Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Myriam Lamrani, Associate Researcher, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University

When a life-size skeleton dressed like the Grim Reaper first appeared on a street altar in Tepito, Mexico City, in 2001, many passersby instinctively crossed themselves. The figure was La Santa Muerte – or Holy Death – a female folk saint cloaked in mystery and controversy that had previously been known, if at all, as a figure of domestic devotion: someone they might address a prayer to, but in the privacy of their home.

She personifies death itself and is often depicted holding a scythe or globe. And since the early 2000s, her popularity has steadily spread across Mexico and the Americas, Europe and beyond.

The idea and image of death made into a saint is both unthinkable and magnetic. Her association with drug traffickers and criminal rituals makes many people wary of the skeletal figure. La Santa Muerte also faces significant opposition from the Catholic Church, which condemns her veneration as heretical and morally dangerous. High-ranking church figures such as Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera in Mexico have publicly denounced her devotion, warning that it promotes superstition and goes against Christian values.

This criticism highlights a profound tension between official religion and the grassroots devotion. Many Mexicans who feel abandoned by government and church institutions embrace her as a source of hope. Indeed, based on my research, La Santa Muerte represents strength, protection and comfort to her devotees, which include prisoners, police officers, sex workers, LGBTQ+ people, migrants, the working class and others among less vulnerable populations. Despite her fearsome appearance, she offers a form of care they are often denied elsewhere.

As an anthropologist who has studied La Santa Muerte in Mexico, I believe her power reflects a paradoxical Mexican understanding of death – not only as a symbol of fear but as an intimate part of everyday life that has become one of resilience and resistance amid the country’s chronic violence.

Death and the state

In my recent book, “The Intimacy of Images,” I examine how devotion to La Santa Muerte in Oaxaca – the state famed for its Day of the Dead tradition – draws on Mexico’s long-standing, often playful relationship with the image of death.

Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, I found how people’s prayers, offerings and promises to her are part of a desire for solutions to everyday problems such as illness, economic hardship and protection from harm. Her frequent representation in images such as altars, tattoos and artistic productions also reflects an evolving social understanding of death that has long been a pervasive symbol of Mexican culture, identity and the power of the state.

Following the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century, death as a symbol of the new Mexican nation was popularized by artists such as José Guadalupe Posada, especially through La Catrina, the caricature of the dandy skeleton often associated with the Day of the Dead. Whereas death and its personification were once part of an ethos of celebration and fearlessness in the face of death, they have now become disturbing reminders of the mounting insecurity and violence in Mexico.

This transformation, and the role the skeletal saint plays in providing protection in this dangerous context, reflects Mexico’s broader descent into turmoil. In the 2000 national elections, the Institutional Revolutionary Party was unseated after 71 years of uninterrupted rule. The election of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, in its place saw the fracturing of informal alliances between the state and criminal networks that had previously tamped down on crime through systems of patronage.

In 2006, newly elected PAN President Felipe Calderón launched a militarized war on crime after the yearslong evolution of these early criminal networks into ruthless organizations.

In the following decades, cartel violence has surged, civilian deaths and femicides have escalated, and state institutions have been accused of either direct complicity or a refusal to intervene. The 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Iguala – a case that revealed the degree of state and criminal organizations’ collusion and remains unresolved – only crystallized public outrage. Such rampant violence continues to this day.

Since the beginning of the Mexican drug war in 2006, an estimated 460,000 people have been murdered, and more than 115,000 people are officially listed as missing in the country – roughly one in every 1,140 residents. In heavily affected states such as Guerrero and Jalisco, that ratio is likely far higher, revealing the uneven geography of violence and disappearance across the country.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the country’s first female president – who took office in October 2024 – has promised to dismantle organized crime. Yet the violence and widespread public perceptions of insecurity persist.

A violent mirror

For most devotees, La Santa Muerte is not an ally of the criminals, despite its use by cartel-linked groups. Instead, she is one of the few remaining forms of help amid a terrifying social reality. She offers no illusion that the situation of political dysfunction or rampant violence will improve – only presence and protection. Her image reflects a brutal truth: Survival is no longer guaranteed by a state whose ties to the cartels run deep.

