# Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025) Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622/piergiorgio-di-giminiani-alterhumanism-becoming-human-on-a-conservation-frontier-u-arizona-press-2025 Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622/piergiorgio-di-giminiani-alterhumanism-becoming-human-on-a-conservation-frontier-u-arizona-press-2025.md Podcast: [New Books in Critical Theory](https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622) Published: 2026-09-04T08:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK7797775213.mp3 Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK7797775213.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622/episodes/piergiorgio-di-giminiani-alterhumanism-becoming-human-on-a-conservation-frontier-u-arizona-press-2025 Duration seconds: 3527 ## Resource In the Anthropocene, a question has become increasingly urgent: What does it mean to be human? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s conservation frontier, Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier (University of Arizona Press, 2025) invites us to recognize the centrality of the human condition in the face of an increasingly uncertain world and imagine future forms of coexistence. Reflecting on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with smallholding settlers, Indigenous Mapuche farmers, environmental activists, entrepreneurs, and conservation scientists, Piergiorgio Di Giminiani brings to light how these diverse groups navigate the enduring impacts of settler-caused environmental depletion and their aspirations for new ethics of care. Di Giminiani challenges traditional Western humanism, proposing a more relational and open-ended understanding of humanity shaped by interactions with nonhuman others. Rather than seeking fixed answers, the book explores the fluid and multifaceted nature of becoming human through the lens of conservation politics. By highlighting the entangled, multispecies worlds of southern Chile, Di Giminiani offers a novel approach to understanding the political project of becoming human in the Anthropocene. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on land, indigeneity, conservation, agriculture, and statecraft, with ethnographic fieldwork experience in both Chile and Italy. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile (2018) and Alterhumanism (2025). He has also co-edited several volumes, including The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation,… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622/episodes/piergiorgio-di-giminiani-alterhumanism-becoming-human-on-a-conservation-frontier-u-arizona-press-2025/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-critical-theory-962622/piergiorgio-di-giminiani-alterhumanism-becoming-human-on-a-conservation-frontier-u-arizona-press-2025.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.