Amber Worlds: The Global Amber Trade in the China-Myanmar Borderlands

What role do China and other Asian countries play in the global amber trade? And, what can we learn about the big challenges of our time by studying amber? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nielsen talks to Alessandro Rippa about the global flows and significance of this seemingly inconspicuous lump of fossilized tree resin, a material that is at the heart of a new research project at the University of Oslo, named “Amber Worlds”. In this project, a group of social science researchers use amber as unique lens through which to interrogate crucially important contemporary issues such as growing extractivism, globalized trade, environmental crises, and violent conflict. Alessandro Rippa is associate professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, and the principal investigator of the research project “Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene”. Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a social anthropologist based at the University of Oslo and one of the Leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.