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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · 20d

New semester. Offered to print all the readings for students who wished to try to work in a less distracted way. Did not appreciate how long actually doing that printing would take...

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · 20d

"There is something... self-defeating about an approach to political strategy that takes so much of our political life as fixed and preordained and thereby minimizes the significance of doing actual politics"

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 22d

Reignited debates about the place of polling in progressive politics are one skirmish in a broader struggle over the future of the Democratic Party. The stakes could hardly be higher for forging a popular front against Trump’s authoritarianism.

Lily Hu on the data wars over electoral strategy:

How to Lie with (Political) Statistics - Boston Review

Inside the data wars over Democratic strategy.

www.bostonreview.net

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Aug 29

from citizens to subjects, alas.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Aug 23

@spokes.org.uk I recall seeing something about e-bikes not being allowed overnight at Waverley. Is that the case?

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Aug 19

the newest issue of Hau has a special collection on the late, great economic anthropologist Jane Guyer: www.haujournal.org/index.php/ha...

Vol 15, No 2 (2025)

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

www.haujournal.org

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 19

"Looking across all sectors, the key dynamic appears to be a well-worn story: women opt in much greater numbers for healthcare jobs, where employment continues trending steeply upwards...

Perhaps “learn to care” could replace “learn to code” as the go-to career advice for the next generation."

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · Jul 18

NEW:

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment.

I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged:

Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay.

www.ft.com/content/a9ea...

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Indeed. Runciman made the case for an even larger expansion, though as a father of a five year old I’m suspicion of six year olds: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Votes for children! Why we should lower the voting age to six | David Runciman

The long read presents Reconstruction after Covid: The generational divide is deforming democracy. But there is a solution

www.theguardian.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

There are also some good books focused on the river and its inhabitants, including Stephen Most’s River of Renewal and Kari Marie Norgaard’s Salmon & Acorns Feed Our People

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/salmon-and-a...

osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/river-o...

Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People - Rutgers University Press

Finalist for the 2020 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems Since time before memory, large numbers of salmon have made the...

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

See also the documentary work of Swiftwater Films: www.youtube.com/@swiftwaterf...

Swiftwater Films

We are a full service production company who specialize in documentary nonfiction storytelling and branded films that inspire, activate and engage. We have a diverse team that works from concept thro...

www.youtube.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

hakaimagazine.com/features/the...

The Other Side of the World’s Largest Dam Removal | Hakai Magazine

Removing dams from the Klamath River in Northern California seems like a clear win for fish and rivers. Why do some locals hate it?

hakaimagazine.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

VOA www.youtube.com/watch?v=skok...

The Inside Story | Undamming the Klamath

YouTube video by Voice of America

www.youtube.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

@opb.org's archive of reporting www.opb.org/search/#gsc....

Including these films: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnI...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZMS...

After the dams: What’s next for the Klamath River? | Oregon Field Guide

YouTube video by Oregon Public Broadcasting

www.youtube.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Mongabay.org's news.mongabay.com/2024/10/larg...

Largest dam removal ever, driven by Tribes, kicks off Klamath River recovery

KLAMATH, CALIFORNIA—Brook M. Thompson was just 7 years old when she witnessed an apocalypse. “A day after our world renewal ceremony, we saw all these fish lined up on the shores, just rotting in pile...

news.mongabay.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

@americanrivers.bsky.social did a terrific podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0IKmzyD...

Undammed: The Klamath River Story

Podcast · American Rivers · The history of water in the West has been shaped by conflict, greed, and scarcity, but in a remote pocket of Southern Oregon and Northern California, a different Western wa...

open.spotify.com

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Grist's lengthy retrospective: grist.org/project/indi...

How the Klamath Dams Came Down

Last year, tribes in Oregon and California pulled off the largest dam removal in U.S. history. This is their story.

grist.org

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

The Klamath saga has been subject of excellent journalism, including from @highcountrynews.org, @opb.org, @ahofschneider.bsky.social of @grist.org, @jacquesleslie.bsky.social, and @mongabay.com. I'll include some links below.

Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

As the Trump regime works to eliminate such programs, the Klamath has important political lessons, some of which I tease out in the essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review

A new politics of rivers is emerging.

www.bostonreview.net

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

As the Trump regime works to eliminate such programs, the Klamath has important political lessons, some of which I tease out in the essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review

A new politics of rivers is emerging.

www.bostonreview.net

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

When I visited, I was surprised at how much heavy machinery goes into restoring ‘nature’—bulldozers, excavators, dump trucks, and quite a bit of dynamite were needed.

But so did a lot of scientific and indigenous knowledge, carefully selected seeds, and legal manoeuvring.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

A 2020 agreement — between states, power companies, tribes, and others — paved the way for an incredible project of deconstructing four dams.

This has been a highly contentious project but also a remarkable project of engineering and re-wilding.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Salmon are a keystone species, essential to ecological flourishing, but they’re also at the core of indigenous identity—diets, ceremonial life, and leisure. When dams inhibit nutrient flows, raise the temperature of water, and block upstream salmon habitats, it is therefore an issue of sovereignty.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Native Americans (from @yuroktribe.bsky.social and others) have fought for decades to restore the Klamath River which runs from Oregon through California to the Pacific. Central to this are salmon which used to be bountiful and are now threatened with extinction.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

Dams, in other words, are sacrifice zones. In the American west, they were central to colonisation; in postcolonial states, they were what Nehru called “temples of modernity.” Countries from China to Ethiopia to Brazil have, in recent years, seen them as ‘clean’ energy.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

In the 20th C, humans built a large dam a day. Some are controversial; some are charismatic mega-infrastructure. Many are relatively small.

But damming a river is always a partisan act. What dams offer in electricity, irrigation, or flood control comes with displacement and ecological costs.

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Kevin Donovan @kevindonovan.bsky.social · Jul 17

I wrote about dams, using new books by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social, James C. Scott, and Yuvan Aves to discuss a remarkable transformation on the Klamath River where four large dams have been removed to restore the watershed. 🧵

www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...

What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review

A new politics of rivers is emerging.

www.bostonreview.net

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Reposted by Kevin Donovan

Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · Jul 16

“When Jawaharlal Nehru called dams ‘temples of modern India’ in 1954, he was expressing a belief shared by all the dominant faiths: to dam a river was to develop a nation. Over the course of the twentieth century, humans built, on average, one large dam a day.”

New from @kevindonovan.bsky.social:

What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review

A new politics of rivers is emerging.

www.bostonreview.net

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