This political and spiritual vacuum is seen in the rise of other lay figures of devotion – folk saints such as Jesús Malverde, more official ones such as San Judas Tadeo, or even devotion to the devil.

La Santa Muerte is distinct, however. She is death personified, the end of life, the ultimate judge and a symbol of shared mortality, regardless of status, race or gender. As one devotee told me: “If you open us, you’ll find the same bones.” La Santa Muerte is also imbued with care and love by her followers. Some address her as kin, an aunt or a revered mother incarnating maternal protection and a kind of strength more commonly associated with the masculine. As many say: “She’s a badass.”

In a country where state protection is scarce and the boundaries between authorities and cartels blur, she represents the people and also shields her believers through miraculous protection. Her followers turn to her because, as they say, only death can protect them from death.

Given her devotees’ vulnerability and the wholehearted trust they place in their skeletal saint, La Santa Muerte is more than mere folklore. She is the patron saint of the many in a country where death walks close. She is a figure of personal solace and collective resilience. Above all, she is a mirror – reflecting a society in crisis and engulfed in violence, and a people reaching for meaning, dignity and protection in the face of it all.

Myriam Lamrani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Only death can protect us’: How the folk saint La Santa Muerte reflects violence in Mexico – https://theconversation.com/only-death-can-protect-us-how-the-folk-saint-la-santa-muerte-reflects-violence-in-mexico-263885

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Justin St. P. Walsh, Professor of Art History, Archaeology and Space Studies, Chapman University

The International Space Station is one of the most remarkable achievements of the modern age. It is the largest, most complex, most expensive and most durable spacecraft ever built.

Its first modules were launched in 1998. The first crew to live on the International Space Station – an American and two Russians – entered it in 2000. Nov. 2, 2025, marks 25 years of continuous habitation by at least two people, and as many as 13 at one time. It is a singular example of international cooperation that has stood the test of time.

Two hundred and ninety people from 26 countries have now visited the space station, several of them staying for a year or more. More than 40% of all the humans who have ever been to space have been International Space Station visitors.

The station has been the locus of thousands of scientific and engineering studies using almost 200 distinct scientific facilities, investigating everything from astronomical phenomena and basic physics to crew health and plant growth. The phenomenon of space tourism was born on the space station. Altogether, astronauts have accumulated almost 127 person-years of experience on the station, and a deep understanding of what it takes to live in low Earth orbit.

If you’ve ever seen photos of the inside of the International Space Station, you’ve probably noticed the clutter. There are cables everywhere. Equipment sticks out into corridors. It doesn’t look like Star Trek’s Enterprise or other science fiction spacecraft. There’s no shower for the crew, or a kitchen for cooking a meal from scratch. It doesn’t have an area designed for the crew to gather in their downtime. But even without those niceties, it clearly represents a vision of the future from the past, one where humanity would live permanently in space for the first time.

Space archaeology

November 2025, by coincidence, also marks the 10th anniversary of my team’s research on the space station, the International Space Station Archaeological Project. The long history of habitation on the space station makes it perfect for the kind of studies that archaeologists like my colleagues and me carry out.

We recognized that there had been hardly any research on the social and cultural aspects of life in space. We wanted to show space agencies that were already planning three-year missions to Mars what they were overlooking.

We wanted to go beyond just talking to the crew about their experiences, though we have also done that. But as previous studies of contemporary societies have shown, people often don’t want to discuss all their lives with researchers, or they’re unable to articulate all their experiences.

Astronauts on Earth are usually trying to get their next ride back to space, and they understandably don’t want to rock the boat. Our research provides an additional window onto life on a space station by using archaeological evidence: the traces of human interactions with the objects and built spaces of the site.

The problem, of course, is that we can’t go to the station and observe it directly. So we had to come up with other ways to capture data. In November 2015, I realized that we could use the thousands of photos taken by the crew and published by NASA as a starting point. These would allow us to track the movement of people and things around the site over time, and to map the behaviors and associations between them.

In 2022, the International Space Station Archaeological Project also carried out the first archaeological fieldwork off the Earth, an experiment designed by my collaborator, Alice Gorman. We asked the crew to document six sample locations in different modules by taking photos of each one every day for two months.

