Sam Perkins
Whitman College
Project
The Language of Wildfire: Collisions of Nature, Society and Uncertainty
Australia, Chile, Japan, Nepal
As a global population, wildfire functions as a proxy for the collision between nature and society. This collision communicates what we choose to ignore, where we face pressure, and what we choose to value. For my Watson year, I will explore cross-cultural approaches to wildfire in a new era defined by uncertainty. My aim is to investigate how different people across the globe approach this universal phenomenon of increasing frequency and severity of wildfire, how they choose to assign agency to the factors of uncertainty, and how they negotiate the intersection between nature and society.