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Andrew Flachs

@drflachsophone.bsky.social

340 followers 370 following 110 posts

Associate professor, Purdue Anthropology. Environmental anthropology, ethnobiology, political ecology, food, biotech, fermentation, agriculture. US Midwest, South Asia, Balkans. He/him/his www.andrewflachs.com

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Jan 24

This delicious book on Bt and Organic cotton in India is now available to anthropologists 10 months and older, open access: uapress.arizona.edu/book/cultiva...

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 13d

@ashattuck.bsky.social giving a great lecture in the horticulture department at Purdue! To know about the risks of the global pesticide complex we first need to have usable data about who sprays what and where it’s made

Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Classic FM @classicfm.com · 17d

Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov has been arrested while protesting near the Israel-Gaza border.

Read more: clssicfm.co/4gx5aPS

Israeli conductor arrested while protesting near Gaza border

Ilan Volkov spoke out against the war in Gaza while conducting Brahms’ Symphony No.2 earlier this month.

clssicfm.co

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Raj Patel @rajpatel.org · 21d

The Andhra Pradesh Community-managed Natural Farming team and the good folk at the Kasisi Agricultural Centre in Zambia have some *very* exciting results from their trials. Can't say much more, but it'll be a gamechanger. events.futureeconomy.forum/natural-farm...

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

In the interest building solidarity, I recognize that scholarship and its associated politics are diverse. It includes problematic roots that contemporary scholars disagree with. Open access version coming soon, so if paywalled please see: andrewflachs.com/s/Ethnobiolo...

andrewflachs.squarespace.com

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

This was a remarkable paper to write, in part because both ethnobiologist and degrowth reviewers curbed earlier versions where I was too focused on hatcheting arguments and not planting enough seeds. A shifting kyriarchy mis-applies ethnobiology, anthropology, degrowth, and other ways of thinking.

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

If the point of our work is not just to interpret the world in various ways but to change it, then ethnobiology and degrowth scholars are allies in action-oriented, imaginative research. Both ask how to scale up reciprocity and care. This is a way of being, a relationship. It is not a product.

venn diagram of ethnobiology and degrowth thinking

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

Both conversations work to transcend problematic histories: ethnobiology opposes extraction and appropriation, while degrowthers reject Malthusian and ecofascism. But as long as these inform public conversations around human–ecological relationships and downscaling, the work is never finished.

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

Degrowth research offers a vocabulary to contribute to larger discussions of political economy and political ecology. It tends to emphasize political economy and industrial relations, centering/combatting capitalism while glossing the fine details of how communities co-create environments.

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

Ethnobiology offers meticulous case studies into the web of life, neither studying life apart from human influence nor centering its intersection with humans. While we work in a world shaped through colonial hierarchies and capitalist extraction, we rarely center this context in our research.

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 22d

New paper on the intersections of ethnobiology and degrowth: two ways of understanding our place in the world through action-oriented, imaginative research into socioecological relationships.

doi.org/10.1177/0278...

Ethnobiology and Degrowth: A Review of the Opportunities for Collaboration, Generative Inquiry, and Solidarity in Socio-Ecological Research - Andrew Flachs, 2025

For centuries, global political economic relations have been informed by a model of growth premised on transforming plants, animals, knowledge, labor, water, an...

doi.org

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Jewish Voice for Peace @jvp.bsky.social · 22d

We offer these resources as we enter the High Holy Days this year in grief and in outrage. Our movements have grown to greater power than ever, and yet we have not yet had enough power to shut down the US-Israeli war machine waging death, destruction, and famine on Palestinians in Gaza.

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · 26d

Great intersection of ethnobiology, food security, and food sovereignty from Kaminski and colleagues: communities manage political ecological change by combining long-distance and local food systems ojs.ethnobiology.org/index.php/eb...

Free and open access as always from Ethnobiology Letters

Map of Fijian communities navigating food access

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Sep 6

“Look, there’s structuring structures that structure, and that’s why the poors don’t choose to be better” David Brooks, probably

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Sep 6

What is this “culture” thing anyway? Do any person or persons specialize in its analysis?