Lessons from photos

We learned that the crew of the International Space Station is a lot like those of us on Earth – perhaps unsurprising, since they live 95% or more of their lives here with the rest of us. They decorate the walls of the station with pictures, memorabilia and, on the Russian side, religious items, the way you might put photos and souvenirs on your refrigerator door to say something about yourself and your family. They make birthday cakes for their colleagues. They love to snack on candy or other special foods that they selected to be sent.

Unlike the rest of us, however, they live without much freedom to make choices about their lives. Their days are governed by lengthy procedures overseen by Mission Control, and by lists of items and their locations.

Crew members do show some signs of autonomy, though. They sometimes create new uses for different areas. They used a maintenance work station for the storage of all kinds of unrelated things, just because it has a lot of Velcro for holding items in place. They have to come up with solutions for storing their toiletry kits because that kind of affordance wasn’t considered necessary by the station’s designers 30 or 40 years ago.

We discovered that despite the international nature of the station, most areas of it are highly nationalized, with each space agency controlling its own modules and, often, the activities going on in each one. This makes sense, since each agency is responsible to their own taxpayers and needs to show how their money is being spent. But it probably isn’t the most efficient way to run what is the most expensive building project in the history of humanity.

In our latest research, we tracked changes in scientific activity, which we found has become increasingly diverse, by documenting the use of specialized experimental equipment. This work was the result of questions from one of the companies competing to build a commercial successor to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.

The company wanted to know if we could tell them what facilities their customers were likely going to need. Of course, understanding how people have used different parts of a site over time is a typical archaeological problem. They are using our results to improve the experiences of their crews.

The archaeology of the contemporary world

Similar archaeological studies of contemporary issues here on Earth can also make future lives better, whether by studying phenomena such as migration, ethnonationalism or ecological issues.

In this way, we and other contemporary archaeologists are charting a new future for studying the past, a path for our discipline that lies alongside our traditional work of investigating ancient societies and managing heritage resources. Our International Space Station work also demonstrates the relevance of social science research for solving all kinds of problems – even ones that seem to be purely technical, like living in space.

ISSAP received funding from the Australian Research Council. Justin Walsh’s co-PI on ISSAP is Dr. Alice Gorman (Flinders University). Walsh co-owns Brick Moon, a space habitat consultancy.

– ref. 25 Years of the International Space Station: What archaeology tells us about living and working in space – https://theconversation.com/25-years-of-the-international-space-station-what-archaeology-tells-us-about-living-and-working-in-space-268549

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Doug Jacobson, University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University

When millions of people suddenly couldn’t load familiar websites and apps during the Amazon Web Services, or AWS, outage on Oct. 20, 2025, the affected servers weren’t actually down. The problem was more fundamental – their names couldn’t be found.

The culprit was DNS, the Domain Name System, which is the internet’s phone book. Every device on the internet has a numerical IP address, but people use names like amazon.com or maps.google.com. DNS acts as the translator, turning those names into the correct IP addresses so your device knows where to send the request. It works every time you click on a link, open an app or tap “log in.” Even when you don’t type a name yourself, such as in a mobile app, one is still being used in the background.

To understand why DNS failures can be so disruptive, it’s helpful to know how the Domain Name System is constructed. The internet contains over 378 million registered domain names, far too many for a single global phone book. Imagine a single book containing every American’s name and phone number. So DNS was intentionally designed to be decentralized.

Each organization that owns a domain, such as google.com, is responsible for maintaining its own DNS entries in its own DNS server. When your device needs to find an IP address, it asks a DNS server, which may ask others, until it finds the server that knows the answer. No single system has to hold everything. That’s what makes DNS resilient.

Centralization equals vulnerability

So why did AWS, the largest cloud provider in the world, still manage to break the internet for so many, from Zoom to Venmo and smart beds?

Cloud providers host web servers but also critical infrastructure services, including DNS. When a company rents cloud servers, it often allows the cloud provider to manage its DNS as well. That’s efficient – until the cloud provider’s DNS itself has a problem.

Amazon disclosed that the specific cause of the recent disruption was a timing bug in the software that manages the AWS DNS management system. Whatever the cause, the effect was clear: Any website or service relying on AWS-managed DNS could not be reached, even if its server was perfectly healthy. In this way, the cloud concentrates risk.

