The Shallow State: So many Trump voters know they got it wrong. They feel the cognitive dissonance. But cognitive dissonance is a real bitch. It fights to vanquish the conflict as an intrusion, to keep you addicted to a faulty world view. For most, it creates rationalizations before resolutions.

An analysis of expanding road infrastructure on indigenous land rights, food security and forest cover in southern Palawan, the Philippines : Find an Expert : The University of Melbourne <p> Across the Southeast Asian uplands, expanding road infrastructure increasingly penetrates remnant forests and Indigenous territories, with major consequences for land rights, food security, and biodiversity (Clements et al., 2014; Reddiar and Osti, 2022). In the Philippines, where only 10 percent of original forest cover remains, new road networks linked to critical minerals mining, oil palm and tourism estate expansion are affecting forests long managed by Indigenous peoples (Sze et al., 2022; Nolos et al., 2023; Mason et al., 2025). As the country’s last ecological frontier, Palawan loses roughly 5,500 hectares of forest annually as roads penetrate forest reserves and ancestral lands (Nolos et al., 2023), yet their impacts remain poorly understood. </p> <p> <strong>Research Question:</strong> What are the origins and impacts of road networks on land rights, food security, and forest cover in southern Palawan? How and why do different types of roads emerge, and who wins and loses from them? </p> <p> This PhD project examines the historical and contemporary rise of road networks penetrating the upland forests of southern Palawan, where Indigenous communities face intersecting pressures on land, resources, and governance. It analyses how roads intersect with ancestral domain claims, livelihood changes, shifting land classifications, territorial disputes, and changing accessibility, and how these processes affect Indigenous food security, forest cover, and biodiversity. </p> <p> Using spatial analysis and ethnographic methods, the project traces the spatial and temporal dynamics of road expansion, land use conversion, livelihood changes, forest degradation and biodiversity declines. It integrates satellite imagery, planning documents, and community sketch maps to quantify forest cover change and model relationships between road density, agricultural transitions, and biodiversity. </p> <p> Grounded in political ecology and Indigenous land politics, the project examines how competing claims intersect along roads as socioecological corridors that facilitate market integration while catalysing dispossession and reconfigurations of customary authority. Through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and spatial analysis, it generates a multiscalar account of road building as a political project reshaping ancestral lands, food systems, forest cover, and biodiversity in southern Palawan. </p> <p> References: </p> <p> Clements, Gopalasamy Reuben, et al. (2014) “Where and how are roads endangering mammals in Southeast Asia’s forests?.” <em>PloS one</em> 9.12 (2014): e115376. </p> <p> Dressler, W. (2021). Defending lands and forests: NGO histories, everyday struggles, and extraordinary violence in the Philippines. <em>Critical Asian Studies</em>, <em>53</em>(3), 380-411. </p> <p> Mason, D., Dressler, W., & Novellino, D. (2025). Extracting Value, Losing Ground: The Critical Minerals Boom in Palawan. <em>New Mandala</em>. June 13, 2025. <a href="https://www.newmandala.org/extracting-value-losing-ground-the-critical-minerals-boom-in-palawan/">https://www.newmandala.org/extracting-value-losing-ground-the-critical-minerals-boom-in-palawan/</a> </p> <p> Nolos, R. C., Zamroni, A., & Evina, K. F. P. (2023). Drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Palawan, Philippines: an analysis using social-ecological systems (SES) and institutional analysis and development (IAD) approaches. <em>Geography, environment, sustainability</em>, <em>15</em>(4), 44-56. </p> <p> Reddiar, I. B., & Osti, M. (2022). Quantifying transportation infrastructure pressure on Southeast Asian World Heritage forests. <em>Biological conservation</em>, <em>270</em>, 109564. </p> <p> Sze, J. S., Childs, D. Z., Carrasco, L. R., & Edwards, D. P. (2022). Indigenous lands in protected areas have high forest integrity across the tropics. <em>Current Biology</em>, <em>32</em>(22), 4949-4956. </p>

Colleagues,

Please share this great PhD scholarship opportunity on the political ecology of roads in the Philippines. Fully funded, relocation support, etc. Ethnographic skills, willing to learn Filipino, strong GPA essential. @pollenetwork.bsky.social

findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/opportunity/...

Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.

No, the US began shit talking us, slapping us with tariffs and threatening our sovereignty. We Canadians didn't do anything. Don't blame us for this shit. Elbows up, 🍁

ICE uses extrajudicial violence and intimidation for political ends. It's unconstrained by the law, unaccountable to the public. Its crimes are endorsed at the highest levels. What does this tell us? That it's the force of paramilitary thugs all fascist movements & governments use. It is Trump’s SS.

Message from a convicted criminal and sexual offender to Canada.
I'll take that as Team Canada for the win.

Charlie Angus Talks With the UK About Trump: The Petrie Hosken Show YouTube video by Charlie Angus

Speaking with folks in the UK about how Canada is resisting the Trump threat.
It was an honour to be on the Petrie Hosken show.

