Matt Chew
Modern ecology, and perhaps especially Anglo-American ecology, has several constitutional vulnerabilities: relying on arbitrary, figurative and sociomorphic study objects; misanthropy and misoneism; apocalyptic proselytizing, and insisting that the foregoing can be (and have been) scientifically rationalized. All these emerge in discussions of biogeographical dynamism attributable to human agency; i.e., of introducing plants and animals to new places. Scientists rarely address the arrival and establishment of locally, recently unfamiliar taxa in value-neutral terms. Imports are most often disparaged as alien and sometimes as invasive species.
The redistribution (premeditated or otherwise) of biota by humans has provided an incubator for ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary hypothesizing since the 1600s. My research is historical and theoretical, tracking the occurrence, recurrence, and (sometimes) development of sociomorphic, mostly censorious conceptions and representations of biogeographical dynamism within the various (peer-reviewed, gray, popular and derivative news) literatures of natural history, botany, zoology, ecology and conservation biology. I am particularly interested in (1) attempts to establish categories and degrees of biogeographical belongingness, which I call anekeitaxonomies; (2) arguments based on xenobiophobic assertions that arriving organisms or taxa are deviant, aggressive, monstrous, ugly, unfairly competitive or morally deficient; and (3) scapegoating biota in response to the unforeseen outcomes of commerce and other human activities.
Phone: Office 480.965.8422
Address: Arizona State University
Center for Biology and Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301
USA
The redistribution (premeditated or otherwise) of biota by humans has provided an incubator for ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary hypothesizing since the 1600s. My research is historical and theoretical, tracking the occurrence, recurrence, and (sometimes) development of sociomorphic, mostly censorious conceptions and representations of biogeographical dynamism within the various (peer-reviewed, gray, popular and derivative news) literatures of natural history, botany, zoology, ecology and conservation biology. I am particularly interested in (1) attempts to establish categories and degrees of biogeographical belongingness, which I call anekeitaxonomies; (2) arguments based on xenobiophobic assertions that arriving organisms or taxa are deviant, aggressive, monstrous, ugly, unfairly competitive or morally deficient; and (3) scapegoating biota in response to the unforeseen outcomes of commerce and other human activities.
Phone: Office 480.965.8422
Address: Arizona State University
Center for Biology and Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301
USA
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Videos by Matt Chew
April 2014
55 minutes
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April 2014
55 minutes
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As invasive species go, Killer Tomatoes would have to be at the top of the heap. If it weren't for the fact that they only existed in a gloriously awful 1970's science fiction film.
In real life, most ecologists view invasive species as serious -- if less existential -- threats and with good reason. Plants and animals such as Asian Carp, Zebra Mussels and European Water Chestnuts have done some serious damage to native species, even whole ecosystems.
But according to Matt Chew, that approach to invasive species is wrong-headed and even dangerous. He's from the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University. And he's one of a group of 19 people who signed an article in the journal Nature that argues for a much less confrontational approach. Matt Chew was in Tempe, Arizona. And Dr. Jim Carlton is a Professor of Marine Sciences at Williams College, and Director of the Williams-Mystic Maritime Studies Program. He was in Mystic, Connecticut.
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