September 8, 2022

Rick Wilk

Economic and social inequality are fundamental issues for anthropology. The earth’s atmosphere is a common-pool resource which belongs to all the planet’s inhabitants, but we do not all make equal contributions to the causes of greenhouse gas emissions, nor will we all share the consequences. The rich as individuals, and rich countries more generally, are responsible for a lot more carbon emissions, and their wealth allows them to evade much of their impact. In this talk we will discuss the carbon footprints of prominent billionaires and discuss some of the ways their profligate use of common resources could be curbed.

Richard Wilk is Distinguished Professor and Provost’s Professor Emeritus at Indiana University where he co-founded a PhD program in the anthropology of food, and the Indiana University Food Institute. He has lived and worked in Belize for over than 40 years, and more recently in Singapore. Trained as an economic and ecological anthropologist, his research has covered many different aspects of global consumer culture. The author of many books and papers, his most recent books include two co-edited collections one with Emma McDonell titled Critical Approaches to Super Foods (Bloomsbury Academic 2020) and the other Seafood: Ocean to Plate (Routledge, 2018), co-authored with Shingo Hamada.