Paper short abstract:

Landscape is more than just material accumulations of the past. In this paper I present a collaborative landscape history project that has worked on futures as much as the past.

Paper long abstract:

Landscape is more than just material accumulations of the past. The stratigraphic reckoning of landscape imagines that time passed in periods reaching backwards, and downwards, from the present, creating a succession of pasts that can be uncovered as archaeological layers. How, then, can we conceive of ecological futures in landscapes? One starting point could be to explore how people in the past and in the present may have thought about and acted in relation to the future.

In Scotland as in many nations, the rural landscape is often a repository of history, with competing visions of the past and values of place, nature and culture. In this paper I present a collaborative landscape history project in Aberdeenshire that explores futures of the landscape as much as the past. We came to think of the 19th century crofting inhabitants not as subsisting only day-by-day, but with hopes and plans for the future that they were trying to enact in the landscape. Our own work in the landscape – gardening and tree-planting – now recreates aspects of their futures that they were cut off from themselves.

Although we cannot assume that an object called ‘the future’ necessarily existed in the past in the way it can today, we should be open to the possibility of future-oriented temporalities. Activities in the landscape often generate certain kinds of future, some of which come to fruition and some of which do not. Landscape from this perspective is a historical ecology of future-making.

Paper short abstract:

A feature of the traditional irrigation system is used in a design project to build up the narrative of the sharing-out of water. I also use here it as a conceptual figure to explore how different ideas on how to timeshare a common future are being shaped by several landscape transformations.

Paper long abstract:

The Mediterranean landscapes of mass tourism in Spain, with its rapid urbanization of land and change of the uses of space, were preceded by a transformation in the traditional uses of water. Today, from an ecological perspective, the future of these landscapes is being rethought. Institutions, businesses, and active citizens are looking back to what is left of medieval irrigation systems. Some, to relearn the arts of taking care of water and take better care of the landscape; others, to make water management more efficient in the future; and yet others, to reorient the tourism destination from sun and beach to idyllic views of the rural. I draw from fieldwork done while, as an architect, I have been part of the repurposing of the headwaters of the 'Horta d'Alacant' into a center to welcome visitors that will be attracted, hopefully, by how different temporalities meet in this landmark building: from here to the agro-industrial plantations, treated water is impulsed by photovoltaic panels, but torrential rainwater is still collected and shared-out among traditional irrigators. A 'partidor' is a board attached to a screw and a wheel to help lift it and let pass, or not, the water through each irrigation canal. In our design, the 'partidor' has become a central feature of the narrative of the sharing-out of water. I also use it as a conceptual figure to explore how different ideas on how to timeshare a common future are being shaped by several landscape transformations.

Paper short abstract:

After each rainfall, soil erosion on the Greek island of Samothraki reshapes both the physical landscape and the specific socio-temporal assemblages of its human and non-human inhabitants. This paper will explore the emerging narrations of history and self arising from living on unstable ground.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will explore the multiple perceptions, imaginaries and narrations of goat herders surrounding soil erosion on the island of Samothraki in North-Eastern Greece. As shifting soils regularly “unearth” the landscape, this instability unsettles previously held narratives of the past and the future, as well as the grounding of one’s own knowledge in relation to a broader web of relations which includes plants, animals and weather events. The living memory of past practices, such as the communal management of agricultural terraces, thus takes on a new urgency, calling forth renewed ways of inhabiting with the landscape, while also eliciting complex responses towards institutional injunctions to “modernize”, at the junction of different contested local and global historicities. At the same time, new forms of relating to the weather itself emerge, bringing forth conceptualizations of rains and droughts as moral and cosmological categories with which different relations and understandings become negotiated. Drawing on my fieldwork with goat herders faced with the ongoing uncertain reshaping of the landscape they inhabit, I will present a few key aspects in which erosion “provokes” (Massey, 2006) a reconfiguration of temporal and spatial relations. In being attentive to the transitional moment of erosion and the efforts of Samothracian goat herders to make sense of the protean soil they live on with other animals and plants, this paper will call attention to the ongoing, precarious work of landscape making.

