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- Convenors:
-
Kathrin Eitel
(University of Zurich)
Laura Otto (Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg)
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- Stream:
- Extinction
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel invites anthropological contributions that unveil how responsibilities are negotiated in a world that faces anthropogenic environmental change. We are interested in cases discussing responsibilisation in the making, reflecting on the entanglements of human and more-than-human actors.
Long Abstract:
In the Anthropocene, the consequences of contemporary climate change are visible everywhere – in our daily lives, in our environment, on political agendas and in activist engagement. Its omnipresence points to various questions of responsibility. International frameworks, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and local policies and adaptation programs define responsibility in the context of climate change. Moreover, the focus in academic debates is often on responsibility as a governance tool. Yet how responsibility is practised, enacted, ignored or negotiated on the ground among human and more-than-human actors has not been discussed sufficiently. Accordingly, we are interested in contributions that address this gap. We invite papers that draw critically on the understanding of responsibilisation as a mere tool of (human) governance, and discuss responsibility-making beyond legal frameworks which can be grasped particularly well through ethnographic fieldwork instead. In addition, we welcome contributions which reflect on the notion of responsibility itself: In how far can the concept of responsibility be applied to a world of multispecies and more-than-human actors? As responsibilities are often anticipated by and distributed to specific actors, the question arises how dynamics, fluid entanglements and hybrid constellations can be taken into account.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines some stories told by gut microbiota and human beings, proposes to read these in a diffractive way, and examine how both become revelatory of each other. As such, these stories entangle into material-semiotic biographies of more-than human life and society.
Paper long abstract:
Inspired by the environment-sensitive (micro)biology of microbial communities within the human person, I will explore how a synergistic cooperation between socio-cultural anthropologists and microbiological researchers in this field can work through fleshing out material-semiotic biographies (Law 2004, Niewöhner 2020) of the more-than-human being. I suggest that we can listen to the stories that gut microbiota tell, through shotgun sequencing of the entire microbial community in the gut, as well as stories of human beings and their collectives, through a careful ethnographic study of practices and collection of individual and collective biographies (of changes in ways of life, eating habits). Subsequently I suggest to read these stories in a diffractive way (Barad 2007), where we ‘read’ the gut microbiota composition through the life biographies of human beings and societies, and vice versa. In this way, it should become possible to understand how both biographies may relate to each other, causally or not, and entangle into the material-semiotic biography of more-than human life and society. In this way, we can better understand how the situated microbiology tells us something about changes in society and how ways of life tell us something about the microbial communities within and without the human person. I will discuss this interdisciplinary diffraction of microbial and human biographies at the hand of some of the very few existing attempts (de Filippo et al 2010, Smits et al 2017), and discuss my experience in cooperating with gut microbiota researchers in setting up such a research in Sri Lanka.
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to analyse the relation between deforestation and epidemics, looking at the indigenous peoples of the Xingu Indigenous Land (TIX), Brazilian Amazon, within the scope of the research project “PARI: Platform of Anthropological and Rapid Indigenous Responses” (supported by UKRI).
