Cameron Allan McKean
Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Cameron is a writer, editor and underwater anthropologist in Melbourne, Australia. After a decade in Tokyo working as an arts journalist, he began doctoral studies at Deakin University involving fieldwork with scientists and divers at coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Cameron is a former books and culture editor for The Japan Times, and a past contributor to CNN, ArtAsiaPacific, Dwell, Apartamento, and art-agenda.
Edited by Cameron Allan McKean
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Anthropology
How to mourn a forest
The Marind people of West Papua deploy mourning not only to grieve their animal and plant kin but as political resistance
Sophie Chao
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Physics
Time is an object
Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories
Sara Walker & Lee Cronin
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History of ideas
Disorient yourself
Now associated with childhood fun, the swing has a near-universal history of ritual transgression and transformation
Javier Moscoso
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Biology
Octopus time
We humans are forward-facing, gravity-bound plodders. Can the liquid motion of the octopus radicalise our ideas about time?
David Borkenhagen
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Anthropology
Memories within myth
The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records
Patrick Nunn
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Language and linguistics
The problem with English
Is Earth’s most-spoken language a living ‘gift’ or a many-headed ‘monster’? Both views distract us from the real dilemma
Mario Saraceni
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Politics and government
Wielding death
When everyday life is marked by oppression and violence, can a martyr’s death truly be an act of freedom and resistance?
Umar Lateef Misgar
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Archaeology
Children of the Ice Age
With the help of new archaeological approaches, our picture of young lives in the Palaeolithic is now marvellously vivid
April Nowell
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History of technology
We’ve always been distracted
Worried that technology is ‘breaking your brain’? Fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself
Joe Stadolnik
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Deep time
The Rift
Splitting the African continent, it is the only place where our human story can be read continuously from the very start
Tristan McConnell
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The environment
Our contaminated future
In Fukushima, communities are adapting to life in a time of permanent pollution: a glimpse of what’s to come for us all
Maxime Polleri
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Thinkers and theories
The generous philosopher
Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world, respecting their right to exist and act on their own terms
Stephen Muecke