The Eye of the Tiger: Conservation technology, rural surveillance and the patriarchy in Indian wildlife tiger reserves
The Eye of the Tiger: Conservation technology, rural surveillance and the patriarchy in Indian wildlife tiger reserves
A conversation with Dr Trishant Simlai
Dun, dun, dun, dunnnnn! The Anti-Dystopians have another episode out, and this one is absolutely fascinating.
I talked to Dr Trishant Simlai, a conservation researcher studying the politics and geographies of wildlife conservation in India who just received his PhD in the Department of Geography at Cambridge. We discussed wildlife surveillance in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, how camera traps can be used to uphold the patriarchy, and when workplace surveillance technologies **literally*** lead to tiger attacks.
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Further reading from the episode
Negotiating the Gaze. Sanctuary Asia, December 2019
Are Conservation Organizations Complicit in Ethnic Discrimination? The Wire 2017
Grasslands of Grey: The Kaziranga Model isn't perfect- but not in the ways you think. The Wire 2017
Are Treacherous Links and Claims an Illusion? Sanctuary Asia 2016
Conservation 'Wars': The global rise of green militarization and trends in India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol L No 50. 2015.
Negotiating the Gaze. Sanctuary Asia, December 2019
Digital Surveillance Tech in Conservation and their social implications (ebook)
Why we must question the militarisation of conservation (Science Direct)
How does Conservation Tech Cause Harm? (Youtube video)
Conservation Surveillance as a means for state repression? (Youtube video)
Video of the week
Don’t understand NFTs? This dragon’s got you covered…
What I’ve been reading
Rotterdam is dismantling an historic bridge to allow Jeff Bezos’s superyatch to come through (how rich do you have to be to get a bridge dismantled for your Very Big Boat?)
Excellent long read on how the cybersecurity company ID.me became the private gatekeeper of digital identity for the government on Bloomberg
Plus, a further op-ed by Joy Buolamwini in The Atlantic about how the IRS shouldn’t use ID.me/facial recognition for collecting taxes
In more concerning problems on Amazon marketplace, lawmakers press Amazon on sales of dangerous chemicals (t/w: self-harm)
The Crisis Text Line’s AI-driven chat service has gathered troves of data from its conversations with people suffering life’s toughest situations. (t/w: self-harm)
Plus, an interesting interview with Yanis Varoufakis in crypto-syllabus on “Crypto, the Left, and Techno-Feudalism”
Finally, Gen Z is spamming Putin’s Instagram asking him not to start World War III …. hey, diplomacy comes in many forms