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Sep 3

Social reproduction, unpaid and keeping us alive as ever

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · Sep 3

When people say "We used to drink raw milk from our own cow and it was fine,"

That's... usually not the case!

In families w their own cow, the mom usually boiled it before using.

We just forgot bc that's a boring chore that mom did. And who pays attention to that?

youtu.be/vKDPast9WFk

"Everyone Drank Raw Milk!" No They Didn't

YouTube video by Farm to Taber

youtu.be

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Sep 3

Fabulous ethnobiology research from Tassel et al. on ‘Akkoub (Gundelia spp. and Asteraceae) in Palestine, newly out in Ethnobiology Letters

ojs.ethnobiology.org/index.php/eb...

The foliage of this hardy, prickly, perennial genus resembles the artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) and has similar culinary uses.

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · Aug 22

The intentional denial of food and water in Gaza is a crime against humanity, a violation of the international human rights to food and water, and a breach of humanitarian law.

Our statement: ipes-food.org/starvation-a...

#FoodIsNotAWeapon #ProtectGaza

Starvation as genocide - IPES-Food

IPES-Food statement on Gaza. Mass starvation is deliberately being used by Israel as a tool of genocide against the Palestinian people.

ipes-food.org

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · Aug 20

What's the point of a university education if you come out of it not being able to write the first draft of a letter without "AI assistance"?

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Aug 19

Great work!!

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Silvia Secchi @profsecchi.bsky.social · Aug 19

Here's my open access paper "Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American agriculture?"!
I show that using $1,000 sales value as the threshold to be considered a farmer in the Census of Agriculture + increasing the # of operators per farm results in vast overestimates of "farms" & "farmers" 1/

Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American agriculture? - Agriculture and Human Values

Agriculture and Human Values - The most recent changes in the US Census of Agriculture (CoA) have caused substantial increases in the number of farmers. At the same time, by including lifestyle and...

link.springer.com

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Aug 18

Some of us paid attention in Hebrew school: “it is difficult to consider any deaths as natural in Auschwitz, regardless of one's interpretation, as prisoners frequently died from disease, starvation, exhaustion, and, above all, beatings.” www.auschwitz.org/en/education...

Holocaust denial – strategies of lies and distortion / Podcast / E-learning / Education / Auschwitz-Birkenau

www.auschwitz.org

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Reposted by Andrew Flachs

Alan Owlport 🦉 🎃 @alanallport.bsky.social · Aug 18

Is Weiss aware, and if she is does she care, that Holocaust Deniers have made *exactly* this same argument about how the death tolls in the camps are inflated?

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · Aug 18

I’m kind of speechless with this one. I can’t imagine the kind of person who continues to make the argument that it doesn’t count as real starvation if the kids were already sick.

They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation. But All
12 Suffer from Other Health Problems.
A Free Press investigation found that the viral photos lacked important context: The subjects have cystic fibrosis, rickets, or other serious ailments.
By Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova
08.17.25 -Israel and Antisemitism

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Aug 11

But then again, producing enough food hasn’t been the problem since Malthus’ time doi.org/10.1093/acre...

oxfordre.com

Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Aug 11

But industrialized ag is also heavily consolidated and functions as a site of financial speculation, while neoliberal retreat has left states unable to channel food to hungry people www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Concentration and crises: exploring the deep roots of vulnerability in the global industrial food system

The world has experienced three global food crises in the past 50 years. While unique triggers sparked each of these crises, they all exposed extreme concentration within the global industrial food...

www.tandfonline.com

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Andrew Flachs @drflachsophone.bsky.social · Aug 11

This same process can also intensify the use of chemical pesticides, even when working with GM crops designed to curb pesticide use onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

GM Crops and the Jevons Paradox: Induced Innovation, Systemic Effects and Net Pesticide Increases From Pesticide‐Decreasing Crops

The Jevons paradox describes how increased efficiency in the use of a resource can paradoxically increase rather than reduce its overall consumption. In agricultural systems, efficiency is confounded...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com