Continuing our tradition of the Distinguished Lecturer Series, this year we
have a stellar line up speakers throughout the year. Our theme for this
years’ talks is Sustainable Humanity: Social, Political, and Ecological
Considerations. We have invited Anthropologists to take into consideration
if our present ways of life are sustainable? What must change to preserve
human life, the viability of the ecosystem,the survival of cultures and
social systems?
Concerned by the failures of world political elites to address these
hazards, the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences is
devoting its 2019-2020 academic program to the topic of “human sustainability.” Anthropology is uniquely positioned to address human responses to
such stresses, with its focus on the cultural past and present, on human
biology and language,as well as its concern for practice. We ask how
anthropologists are innovating and adapting in the ways they study these
changes-seeking new kinds of field sites, new methods. We are asking our
field for new approaches to old questions about humans,non-humans,and
environments. Sustainability as a concern or set of practices entails the
conjoining of different temporalities – what new research is engaging with
understanding connections between present, past and future possibilities?