Paper short abstract:

Exploring the palimpsest nature of energy developments in Orkney - the mutually shaping and reshaping histories of peat, uranium, oil, and renewables - this paper explores how older futures shape present landscapes as resources for pragmatic use, warning, and potentially hope.

Paper long abstract:

What does it mean when new energy developments stand in the footprints of previous visions of the future? Recognising the complex relationships between the renewables economy and histories of extraction in Scotland, this paper reflects on collaborative participatory research, along with subsequent oral history interviews and archival work, to explore on the social life of energy developments. The ethnographic focus will be the palimpsest nature of Orkney energy landscapes. Human use of peatlands has shaped the physical landscape, while the arrival of North Sea oil and the tensions following the discovery of economically viable Uranium deposits were defining events in the islands' political landscape. Today, Orkney plays a key role as a global centre of renewable energy invention and innovation in the face of an uncertain future. How do these histories contact and fold into one another? Making a case for the need to embed our understanding of energy generation in the context of long-term histories, we see how older futures shape present landscapes as resources for pragmatic use, warning, and potentially hope.

Paper short abstract:

This paper offers ethnographic reflections on how people in the Outer Hebrides live in the shadow of frequent predictions of the disappearance of the Gaelic language and the islands' vulnerable ecology, and how these prediction circulate in the building of socio-ecological futures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers ethnographic reflections on how people in the Outer Hebrides live in the shadow of frequent predictions of their own ecological and cultural disappearance. Inhabitants of the islands hear frequent pronouncements of the imminent death of Gaelic as a community language in one of its last remaining strongholds. They also live with near-constant reminders of the threat of climate change and biodiversity loss: the islands, being low-lying and with a dune-based west coast, are particularly vulnerable to rising seas and extreme weather events, while the islands’ valuable biodiversity is menaced by a wide variety of potential hazards, not least among them climate change itself. There is a widespread understanding that crofting and Gaelic are closely connected. This accompanies significant evidence that crofting lifeways have the potential to produce and maintain habitats for a wide variety of internationally important biodiversity. As such, climate change threatens biodiversity directly by altering the habitats on which wildlife depends, but it also indirectly threatens biodiversity by menacing the sustainable human livelihoods which create and maintain the complex naturecultures on which both Gaelic and natural ecologies rely. Additionally, those “returning to the land” with idyllic notions of protecting and enhancing rural nature play a role in imaginaries of Gaelic’s disappearance. In this paper I reflect on the ways in which these predictions of doom are understood, the forms in which they circulate, and the ways in which they are used to spur different kinds of future-making political practices.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to elucidate how the Catholic Church repositions itself in the Brazilian civic-political space, as an ecological subject who starts to defend new socio-environmental policies through a religious repertoire of social justice.

Paper long abstract:

