Distribution of threatened amphibians in Central America, Northern South America, and the Caribbean. In: Amphibian Ark, “Frogs Matter. Global Info Pack,” Apple Valley 2008, p. 53. Courtesy Global Amphibian Assessment.

Current Research Topic

Endangerment and Its Consequences

Documenting and Preserving Nature and Culture

At first glance, the following items may seem to have nothing in common: an Amur leopard, a Brazil-nut Tree, 510th Fifth Avenue, Bolivia’s Carnival of Oruro, the Tofa language from Irkutsk, a Usambara Blue-bellied frog, a Masoala madagascariensis, Nasca lines and geoglyphs in Peru, Viennese coffee house culture, and Cameroon’s Ndai language. Nonetheless, they all belong together, and not just because, as with Jorge Luis Borges’ Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, a category can be made to arbitrarily encompass them. All the items – animal and plant species, sites and buildings, cultural practices, and languages – have been categorized as endangered. While such categorizations are often subject to debate, endangerment tends to be taken for granted both as a concept and a phenomenon. A Working Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science seeks to challenge the taken-for-granted nature of endangerment in contemporary discourse by placing it in conceptual and historical perspectives and exploring the situated, culturally and historically specific character of the imperative to preserve nature and culture. By Fernando Vidal. more