This wasn’t the first time DNS became a point of failure. In 2002, attackers attempted to disable the entire DNS system by launching a denial-of-service attack against the root DNS servers, the systems that store the locations of all other DNS servers. In a denial-of-service attack, an attacker sends a flood of traffic to overwhelm a server. Five of the 13 root servers were knocked offline, but the system survived.

In 2016, a major DNS provider called Dyn, which companies paid to run DNS on their behalf, was hit with a massive distributed-denial-of-service attack. In a distributed-denial-of-service attack, the attacker hijacks many computers and uses them to send the flood of traffic to the target. In the Dyn attack, tens of thousands of compromised devices flooded its servers, overwhelming them. For hours, major sites like Twitter, PayPal, Netflix and Reddit were functionally offline even though their servers were fully operational. Yet again, the issue wasn’t the websites; it was the inability to find them.

The lesson is not that DNS is weak, but that reliance on a small number of providers creates invisible single points of failure. DNS was initially designed for decentralization. Yet, economic convenience, cloud services and DNS as a service are quietly steering the internet toward centralization.

Convenience over resilience

These failures matter far beyond shopping or streaming. DNS is also how people reach banks, election reporting systems, emergency alert platforms and the artificial intelligence tools now powering critical decision-making. It doesn’t even need to fully go down to be dangerous. Simply delaying or misdirecting DNS can break authentication between users and services, block transactions or erode public trust at sensitive moments.

The uncomfortable reality is that convenience is quietly winning over resilience. As organizations increasingly outsource DNS and hosting to the same handful of cloud providers, they accumulate what could be called resilience debt – invisible until the moment it comes due. The internet was engineered to survive partial failure, but modern economics is concentrating risk in ways its original designers explicitly tried to avoid.

The lesson from the AWS outage isn’t just about fixing one software bug. It’s a reminder that DNS is critical infrastructure. That means technology companies can’t afford to treat DNS as background plumbing, and resilience needs to be designed intentionally.

Individual DNS failures inconvenience people, but the reliability of DNS on the whole defines whether the internet still works at all.

Doug Jacobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What is DNS? A computer engineer explains this foundational piece of the web – and why it’s the internet’s Achilles’ heel – https://theconversation.com/what-is-dns-a-computer-engineer-explains-this-foundational-piece-of-the-web-and-why-its-the-internets-achilles-heel-268336

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shelley Mitchell, Senior Extension Specialist in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Oklahoma State University

If you visit a cemetery, look closely and you’ll likely notice many flowering plants – adorning the graves, or maybe even carved into headstones.

As a horticulture Extension specialist and frequent geocacher, I often visit cemeteries in urban and rural areas across the country. The plants seen in cemeteries vary by climate as well as local history and culture. They are planted with purpose, often serving as symbols for the physical and spiritual realms.

Early rural cemeteries

In the early 1800s, cemeteries in the United States started separating from churchyards and common grounds of large cities, such as Boston Common. The population growth of cities quickly boxed in burial grounds, and they became overcrowded. The solution was rural cemeteries outside the city limits.

Mount Auburn, the first rural cemetery, was opened in 1831 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The developers kept the natural state in mind and drew inspiration from English landscape gardens and from a large cemetery in Paris: Père Lachaise – Napoleon’s solution for running out of space for burials in Paris.

Early rural cemeteries were closely linked with horticulture societies, and they became popular green spaces to visit to escape the pollution and crowds of the cities. The founder of one early rural cemetery, Laurel Hill outside Philadelphia, recorded all its plantings, representing over 175 different species, and created a guidebook.

Plants grown in cemeteries were selected not only based on whether they could grow in the climate, but also for the symbolism of their shapes and historical associations of their species. Plants frequently represented death and mourning, hope and immortality.

Weeping willow trees with their long, dangling branches were popular in cemeteries due to their dramatic emotional and visual effects. Evergreens symbolized eternal life. Deciduous trees represented the cycle of life because they lose their leaves in the winter, and flowers are comforting. Plants like iris and rose, which return every year, symbolized immortality.

