tristan d. jones
doctoral student, advocate for environmental justice and decolonization
"i can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would fight fires, watch grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. it would multiply not judgements but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. perhaps it would invent them sometimes — all the better. all the better. criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; i’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. it would not be sovereign or dressed in red. it would bear the lightning of possible storms." [michel foucault, the masked philosopher, 1980]
linkedin- academia.edu
- facebook
- tumblr
- last.fm
- contact
-
Info
- PhD Student in Anthropology at Rutgers UniversityHigher Education | Greater New York City Area, USSummary
I grew up on a farm in Central Virginia, and graduated Oberlin College in 2007 where I involved myself in teaching, labor organizing, co-operatives, and ecology management at the environmental studies center. I moved to NYC in February 2008, and worked as a political canvasser with the Working Families Party; I left the WFP to pursue a career in environmental activism.
In January 2009 I established a CSA in the Lower East Side and a larger umbrella group of urban agriculture initiatives called the NYC Food Project.
I obtained my M.A. in Climate and Society at Columbia University in 2010 where I studied climate change and its effects on human societies, specializing in environmental ethics and anthropology.
After earning my M.A., I helped to found a nonprofit based in NYC, The Human Impacts Institute. At the Hii I helped to develop outreach and advocacy programs, and directed the NYC Climate Coalition, a project designed to facilitate collaboration between area climate change organizations. I also worked as a consultant to several corporate sustainability departments, an educational if frustrating experience.
In the fall of 2011 I joined the Anthropology department at Rutgers University as a PhD student, focusing on settler colonialism and indigenous sovereignty, social movements and activism, and the constitution of alterity in the tar sands projects and pipelines of Alberta, Canada. I am an aspiring professor, writer, farmer, and an advocate for environmental justice.
I am an avid bicycle commuter, backcountry backpacker, musician, and cook, and practice vipassana meditation regularly.
Specialties: community organization, social media, horticulture, local agriculture, anti-racism, promotion and outreach, climate change, cultural studies, cultural theory, web development
Experience- Aug 2011 - PresentPhD Student in Anthropology / Rutgers University
- May 2010 - Sept 2011Director of Advocacy and Outreach / The Human Impacts Institute
Establishing networks and collaborative partnerships between NYC-based environmental organizations; developing all web and outreach materials for the NYC Climate Coalition, a project of the Human Impacts Institute; representing the organization at conferences and events; developing internet presence and web content; present project initiatives to museums and community-based organizations.
- Oct 2008 - Aug 2011Volunteer, Staff Member / Bluestockings Bookstore, Community Center, Fair Trade Cafe
Staff member at the collectively-owned and run bookstore, cafe, and activist resource center Bluestockings. Sell books and other items; assist in managing finances; work on store projects; in-class textbook sales; coordinate activities and events with collective members and other workers and volunteers.
- Oct 2010 - Apr 2011Sustainability Programming Coordinator / VF Sportswear
Planned and developed VF Sportswear's internal employee sustainability programming, including outreach events, lectures, and participation incentives. Continued work on VF Sportswear's greenhouse gas inventory. Provided general guidance and assistance to the Director of Corporate Social Compliance and Sustainability.
- Sept 2009 - Sept 2010Writer & Editor at The Climate Center / The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Provided editorial oversight to blog articles; researched, wrote, and posted climate-oriented articles to the Climate Center blog; organized events including a panel on climate change and environmental ethics.
- May 2010 - Aug 2010Environmental Education Intern / Lower East Side Ecology Center
Indexing the "environmental baseline" for local businesses; assisting and leading various workshops including vermicomposting "wormshops"; building the LES Ecology Center's NYC Climate Coalition initiative through community outreach, organizational networking, and web development.
- Sept 2008 - Nov 2008Canvasser/Assistant Field Manager / Working Families Party
Went door-to-door in Long Island to build grassroots support for local Democratic candidates and build name-recognition for the WFP, a progressive labor-oriented third party in NY State. Organized turfs, paperwork, and lead canvassing crews during the election period.
- Aug 2006 - Sept 2007Student Research Assistant at Environmental Studies Center / Oberlin College
Maintained the grounds of the Environmental Studies Center including the orchard, garden, lawn, and wetland in accordance with the Center's philosophy of sustainability.
- Jun 2006 - Sept 2007Head Mechanic and Summer President / Oberlin Bicycle Cooperative
Supervised the opening and closing of the Bike Co-op; supervised the repair of members’ bicycles and co-op rentals; registered members and handled the finances of the co-op; established community outreach programs; ensured smooth organization and operations.
