Discuss what Rob Nixon calls slow violence. Essays - Articles

Discuss what Rob Nixon calls slow violence. Essays - Articles Take-home exam SANT285-3 Current Anthropological Research: Anthropology of the Environment Spring 2019 Candidate number: 184 Discuss what Rob Nixon calls "slow violence." In addition to Nixon, use at least ONE other author from the course. This essay explores the term "slow violence" coined by Rob Nixon. Discussing how it plays an important role in explaining the difficulties we have of understanding ecological and natural problems. How reporting environmental problems involves many difficulties, and the importance of contrasting the differences connected to violence. Emphasizing on the humans most affected by the various changes the planet is experiencing, where conspicuous individuals actively try to misguide. Aspects of time and place disoriented trough postponed effects. Further will the understanding of our worlds condition be examined, how our perspective on nature is evolving and some common implications about the subject. Possible shift in our interests to look after our weakened environment, discussed around Bruno Latour's article politics of nature. In addition will we explore some similarities natural issues have with battle and conflict. Slow Violence Humanity has become more connected the last few decades , through technology heavy devices and the world wide web . Instant communication and access to information have made us less committed to our geographical location, and more worried of other locations. Our ring of concern has widened, perhaps because we understand it will eventually affect us equally. And perhaps we think it can escalate, either way are we starting to tackle complex problem s in the environmental field . One of the more subtle problems we have to work with is how to exhibit issues involving nature, and displaying them to the public. A professor named Rob Nixon is discussing the many problems involving humans and nature, in which he came up with the term "slow violence". Nixon describes "slow violence" as " violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time an d space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all . Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility " (Nixon 2011: 2). C limate change is as good as any place, to start illustrat ing the term "slow violence". D isruption of earth cycles caused by humans, at hastened speeds , throwing the planet out of balanc e . But the changes we see and experience are incremental and locally bound in which we need accurate data and numbers to measure and detect the differences. However when these numbers change, they don't make the news by default and when it does get reported it gets faint attention. Sure enough, a five percent increase in the CO 2 content will hardly affect anyone and is why some people don't bother with it. But a five percent tax increase will affect people by the size of their wallet. It is more immediate and direct, it will happen, and it will affect living people. The thought of someone taking your money makes you impassioned, but what to think when we are all collectively destroyi ng our planet in different ways , all robbing each other of our future environment. It's hard to imagine earth to be sensitive enough to feel the presence of human beings. One can foolishly think that if we are disturbing the balance , it must be miniscule. Which it was in the earlier days of humanity , when fire was firstly being introduced . B ut when the accumulated human combustion exceeded what nature could absorb , then the "slow violence" of climate change was initiated . The time perspective of "slow violence" is showing to be problematic. The concept of delayed destruction is not as entertaining as scientists would have liked it to be. Displaying it in today's hysterical news format is difficult , because of the disconnectedness to time and place (Nixon 2011) . When using decades as time unit and earth as the location, the news aspect gets largely diffused . The lack of vis ual evidence and the fact that one can't physically touch the thing that is being discussed can feel