Paper long abstract:
This paper seeks to analyse the relation between deforestation and epidemics, looking at the indigenous peoples of the Xingu Indigenous Land (TIX), Brazilian Amazon, within the scope of the research project “PARI: Platform of Anthropological and Rapid Indigenous Responses” (supported by UKRI). While the anthropocentric premises that rule the Western world, its health and politics, continue to release human beings from responsibility for managing Earth’s resources (in name of the fable of progress), indigenous peoples keep patiently trying to show us how it is all connected. For the sixteen peoples who live at TIX, it is consensual that the worlds (plural) are populated by humans and other-than-humans, such as the spirits/owners, who share daily events, and keep avoiding, or maintaining close interspecies relations. For many of these peoples, everything, or almost everything has an owner: plants, paintings, rituals, and therefore every action carries consequences. A Yawalapití leader once affirmed that Covid-19 epidemic is a response from the owners, from the spirits. One cannot burn forests and open roads and get rid of Other’s reactions. Recent Ecology studies show a scenario that matches, at least partially, this holistic indigenous understanding, showing a relation between the increase of deforestation and the increase of the eminence of new pathologies and epidemics. It is clear that there’s an urgency to hold human beings responsible for the devastation of this shared world, instead of pigs, cows, bats. In this way, this communication pursues the responsibilities framed in these pathogenic multispecies entanglements.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how waste management in Cambodia produces 2 types of responsibilities, one entails disciplining both citizens and the microbial life of waste, the other foregrounds the more-than-human relations. I consider how we may reframe ‘responsibility’ through the concept of ‘care’.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how the idea of responsibility is articulated in waste management policies and strategies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Through examining the recent government report on waste management and the responses to these strategic plans from community-based organisations (CBOs), I demonstrate the emergence and the ethico-political entailments of 2 types of responsibilities. In the past two decades, waste generation has proliferated dramatically in Cambodia, producing 3,000 tons of waste per day. It is estimated that the average annual municipal waste generation has soared from 0.136 million tons in 1995 to 0.681 million tons in 2015 (Spoann et al. 2019). In terms of the waste composition, 63.3% of the waste is made up of food waste with rich microbial life (Seng et al. 2010). Within this context, I first show how microbes and other chemicals found in waste are governed and constructed as the source of greenhouse gases in the government report. Further, through a moralising narrative, the report holds individual citizens responsible for environmental crises. Contrary to the state narrative, I discuss how a growing number of waste management CBOs utilise technology (e.g., composting) to engage people to care about the environment. Accordingly, these CBOs aim to foreground ‘relational responsibility’ that cultivates interdependent relationships with multi-species and microbes to deal with waste. Reflecting on the theoretical work in feminist STS, particularly the work of Puig de la Bellacasa (2017), I suggest that we cannot reframe and practise responsibility differently without thinking about care.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses how Afro-Brazilian religions' practitioners rediscuss environmental responsibility and ritual practices in light of the discourses on conservation and climate change, taking into account the obligations towards more-than-human visible and invisible beings.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic data, this paper analyses distribution of social responsibility towards climate change in the context of Afro-Brazilian religions. As the environmentalist discourse is gaining relevance in the Brazilian public debate, Afro-religious people are being accused of polluting the environment with offerings left in the landscape as part of the religious practice. As part of the worship, ritual offerings and gifts are delivered in different places such as forests, rivers or the ocean where spiritual entities reside. In recent years, these widespread practices started to raise questions of ethics and sustainability, and religious practitioners started rediscussing the composition of the offerings and their environmental impact. In some instances, polluting "wrapping" materials such as ribbons or plastic decorations started to be replaced or avoided to comply with sustainability criteria. While rituals are adapting to the current sustainability standards, this issue creates a debate on how religious minorities perceive their share of social responsibility towards other ontologies in a country dominated by corporate interest. Ritual change and innovation are renegotiated with different beings: the animals that may be attracted by the offerings as a source of food, the spiritual entities who require the rituals to be performed, and other humans who regard offerings as morally or materially polluting.
Paper short abstract:
Three permaculture projects in Sardinia (Italy) are presented to show different levels of advocating other-than-humans actors in the care and production of soil. Permaculture offers an ethical-technical frame based on taking responsibility of one' s actions towards earth and people.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution attains to an ethnographic research on Sardinian Permaculturalists practices (Italy). It briefly introduces to permaculture showing how its three ethics (earth care, people care, fair share) advocate a philosophical framework based on taking responsibility of one’s actions towards humans, non-humans, other-than-humans and the environment. Ethics are put into practice through design principles and technical tools to shape meaningful practices. Case studies will be quickly presented: three farms show three ways of articulating responsibility into aware actions of caring: one in Nurra (northern Sardinia), one in Medio Campidano (central Sardinia), one in the surroundings of Cagliari (south Sardinia).
These farming projects bring about three (interconnected) approaches to the care of earth and soil in the antropocene: from the smallest actors of the game (bacteria) to the medium-scale ones (animals and humans) to the widest ones (European agriculture funding programs). In Cagliari Anna breeds what she calls “my beloved pets”: bacterial compounds and “fermented concoction” she entrusts on for the renewal of her soil, a land purchased years ago as uncultivable that is now a splendid vegetable garden. In Medio Campidano Luca and Maria recovered a family field in which they work together with hens and other animals that "produce the soil", with wild animals and birds that "plant" useful new herbs. In Nurra Marco puts abandoned land back into production by recovering ancient grains, putting into dialogue the European funds rules with ancient Sardinian agro-pastoral practices.