Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how changing urban landscapes form part of ethical worldbuilding among residents in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Here, material elements become relational tools implicating self and others. I will discuss the implications of this for understanding ethics in Mongolia.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from ethnography conducted in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, this paper discusses the ways in which material urban environments form a part of ethical worldbuilding (Zigon 2014) among residents caught in suspended urban redevelopment schemes. Operating within conflicting temporalities - including forms of temporal delay wrought by real estate and construction time frames, and types of 'collapsed futures' (Nielsen 2014) that have come about due to failures to build - this paper discusses the ways in which the materiality of the surrounding environment becomes a crucial element in attempting to grow types of personal stakes in the city. Old buildings, poured concrete bases, storage containers, dusty streets and the home itself become implicated within relational perspective-making (Wagner 2018) between the landscape, self and other. Here, multiple value regimes emerge around the formulation of real-estate assets in times of decline. This paper will discuss how this materiality is integral to ethical perspectives emerging in urban Mongolia, where the real estate asset one wants to encourage becomes constitutive of a type of preferred moral urban citizenship in a time of volatility, unpredictability and fluctuating urban growth.

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates the interplay between the materiality of energy technologies, and the way in which such materiality is imbued with values which bring into being South African post-apartheid gendered 'sociotechnical dreamscapes' through their use by women in their daily practices.

Paper long abstract:

The paper investigates the interplay between the materiality of energy technologies, and the way in which such materiality is collectively held and imbued with values in South African post-apartheid gendered 'sociotechnical dreamscapes', or narratives of the future articulated through technology. It draws upon research on the role played by energy technologies and infrastructure in women's empowerment, and will present data collected in research with three groups of women organising around energy issues in urban and peri-urban South Africa.

Energy infrastructure has been historically been politicised in South Africa, as a tool of both racial segregation and governance and anti-apartheid resistance and remains contested in contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. For socially-marginalised women, the materiality of energy technologies enables and constrains physical and lived opportunities in women's lives. On the other hand, energy technologies and materials are used by organised women to practice and bring into being an environmentally-just and gender-equitable future. In this way, narratives and visions of transition, justice, and empowerment are brought into lived reality through the daily use of energy materials including fuel and electricity.

The paper takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from gender and development theory while taking and extending upon a theories of practices framework. It considers the intersection of materials, action and meaning in energy practices, and how energy technologies and infrastructure constitute both materiality and meanings that are practiced with implications for gender equality and environmental justice.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores alcoholic spirits and spiritual connections in southern Ghana. In Akwamu ritual libations, not all alcohol and neither are all people equal. By considering the economic, social and spiritual value of alcohol, I ask what value is placed on people in and beyond the physical world.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores alcoholic spirits and spiritual connections in the Akwamu context in southern Ghana. In focusing on ritual libations, I consider how gin and schnapps are used to open up ceremonial spaces and connect humans with spiritual kin as well as deities. In this process, not all alcohol and neither are all people equal. As relatives shift from physical life to death, their valued is affirmed or denied by family by adding or omitting their name in libations. By unpacking the ordered circulation of alcohol and inclusion or exclusion of people in ritual, I ask who is a valued and central member in society, and who is peripheral. We also learn who, through the use of alcohol, has the ear of the ancestors and deities to ask for favour and to transition lives for the better.

Alcohol is a slippery substance in its material form and mind-adjusting potential. This makes it a curious choice to ceremonially solidify social connections. In its absorption into the human body and evaporation as offering on the ground, this paper explores how alcohol creates enduring spiritual ties even as its shifts in its tangible state. By considering the economic, social and spiritual value of alcohol in ritual, I ask what value the Akwamu attribute to people in and beyond the physical world.

Paper short abstract:

In Peki, a small town in the Ghanaian Volta Region, death is a public affair. It's materiality provides a body for the communal negotiation of loss, governance structures and at times conflicting attribution of values within the community - be they economic, transcendental or political.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnography from Peki, Ghana, this paper contextualises the role of materiality for the complex workings of events, places and things around burials and death in the resident Ewe community. Here, the 'total social phenomenon' of death-related practices serves as a political tool for continuing traditions, beliefs and power structures as well as for challenging, negotiating and changing them. Material things, substances and their respective properties play a vital role for these processes, in which values of economic, social and spiritual sort are brought into a common context. Local perspectives on synthetic, durable materials such as concrete or plastic versus organic, locally-sourceable perishables give insight into ideas of permanence, change and preservation that mirror changes in the social organisation of the community. As such, obituary posters from tarpaulin, cellophane foil wrapped wreaths, concrete bricks in graves and frozen corpses are framed as pillars of life against death, their durable qualities highlighted against signs of wear and tear which also befall these things. Seen before a broader historical as well as contemporary political background, the uses of non-native technologies, materials and things that are 'new' or marked as global commodities also demonstrate the continued struggle between native, traditional institutions and assimilated Christianity, national politics and pressure from a neo-colonial world market. The paper explores local ways of dealing with death in the community, highlights the role of material things and their properties and shows how both death and the precarity of life are negotiated by way of material things.