Death in the Victorian era

Within a few decades of the beginning of the rural cemetery movement, the Victorian era began. Because of large numbers of dead from plagues and wars, death was a big part of Victorian life.

The Victorians were interested in floriography – “flower language” – and attached a symbolic meaning to almost every flower known. Consequently, flowers and other plants became commonplace on headstones.

This emphasis on botanical motifs on headstones contrasted the symbols that had been common on early gravestones in New England during colonial days. Many gravestones from those days had images such as winged skulls and crossed bones, representing the orthodox Puritan view that all humans were sinners. Mortal symbols on headstones were a reminder of death.

Horticultural symbols

Each symbol’s meaning may vary with time and place. Some plants may represent a person’s ancestry or birthplace. A thistle on a headstone could represent someone of Scottish descent, while an Irishman might have a shamrock. Willow is a common symbol on Iroquois graves.

Yuccas, which can live for hundreds of years, can serve as headstones by themselves. African American or cemeteries for enslaved people sometimes used them as grave markers.

Statues of trees can also be gravestones, shaped as trunks, stumps or logs. The stump represents a life cut short. Branches can represent how many children the deceased had, or how many family members are in the plot. Trees can symbolize eternal life or the importance of family – as in a family tree.

These tree stones became popular in the Victorian era, reflecting common rustic design styles in Europe that included home decor featuring twigs, leaves, branches and bark. During this time of increasing urbanization, many people were nostalgic for simpler rural lives and nature.

Plants as religious symbols

Many religions have plants that are sacred and may appear on graves. In Buddhism and Hinduism, the lotus is a sacred symbol associated with spiritual enlightenment, purity and compassion.

Different facets of Christianity are represented in various ways: Grapes may represent the Sacraments, the palm Christ’s victory over death, the rose the Virgin Mary, and wheat the body of Christ.

On the Day of the Dead, people of Mexican descent use marigolds to decorate graves and form trails that lead to a home altar with the deceased’s favorite things.

Victorians used dandelions to symbolize love and grief and that life is not permanent: Its blowing seeds represent the soul’s journey upward.

Some plants represent careers or interests. Adolphus Busch, co-founder of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, has bronze hop flowers decorating his mausoleum. Corn or wheat could represent a farmer.

Flower symbolism

Some flowers traditionally represent particular values of the deceased or messages sent or received from beyond the grave. Daisies can stand for innocence and purity and are often found on children’s graves. Magnolias represent the deceased’s strength of character and leave a legacy of resilience.

Carnations represent affection, health and energy, while crocuses evoke cheerfulness. Oak trees symbolize strength, endurance, power and victory. Laurel, especially in the form of a wreath, has meanings that go all the way back to ancient Greece and is associated with someone of distinction in athletics, the military, or art or literature. Red poppies are associated with remembrance, particularly of World War I.

Herbs fall right in there with flowers in their meanings: Fennel means worthy of praise; garlic, courage and strength; mint, protection from illness; oleander, caution; and thyme ensures restful sleep.

The future of cemeteries

With more people choosing cremation and green burials, cemeteries aren’t selling as many plots. Cemetery horticulture may save the economic day for the cemetery business.

Some cemeteries are now offering gardening classes. A few urban beekeepers like to keep their bees in cemeteries where there are a lot of flowering plants. Cemeteries are becoming certified arboretums, a tourist draw. Citizen science projects have discovered insect and fungi species in cemeteries that are new to the scientific community or rarely seen in the area, or even the world. Rose enthusiasts come to cemeteries to harvest some heirloom varieties, and there is talk of growing edible crops in cemeteries in food desert areas of New York City.

Cemeteries may conjure images of death and decay, but the future for cemeteries is full of life.

Shelley Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Symbolism of cemetery plants: How flowers, trees and other botanical motifs honor those buried beneath – https://theconversation.com/symbolism-of-cemetery-plants-how-flowers-trees-and-other-botanical-motifs-honor-those-buried-beneath-268660

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Joanna Woronkowicz, Associate Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University

“Being an artist is not viewed as a real job.”

It’s a sentiment I’ve heard time and again, one that echoes across studios, rehearsal halls and kitchen tables – a quiet frustration that the labor of making art rarely earns the legitimacy or security afforded to other kinds of work.