My postdoctoral research project has as a privileged case of anthropological inquiry the processes of conception, formulation, construction and finishing of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes - known as the “Indigenous Cathedral” - and carried out by the Salesian Mission in the community of Maturacá (São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil). With the hypothesis that from this temple an “ethnoecological religion” is made, my presentation will seek to elucidate the articulations between ecology and ethnicity that guide the socio-environmental policies carried out by the Catholic Church in the Amazon region. In doing so, my presentation aims to contribute to the elucidation of how the Catholic Church repositions itself in the competition for the Brazilian civic-political space, as an "ecological subject" who starts to defend new socio-environmental policies through a religious repertoire of "social justice" which articulates a certain “ecological imagination” to its consolidated theology of “inculturation”. Therefore, by electing the Indigenous Cathedral as the mediator par excellence of this articulation, it will be through the processes of construction and “public presence” of the new temple that I will demonstrate how Catholic convergences and divergences between notions of ethnicity and ecology materialize religiously on two levels – community and national - in this pluralistic society.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will address the conflicts between the multiple futures embedded in infrastructures. I will use Barcelona as a case study, contrasting the multiple temporalities and discordant futures in the new sustainable mobility infrastructures and the digital platform delivery companies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will problematize the notion of “the future” in two senses. First, arguing that futures are not single but multiple, and they are not objects but projects. In this sense, before contributing to propose alternative futures, Anthropology may need to describe and analyze this multiplicity first. Second, by focusing on the futures embedded in infrastructures rather than on narratives of the future (as part of the anthropology of the future has done so far). I will use the conflicts between mobility infrastructures in Barcelona as a case study. These mobility infrastructures are built in a complex superposition, and they project futures that may be radically discordant. On the one hand, the new sustainable mobility infrastructures designed by the city council, essentially the bicycle routes and super-blocks, are designed to “pacify” and slow down a city that was designed, in previous decades, for high speed motorized traffic. These new sustainable infrastructures propose a new, “alternative” future to the modernist future embedded in already-existing mobility infrastructures, in terms of superposition and "undoing" rather than dismantling. On the other hand, I discuss the digital platform companies that offer food and merchandise delivery services. These companies use the new sustainable mobility infrastructures in ways that contradict the project of pacification, as speed-efficient infrastructures for delivering goods, generating congestion and accidents, and ultimately questioning the centrality of the street as public space that sustainability models aim towards. This paper will address these conflicts in terms of multiple temporalities and discordant futures.

Paper short abstract:

Searching for common mechanisms amongst very diversified natures of crises, the endeavor of our presentation will be to invite researchers to search beyond the uniqueness of crisis dynamics and identify structural, generic ones. We present “invariant” dynamics as our first results.

Paper long abstract:

Experts from different disciplines predict that global crises will occur with shorter intervals. Delfraissy and Murgue (2012) named these intervals intercrisis. We posit that forthcoming decades may face an unprecedented situation of permanent states of global crises of different natures (financial, health, environmental, geopolitical…). According to Delfraissy and Murgue (2012), the response to global crises is mainly the responsibility of national and international public authorities. The preparation of this response with the help of academic researchers during intercrisis period represents a key element in the decision-making process of these authorities. Following Delfraissy (2017), we posit that international researchers from different disciplines need to be “prepared”, “activated” and “projected” within a short time to work together on the next emerging global crises. Paradoxically, very few research works have to this day tried to tend toward a transdisciplinary research focusing on common dynamics linked to different natures and contexts of crises. What is more, the word “crisis” itself is said to be overused, debased, and emptied of its meaning. We on the contrary do consider that the use of the word “crisis” often expresses invariant dynamics and that the crisis itself needs to be deeply and factually analyzed by researchers from different domains. Therefore, the complexity of global crises phenomenon calls for more transdisciplinary researches to create knowledge and decipher potential or even foreseeable contextualized dynamics. This research work aims at triggering original contributions by transdisciplinary researchers working on global crises, which may feed decision-making process of public authorities in the future.

Paper short abstract:

In Brussels and Milan civic protests defend unintended nature over future development plans. This article questions to what extent these struggles, in their demand to preserve urban nature, either challenge or reproduce developers’ dualistic way of thinking that places 'nature' outside society.

Paper long abstract:

Both in Milan and Brussels, civic efforts to defend urban nature in contested spaces are emerging. Over the years rewilding processes took place in vacant urban spaces, causing friction between various stakeholders. Notwithstanding the ecological potential of these spaces, they have been earmarked for future development. The emergent protests also imply a struggle over the meaning of nature, a common theme in environmental struggles. Namely, they challenge the idea that the city is a space where development plans automatically prevail over unintended natural amenities. This in fact is possible through the unfolding of ‘othering’, a dualistic way of thinking that distinguishes between what constitutes human and natural spaces. This article analyzes how and to what extent these urban struggles challenge or reproduce this kind of ‘othering’, by placing ‘nature’ outside society in the demand to preserve urban nature as an alternative to a more sustainable future. In doing so, this article aims to broaden the understanding of the various meanings of nature rooted in urban protests. Empirical evidence is provided by an analysis based on ethnographic work, interviews and documents from both Brussels and Milan where four similar struggles developed around contested green spaces. By the analysis of context-specific case studies, a broader understanding is gained about how and when the 'othering' of nature is produced and challenged, and how ‘othering’ is informed by its context. This will give insight into whether the emerging urban struggles envision a different ecological future that goes beyond a dualistic way of thinking.

