Battle in the Clouds
Name
American Anthropologist - 2025 - Moran‐Thomas - Battle in the Clouds.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.88 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9da324d5fb40f32bc5918804cda2b102
Author(s)
Moran‐Thomas, Amy
Date Issued
July 18, 2025
Journal
American Anthropologist
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Moran-Thomas, A. (2025), Battle in the Clouds. Am. Anthropol., 127: 594-610.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This narrative experiment brings together scenes from my family histories in western Pennsylvania coal country, alongsideongoing visits to learn about rising health issues in the region today. Increasing numbers of residents express concerns aboutchronic problems such as young cancers, and many people worry about potential exposures coming from past and present energyinfrastructures. These growing health concerns, some of them my own, also brought me to revisit Rachel Carson’s medical writingsfrom her family home in western Pennsylvania. Looking out from her childhood bedroom with my mother and returning toCarson’s archival notes on “transmissible cancers” and her childhood essay, “A Battle in the Clouds,” these descriptions circlelong-accumulating debates about chronic diseases and their causes and effects over time. Returning to varieties of changing cloudstoday, this essay reflects on how chronic exposures—unevenly accumulating in bodies and landscapes and across generations—show “undone sciences” of many kinds in need of collective attention. It traces how families are grappling with the sense ofneeding to connect their own dots; the ways local communities are coming together to process displaced responsibilities; and theimplications for health, public trust, and care when so much is left in clouds.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Anthropology
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.28075