I study how artists work and earn a living in the United States. In a country that valorizes creativity yet neglects the people who produce it, I’ve seen how artists are left to navigate a system that treats their calling as a personal gamble rather than a profession worth supporting.

“I wish this country supported artists,” one artist told me. “Look how good it could be if culture was celebrated.”

The reality is that for many artists, the dream of sustaining a creative career now comes with steep odds: volatile income, limited benefits and few protections against technological or market shocks.

Some countries have begun to recognize this and act accordingly. South Korea, for instance, introduced its Artist Welfare Act in 2011 and expanded it in 2022, creating mechanisms for income stabilization, insurance coverage and protection against unfair contracts.

Such examples show that insecurity is not an inevitable feature of artistic life – it’s a symptom of policy choices.

My new book, “Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers,” uses U.S. labor force data to show how building a creative career has become an increasingly risky pursuit – and how smarter policies could make it less so.

A fragile profession

About 2.4 million Americans are artists, or roughly 1% of the workforce in 2019. This figure includes individuals whose primary occupation falls within an artistic field – such as musicians, designers, writers, actors, architects or visual artists – according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s likely an undercount, since many artists hold jobs outside of the arts to support their creative work.

But even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of working artists was already falling. Between 2017 and 2019, formal employment in these fields dropped from 2.48 million to 2.4 million, a quiet contraction that reflected shrinking opportunities and growing instability across creative fields.

When COVID-19 hit, that slow decline turned into a collapse. The arts economy shrank by 6.4% in 2020 – nearly twice the overall U.S. rate of decline – and more than 600,000 jobs disappeared. For artists, the pandemic didn’t create new problems so much as reveal how little of the safety net reached them in the first place.

Health insurance is one example.

Most artists are insured, but roughly 20% buy coverage on their own, compared with about 10% of all U.S. workers. When the Affordable Care Act expanded access to individual plans, artists’ coverage rates improved significantly – a reminder that good policy can make a real difference for this workforce.

Even this modest progress is now under threat: With enhanced marketplace subsidies set to expire and the current government funding impasse looming, individual premiums under the ACA could more than double for many enrollees next year.

Education doesn’t provide much protection either. Artists are among the most educated groups in the labor market – about two-thirds hold at least a bachelor’s degree – but their earnings don’t rise as much with each level of education as those of other professionals. Research shows that even artists with graduate degrees earn lower pay and face sharper income swings than workers with similar schooling in other fields.

Artists almost by definition juggle multiple roles. In 2019, about 8% held more than one job – compared with 5% of all workers – and roughly 30% worked part time in different types of jobs. Many combined teaching, freelance projects and contract gigs to piece together something close to full-time work.

My research shows that self-employment is far more common among artists than among other workers. Yet many go independent not because they crave entrepreneurship but because it’s the only option available. The top industries employing artists include professional and technical services, arts and entertainment, information and retail.

In other words, artists often move between arts and non-arts jobs, teaching by day or working service shifts at night, just to keep their creative practice alive.

Existing labor laws assume a steady paycheck

Most U.S. labor protections – health insurance, paid leave, workers’ compensation and retirement benefits – are tied to full-time, W-2 employment. But few artists work that way. They rely on gigs that don’t fit neatly into existing systems: short-term contracts, productions with limited runs such as musicals or film shoots, and one-off project fees.

Existing rules simply do not support professional artists.

Because employers don’t pay into unemployment funds for contractors or freelancers, most artists are ineligible for unemployment insurance.

Copyright law was originally written with publishers and record labels in mind, leaving visual artists without royalties when their work is resold. Existing copyright law is being challenged by artists and record labels, who are claiming their work was used to train AI models without permission, favoring tech companies that say these tools will “democratize” artmaking.

The tax code, meanwhile, lets collectors deduct the full value of artwork they donate, but limits artists themselves to deducting only the cost of materials.

Public funding of the arts, from the New Deal’s Federal Art Project to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, has come in brief bursts – but is often first on the chopping block during economic downturns.

Together, these examples reveal a century-long pattern: The U.S. celebrates art but neglects artists. Instead of treating creative work as legitimate labor, the country’s policies fail to offer artists stability or protection.

