Paper short abstract:

In an ethnographic study of Aotearoa New Zealand's war against microorganism-induced forests diseases, what would it take to seriously consider more-than-human agency? This talk is an invitation to sit, breathe and let your eyes adapt as you track for the very visible impact of invisible agents.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a methodological provocation. It is based on 24 months of fieldwork between plant pathologists and Māori traditional experts, immersive walking through healthy and declining forest ecosystems, and nine kauri seedlings growing on my desk to avoid the winter frosts of Te Wai Pounamu (New Zealand's South Island).

It all started with a question: In an ethnographic study of Aotearoa New Zealand's war against microorganism-induced forests diseases, what would it take to seriously consider more-than-human agency? Deeply inspired by the observations of Māori elders, I walked through the entanglement of time, space, matter, and meaning, tracking scientific research, citizen-science programs, and policy-making in biosecurity, and came up with a different question: in a time of biosphere collapse, how are we not taking non-human actions more seriously? Sometimes called "the unseen", Māori trust the powerful ancestors who rule winds, rains, storms, the course of life. Invisible too to the naked eye are the microorganisms driving a radical transformation of Aotearoa's forests. Biosecurity management overlooks droughts, floods, windstorms, and changing weather patterns because those are variables that escape human control.

This talk will invite you to look beyond disciplinary boundaries, direct into the eye of a multispecies collapse, paying special attention to non-human agency... even when it is invisible.