is the subject of Discovering Mars, a thorough history of how our understanding of the planet has changed over time.” Read more.

NiemanLab Interviews Christopher Chávez on Future of NPR and ‘Sound of Exclusion’

Posted on February 23, 2022February 21, 2022 by Mari Herreras

February 23, 2022

NiemanLab’s Hanaa’ Tameez recently interviewed University of Arizona Press author Christopher Chávez on his new book, Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

From the interview:

The American public looks different now. When we look at the world, demographically, we’re changing. We’re becoming much more diverse in really beautiful and interesting ways. There are all kinds of important stories to tell. During my research, I found that some of the policing [over what can be on NPR] comes from executives and broadcast-level producers, news directors who make small choices. But some of the policing comes from audience members themselves. Some people would react negatively when they heard somebody speaking in an accent, for example, or when a lot of time was spent on a Latinx-oriented story.

Consumers are very vocal, and in today’s digital environment, that feedback can be given to institutions immediately. And it can be swift and severe. That often came up and it was really profound in terms of the range of stories in Los Angeles, where I grew up. L.A. is a predominantly Latinx city. The radio station KPCC’s motto is “We speak Angeleno,” but it’s really speaking in English, speaking without an accent, excluding people that are primarily Spanish-dominant, not telling their stories, and just not showing the breadth of the reality that I know there to be in Los Angeles.

Read the entire interview here.

New Books Network Podcast Features Christopher Chávez on ‘Sound of Exclusion’

Posted on February 21, 2022February 18, 2022 by Mari Herreras

February 21, 2022

Susan Liebell of the New Books Network recently interview University of Arizona Press author Christopher Chávez on his new book, The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public.

How is power enacted in everyday broadcast practices? National Public Radio has a “rhetoric of impartiality” but this obscures the ideological work done by the network.” In The Sound of Exclusion: NPR and the Latinx Public (The University of Arizona Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Chavez interrogates how NPR determines what it means to be American and what is deemed American news. NPR’s original mandate included engaging listeners in civic discourses and representing the diversity of the nation. Yet Chavez argues that NPR has created a “white public space” that pushes Latinx listeners to the periphery. As a result, NPR promotes the cultural logic that Latinx identity is separate from national identity – hindering Latinx participation in civic discourses. But Chavez maintains that the shared act of listening might facilitate the ways in which Latinx listeners negotiate and resist norms of what it means to belong, also known as sonic citizenship. He writes that through the act of listening, “… those without sustained access to political power might imagine alternative political possibilities in which they are included.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Miriam Davidson’s New Op-Ed in Progressive Calls for Protections of Mexican Journalists

Posted on February 15, 2022 by Mari Herreras

February 15, 2022

The Progressive Magazine recently published a new op-ed by University of Arizona Press author Miriam Davidson, calling for the Mexican government to protect Mexican journalists. Mexico continues to rank as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the press.

Davidson’s new book, The Beloved Border: Humanity and Hope in a Contested Land, shares the history of sanctuary and argues that this social movement and others that have originated on the border are vanguards of larger global movements against the mistreatment of migrant workers and refugees, police brutality, and other abuses of human and natural rights. She gives concrete examples of positive ways in which border people are promoting local culture and cross-border solidarity through health care, commerce, food, art, and music.

From the op-ed:

Not only is the Mexican government failing to protect journalists, it has been using spyware to monitor their activities, watchdog groups have determined. Some of the surveilled reporters have later turned up dead.

In response to this situation, some Mexican reporters have gone into exile in other countries. A few have applied for asylum in the U.S., though most are denied, even after receiving death threats.

But there’s only so much they can do. In Mexico, as in the United States, politicians enjoy fomenting public distrust of the press. The media are a suspect class. Yet reporters in both countries perform an essential service in keeping the public informed.

AMLO needs to do more. He must stand up for a free press by putting attention and resources toward actually protecting people, preventing attacks and combatting official corruption. With those words and deeds, he can help end the scourge of journalist murders.

Read the entire op-ed here.

The University of Arizona Press