Labor policy that values artists

If labor policies have largely ignored artists, it’s because policymakers start from the wrong place. Too often, artists are asked to justify their worth by proving that they drive tourism, raise property values or fuel innovation. That logic turns creative work into a tool for someone else’s goals.

In my view, a better starting point is the right to choose creative work. The ability to select one’s occupation freely – and to make a living doing meaningful work – is, to many Americans, as fundamental as freedom of speech. Yet the structure of U.S. workforce policy makes that choice nearly impossible for many artists.

A more coherent approach would treat the arts as part of the nation’s labor system, not an afterthought. One policy change could require benefits such as health care, unemployment insurance and retirement savings to be portable – following the worker, not the employer. Laws could protect freelancers from late or missing payments, such as New York’s Freelance Isn’t Free Act. And tax and copyright policies could give artists the same chance to profit from their work that investors and corporations already enjoy. Many European countries already do this through “droit de suite” laws, which grant visual artists a small royalty each time their work is resold – ensuring that creators, not just collectors, can reap the rewards of the long-term value of their art.

Designing policies around how many artists actually work – project by project, contract by contract – would make it possible for more people to build sustainable careers in the arts. It would also make the sector more inclusive, drawing talent from across social classes rather than only from those that can afford to take the risk.

But I think policy change also requires a shift in mindset.

Viewing artists not as special cases or economic tools, but as workers exercising a basic human right – the right to choose their work – strengthens both culture and democracy. To me, the central question is not whether artists deserve help because their work enriches others, but whether every individual should have the freedom to make a living through work that gives life meaning.

Joanna Woronkowicz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. It’s always been hard to make it as an artist in America – and it’s becoming only harder – https://theconversation.com/its-always-been-hard-to-make-it-as-an-artist-in-america-and-its-becoming-only-harder-266138

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Benjamin Larue, Faculty Affiliate in Wildlife Biology, University of Montana

For decades, wildlife conservation policy has aimed to protect endangered species until there are enough individual animals alive that the species won’t go extinct. Then the policymakers declare victory.

That principle is enshrined in laws such as the U.S. Endangered Species Act and Canada’s Species at Risk Act. It shapes how governments manage wildlife and their habitat, how politicians weigh trade-offs between species protection and human development goals, and how the public understands conservation.

But often, those minimalist population numbers – enough to avoid extinction – aren’t enough to restore ecosystems or cultural connections between people and those animals.

There’s another way of thinking about species recovery: emphasizing not just avoiding extinction but instead enabling species to truly thrive. A shift from conserving minimum populations to restoring thriving populations involves recovering the species’ ecological role, including large parts of its geographic range and genetic diversity, as well as its relationships with people.

The difference between recovering thriving populations instead of traditional minimalist approaches becomes clear when looking at three iconic North American species: gray wolves, grizzly bears and bison.

Gray wolves: More than a number

After decades of federal protection, gray wolves were taken off the list of species protected by the Endangered Species Act in parts of the U.S. in January 2021.

The Trump administration is considering removing federal protections for gray wolves nationwide.

But in the wake of the regional protection removal, states such as Montana and Idaho expanded hunting and trapping seasons for wolves, and some organizations added bounties for killing them.

Officials justified their actions by pointing to the fact that gray wolves had surpassed a minimum population threshold for species survival, and saying that intensive predator control would not jeopardize the species’ long-term viability.

The states’ current population goals would reduce wolf populations to about one-third of current numbers: from 1,235 to 500 in Idaho and from 1,134 to 450 in Montana.

For contrast, there are 3,300 wolves in Italy. That country has an area about 80% of the size of Montana and is home to less prey, less open land and more than 50 times as many people, all of which significantly raise the potential for human-wolf conflict.

So far in Idaho and Montana, gray wolf numbers have stopped increasing and may still satisfy requirements under federal laws protecting the species. But the wolf population there is not robust and thriving – it’s just surviving.

Wolves remain absent from large areas that provide suitable habitat for them. Reducing wolf numbers further, as the states want to do, would limit their ability to reoccupy these areas, where they could restore ecosystems by helping to manage often overabundant prey populations and also inspire millions of people with their wildness.