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

We are open: please wait for us to unlock the door. Thank you for your understanding

this is what it has come to for Mexican restaurants in the Twin Cities

Fantastic work!

My first book, Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025), exists in this world!

Check it out at: uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/social...

1/4

New article!

'Irrigating the periphery: Hydrology, coloniality and counter-irrigation in the Philippines', by Rhomir S. Yanquiling, Wolfram Dressler & Will Smith.

Read it here: doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2025.06.003

Caos en El Nido: el destino viral de Instagram enfrenta crisis ambiental por turismo masivo Palawan, la provincia insular occidental de Filipinas, encabeza la lista de deseos de los turistas por su pintoresco destino principal: El Nido. Este pequeño pueblo pesquero de 50 000 habitantes se en...

El pueblo de El Nido, en la isla filipina de Palawan, se ha convertido en un popular destino turístico debido a su intensa promoción en redes sociales. Sin embargo, el turismo ha causado una grave contaminación costera. Esta es la situación.
es.mongabay.com/2025/07/los-...

I mean, JFC if the FT can say it, so can you @markcarneyforpm.bsky.social

Gorilla habitats and pristine forest at risk as DRC opens half of country to oil and gas drilling bids Government launches licensing round for 52 fossil fuel blocks, potentially undermining a flagship conservation initiative and affecting an estimated 39 million people

Gorillas to be further endangered: the Democratic Republic of the Congo is opening crucial gorilla habitats and pristine forests to bids for oil and gas drilling, with plans to carve up more than half the country into fossil fuel blocks.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Innocuous-sounding "active clubs", including near where I grew up in Hamilton.
ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/...

Distributive Politics and Class Dynamics in Rural Java Based on fieldwork in a village I call Lone Teak in East Java, Indonesia, this paper examines emerging patterns of class differentiation and distributive politics. The history of Lone Teak's landhold....

An open access paper I wrote on differentiated Suharto nostalgia in rural Java for a Journal of Agrarian Change special issue on land and labour in Indonesia: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A picture of the toronto skyline

🚨 Job alert: The Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto is hiring an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

I'll be at ASA and would be happy to chat with interested candidates. Please share widely! #Socsky

Around 100,000 march in Budapest Pride event in defiance of Hungary's ban Marchers gambled with potential police intervention and fines to participate in the annual Budapest Pride, which was outlawed by a law passed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's right-wing governing party.

Marchers gambled with potential police intervention and fines to participate in the annual Budapest Pride, which was outlawed by a law passed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's right-wing governing party.

Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast – and the rate has doubled in 20 years Real world measurements of how much extra heat the Earth is trapping are well beyond most climate models. That’s a real problem.

Earth is trapping much more heat than climate models forecast – and the rate has doubled in 20 years. Article in @theconversation.com by Thorsten Mauritsen @stockholm-uni.bsky.social Steven Sherwood UNSW Sydney & Benoit Meyssignac Université de Toulouse #Climate
theconversation.com/earth-is-tra...

newbooksnetwork.com/for-the-sake...

Great to talk with @dresslerwolfram.bsky.social about "For the Sake of Forests and Gods" on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social !

The conceptual terrain addressed by the volume is expansive. By approaching this terrain through fine-grained studies grounded in the histories, ecologies, and inequalities of Southeast Asia, the contributors render the multidimensioned violence of our time palpable.
—Tania Murray Li, UoT

… The book’s interdisciplinary focus on the volumetric brings a new vision to our understandings of resource territorialities and a new conceptual tool for analyzing the productions of sterile bodies and barren landscapes.
—Nancy Lee Peluso, University of California, Berkeley

“Violent Atmospheres brings the political ecology of crisis to bear on atmospheric violence in Southeast Asia. The theoretically innovative and ethnographically grounded chapters address the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and how resource conflict triggers atmospheric crises.”

Violent Atmospheres: Livelihoods and Landscapes in Crisis in Southeast Asia In Southeast Asia, atmospheric violence emerges from the haze plumes of burning of palm oil plantations, the invisible but powerful spread of viral flows, and the subordination of upland farmers wh…

🚨 On behalf of the contributors, Mary Mostafanezhad and I are delighted to announce the publication of our new book, Violent Atmospheres: Livelihoods and Landscapes in Crisis in Southeast Asia, published by the University of Hawaii Press.

uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/violen...

Bottom trawling is horribly destructive to coastal ocean ecosystems, and deep-sea mining will do the same to the open ocean. #OceanFilm 🌊

Canada, we’re with you!
TRUMPISM IS REPUDIATED IN AUSTRALIA!
#auspol

Israel murdered this beautiful soul. Remember Fatima Hassona. Watch and spread the film "Put your soul on your hand and walk". And never stop fighting the mass murdering death machine that is the Israeli state.

She was 25.