- Feb 2004 - May 2007Journalist and Copy/Resets Editor / The Oberlin Review
Wrote articles; edited newspaper for grammar and content; made corrections to the paper with Adobe InDesign and ensured consistent style.
Education-
2011 - 2018Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-New BrunswickPh.D in Anthropology
Activities: Graduate Student Advising Collective, Anthropology Graduate Student Association - Co-President, Rutgers Climate and Society Initiative, AAUP-AFT, American Anthropological Association, The Association for Queer Anthropology, American Ethnological Society -
2009 - 2010Columbia University in the City of New YorkM.A. in Climate and Society
-
2003 - 2007Oberlin CollegeB.A. in English, Sociology, Third World Studies
Activities: President of the Oberlin Bicycle Cooperative, Co-President of the Students for a Free Palestine, DJ/World Music Staff Member @ WOBC 91.5 Community and College Radio, English Tutor w/ The Immigrant Worker Project, Cleanliness Coordinator @ the Kosher-Halal Cooperative, Dascomb Hall Council President
Additional Information-
Honors:Society for Economic Anthropology, Halperin Memorial Fellow - January 2013 Bigel Pre-Dissertation Research Award - May 2012 Waterman Pre-Dissertation Research Travel Award - May 2012 Rutgers Excellence Fellowship, August 2011 Dannenburg Oberlin-in-London Program, February 2007 – May 2007 Oberlin-in-Guadalajara Program, January 2006 – February 2006 Jerome Davis Research Award, March 2006 Eagle Scout - May 2003
-
academia.edu
-
Canada 2013
-
Posts
If this amendment ends up in the farm bill and passes, it would hit African Americans particularly hard.
According to a secret transcript, members of Cooper Union’s board of trustees joked dismissively about student protesters; Jamshed Bharucha called the students’ demonstrations “performance art”; Stanley Lapidus expressed doubts that the pupils “know what they’re protesting.”
“Welcome to 1968,” trustee Mark Epstein quipped, adding, “Haven’t been tear-gassed in decades,” before dismissing the delegation of trustees for lunch.
More from the transcript—in which the board discusses closing Cooper Union down, screws early decision applicants, declares tenure as good as dead, and tries to avoid scrutiny from the state attorney general—on the Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog.
EDUCATION IS A HUMAN RIGHT YOU FUCKS.
[laughter]
board of trustees are discussion shutting down the engineering school, or the entire school for five years.
Following hot on the heels of Foucault Explained with Hipsters, here’s JB’s Gender Trouble  explained in Socratic dialogue style. With cats. All page references from Butler, J. (1990 [2008: …
Mother Europe Takes Care of Her Colonies*
1925*other version
- Crashing in Toronto
Well, butts! My place to crash in Toronto, while I’m driving out to Alberta, just fell through. I’m going to be in TO Thursday, May 30. I’ll probably get in the evening since the niagara border crossing is so slow. Would anyone here, or any friends, be willing to hole me up for a night?
it’s not a dismissal. i have read her books multiple times, and am well versed in her work. there are quite a few scholars who have critiqued Gloria Anzaldúa for her problematic definition and mobilization of indigeneity, including Andrea Smith (there is a quote from Smith’s article somewhere in this month’s archive of my blog, if you wanna dig thru to find it). a quick search on google scholar should find you what you’re looking for.
i appreciate Anzaldúa for the work that she did, and recognize that she has been a foundational inspiration for many powerful women of color, and for that reason deserves love and respect. her writing style is beautiful and she has a strength in her that i have continually tried to fortify in myself. as a woman who is also trying to connect to her indigenous heritage and make sense of her identities and situatedness in and outside the academy, i admire her relentless passion for such endeavors in her own life—it’s not easy.
none of that detracts from the lateral violence in her writings, which essentialize indigenous cultures of the Southwest and periodize them in a static framing of what Anzaldúa imagines Native cultural practices to signify. a lot of what she has written in that regard is inaccurate at best, and is so incredibly self-absorbed it’s hard, as a Native woman, to take seriously at times. i think it’s really short-sighted and selfish to claim indigenous ancestry and demand that others recognize your birthright to what you paint as a fossilized indigenous culture, while not also simultaneously aligning yourself with living indigenous communities. to my mind, as a reconnecting person, you don’t get to be Native and still not give a fuck about other Native people and what they are struggling with. moreover, indigenous cultures are not something that can just be melded into whatever you want (which is what she does)—ancestry does not give you the right to selectively pick and choose bits of a culture to appropriate or edit as you please.