Grizzly bears: Viable yet vulnerable

Grizzly bear populations in the Greater Yellowstone and northern Continental Divide ecosystems have exceeded the federal recovery targets set decades ago under the Endangered Species Act to prevent the bears’ extinction.

In July 2025, a U.S. House of Representatives committee agreed to remove the species’ protection under the law, which would allow states to permit people to hunt the bears for the first time in decades. But it was overhunting that, in part, drove them to near extinction in the first place.

Government agencies often say that hunting and trapping reduce human conflicts with bears. But scientific and public opinion on that point is far from a consensus. There are effective, nonlethal methods for keeping bears away from humans, such as public education, electric fencing, bear-resistant garbage containers and removal of roadkill and dead livestock.

Once numbering more than 50,000 across at least 18 states in the 48 contiguous United States, grizzlies now number just over 2,000 and occupy less than 5% of their original habitat area. They can be found in only four states.

Current grizzly populations are also not interconnected, despite the availability of suitable habitat for them. That risks genetic isolation of subpopulations, which decreases genetic diversity and their prospects for adaptation and survival. Disconnection of populations also reduces their ability to disperse seeds, improve soil health and prey on other species. Grizzly bears are also an umbrella species, meaning they share habitat with a disproportionate number of other species, so recovering grizzlies benefits the entire food web.

One day, hunting might offer a new way for humans to reconnect with thriving grizzlies. But right now, with populations isolated and vulnerable, opening a hunting season would risk cutting off their chance to thrive in large, unoccupied ranges.

Bison: The illusion of return

Perhaps no species better captures the failure of existing recovery models to move beyond survival toward thriving populations than the bison. Tens of millions of them used to roam North America, shaping grassland ecosystems and playing significant material, spiritual and communal roles in Indigenous cultures.

Hunting for bison hides and tongues reduced their numbers to fewer than 1,000 at the cusp of the 20th century. Today, most bison live on ranches in small, fenced herds. Only 31,000 bison in North America are managed for conservation, and most are in isolated pockets of habitat at the fringe of their historic range. Even in Yellowstone National Park, which supports thousands of bison and provides a glimpse into how bison historically shaped North American ecosystems, the animals are barred from expanding to other parts of their historic range due to concerns about disease transfer to domestic livestock.

Thinking about the bison’s recovery in different terms does not mean tens of millions of them need to be stampeding across the continent. But it could mean large, free-ranging, genetically diverse herds that are integrated into a variety of ecosystems, where they also have a role in cultural revitalization.

A thriving view of species recovery is central to Indigenous-led initiatives, such as those guided by the 2014 Buffalo Treaty, which has been signed by more than 40 Indigenous nations. The treaty helped drive bison reintroduction to Banff National Park in Canada and is currently inspiring the recovery of free-roaming bison on Indigenous reservations across the U.S. and Canada, including the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

A broader vision of recovery

Shifting away from the long-standing goal of a minimum viable population would require changes to how recovery targets are set, how success is measured, and how decisions are made when populations reach those minimum thresholds.

While national laws in the U.S. and Canada provide valuable starting points, focusing on species not just surviving but thriving would involve more ambitious goals, longer timelines and stronger human-wildlife coexistence measures. It would also require shifting public expectations away from the idea that recovery ends when minimal legal obligations are met.

Doing so could help combat climate change by restoring the role of large, wild animals in nutrient cycling, as well as reverse ecosystem degradation and help people of all backgrounds reconnect with nature.

As wildlife biologists, we aim to provide the best available science and recommendations to inform the conservation of North America’s wildlife. Yet under the current management paradigm, where recovery often equates to mere survival, we are compelled to ask whether this is enough. Should wildlife conservation aim merely to prevent extinction or to foster populations that thrive? How each and every one of us answers this question will shape not only the future of wolves, grizzly bears and bison, but also the legacy of wildlife recovery across North America.

Mark Hebblewhite receives funding from National Science Foundation.

Benjamin Larue and Jonathan Farr do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Wildlife recovery means more than just survival of a species – https://theconversation.com/wildlife-recovery-means-more-than-just-survival-of-a-species-263898