Diver and artisanal fisherman Daniel Caniullán recalls with frustration the day he went to collect shellfish from a natural bank in northern Chile, only to find hundreds of the plumose anemones covering the seabed. “I found an anemone plague where there used to be locos .
Despite increasing automation, there are still occupations in which human interaction is a central component: those focused on connective labor. Yet capital’s drive to maximize control of the labor process is threatening to degrade these important jobs.
The gorilla should have vanished. In the late 1980s, the mountain gorilla clung to survival in the misted borderlands of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Poaching, snares, and civil conflict made extinction feel like a timetable.