i think both those problems are ultimately tied into a gross hyper-romanticization of mestizaje as the answer to some grand postcolonial borderlands question—theories of third spatiality, hybridity, and mestizaje have been tempting for a lot of postcolonial scholars because they allow for recognition of nuance and intermixing, but i personally don’t think that’s enough of a legitimation for an ideology that leaves a lot to be desired. a lot of people who romanticize third spaces, for example, do so with no recognition of the fact that for those of us that live in third space forms of survival and resistance because we don’t have a choice, it’s a life of hardship and struggle that often means physical and emotional needs go unmet—when the third space is your only option, there’s often not much you can do and it’s not as glamorous and revolutionary as everyone makes it out to be. hybridity to me seems similarly short-sighted—interrelations and intermixing are two different things and do we really need a vamped up melting pot vision in order to make the point that things are complicated and bound up in their relations with one another? getting back to Anzalduúa, i think the romanticization of mestizaje is especially egregious considering the lateral violence perpetrated against Natives previously discussed—Andrea Smith has written a critique of this that is basically arguing that Anzaldúa’s entire formulation of the mestiz@ as the person who travels between worlds and crosses boundaries is pinned on a theoretical imagination of Indian as Romantic & Prehistoric (especially oppressive re: gender & sexuality), that can only be updated and transformed into something liberatory by the mestiz@. that’s a pretty offensive implication to me.
i’m not doing these critiques justice, there’s plenty of scholarship that goes into this at great length. i don’t have the time to do your research for you, but there’s plenty of stuff out there if you make the effort to look for it. Natives don’t owe you an annotated bibliography every time they say something is offensive.
I have never thought of this, and basically took Anzaldua’s word for it because of how unfamiliar I generally am about indigenous communities. I’m glad this came up though, I’m reading Andrea Smith’s critique now.
i post a lot more political analysis and news articles over on my facebook, if anyone is interested in being friends over there, too.
- This is a repost of an article published to the Newswire site last Saturday. It is being reposted due to it’s significance, as well as edits made per the author’s request. By Hollis Many conversat…
Following the whole DGR (deep green resistance) escapade over transphobia (and other oppressive perspectives and “codes”), this is a nice response. Haven’t read through the whole article yet but so far i’m nodding.
powerful new work by Corey Bulpitt & Larissa Healey at the National Gallery of Canada
ok i’m done for now! thanks for bearing with me folks!
- 245 plays
- 6 plays
- 1122 plays
- 272 plays
- musicdrivethru: Rostam Batmanglij “Wood” @matsoR
(No streaming audio available)101601 plays - 502 plays
-
Recent Tracks
- Pimpin' Smokin' Dro by Los Rakas
- Step Off - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- I Miss You - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- Blowin' Smoke - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- Dandelion - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- Merry Go 'Round - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- My House - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- Silver Lining - Spotify Interview by Kacey Musgraves
- It Is What It Is by Kacey Musgraves
- Follow Your Arrow by Kacey Musgraves
The Magnetic FieldsDaft PunkKanye WestYo La TengoBlurHot ChipPhilip GlassStereo TotalDeerhoofof MontrealKid CudiABBAPixiesBeirutAnimal CollectiveCrassLady GagaDavid BowieSimianThe ShinsBreakbotSonic YouthBelle and SebastianNarciso YepesVashti BunyanKraftwerkManu ChaoElectric Light OrchestraCibo MattoBlonde RedheadJacques BrelcLOUDDEADJay-ZDe Novo DahlCut CopyWireRatatatLowBusta RhymesAesop RockRadioheadRamonesChromeoGorky's Zygotic MynciPavementM.I.A.Calvin HarrisCrystal CastlesThe SmithsSuper Furry Animals- 377 plays
- 240 plays
- 220 plays
- 199 plays
- 197 plays
- 196 plays
- 195 plays
- 182 plays
- 171 plays
- 169 plays
- 161 plays
- 155 plays
- 154 plays
- 151 plays
- 149 plays
- 144 plays
- 140 plays
- 139 plays
- 132 plays
- 131 plays
- 130 plays
- 130 plays
- 130 plays
- 129 plays
- 127 plays
- 127 plays
- 126 plays
- 125 plays
- 124 plays
- 124 plays
- 122 plays
- 122 plays
- 122 plays
- 121 plays
- 119 plays
- 110 plays
- Don't Matter by Akon107 plays
- 107 plays
- 106 plays
- 106 plays
- 106 plays
- 105 plays
- 105 plays
- 102 plays
- 101 plays
- 101 plays