Paper short abstract:

Intersections of intangible heritage and safeguarding the environment reveal divergent temporalities. Drawing on ethnographic research with artisans in the Mediterranean wetlands, the paper shows how they carefully weave their craft through and against particular imaginaries of ecological futures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the ambiguous relationship between intangible heritage and ecological futures. It draws on ethnographic research with basket-makers harvesting plants for the craft in the Mediterranean wetlands. The artisans consider themselves the gardeners of the lagoons, collecting plants from the Sardinian waterscapes . However, the looming threat of coastal erosion and climate change leads to new environmental policies that reconfigure relations between waterscapes and communities on the island. Recent initiatives to protect the lagoons from anthropogenic change seek to restrict human access to the waterscapes, affecting the lives of the basket-makers.

The paper explores what the ambiguities of environmental protection and heritage (safeguarding) practice reveal about the emergent workings of time. The local safeguarding projects, part of the broader efforts to protect global Ramsar sites, highlight the diverging times of the waterscape heritage ecologies. These include the ebbs and flows of the wetlands, the multispecies rhythms of the lagoon’s gardening, the transient presences of migrating birds, the Zeitgeist of sustainability, the timelines of environmental protection projects, the heritage imaginaries of timeless traditions, and the repeated sequences of efforts to modernise southern Italy. The paper demonstrates that rather than “catching up” with the inevitabilities of landscape protection, the basket-makers carefully weave their craft through and against particular imaginaries of ecological futures.

Paper short abstract:

Ethnography of the debates around a project to save the sabra in Israel/Palestine from an 'invading' aphid with the help of a 'natural enemy' beetle; outlines competing environmental futures of different actors on the way to preserve the ecology and land in an era of environmental crises

Paper long abstract:

In the era of increased globalization and climate crisis, are required huge and cross-border efforts to eradicate transformations of species. However, the practice to deal with them continue to be hotly debated topics.

Despite having been introduced relatively recently from the Americas, the prickly pear (sabra) is viewed, rather ironically, by both Palestinians and Jews as symbolizing their nativity in the land of Israel/Palestine respectively. More recently, an aphid has been causing devastating mortality among prickly pears. In order to fight the invader, a small group of scientists import from Mexico a small beetle, which is considered a 'natural enemy' of the invading aphid, but they encounter resistance from other scientists who consider 'natural enemies' as invasive species.

Using ethnographic research, I will focus on the analysis of the discourse and practices surrounding the "Saving the Sabers" project, which reveals debates about the ‘environmental futures’ (Mathews and Barnes, 2016), as it contains questions of fear, care, risk and the future imagination of environmental and human ecology in the Anthropocene era. Specifically, I will refer to the fear and care of the various human actors towards the non-humans (the insects and plants), and how these interpretations and feelings motivate them to act or avoid it. I will show how despite both approaches see invasive species as a danger to the future of the ecology, they differ on the way to defend against them, and also in the political meaning of the context in which this environmental future is imagined.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on collaboration between an anthropologist, a foresight consultant, and an ecologist, I explore the potential of interdisciplinary practice in a project that seeks both to theorize and to contribute to ecological and societal futuring in areas of nuclear decommissioning and waste management.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on close collaboration in a research team including an anthropologist, a foresight consultant, and an ecologist, I am interested in the potential of interdisciplinary practice to achieve both intellectual and practical outcomes whilst operating in a speculative, future-orientated mode. The collaboration I focus on is key to my multi-sited four-year ESRC-funded inquiry into ecological and societal future making in areas of nuclear decommissioning and waste management, one of which is West Cumbria, the region around the Sellafield nuclear facilities. Such areas lend themselves to ‘futuring’, and to exploring local experiences and conceptions of time more generally, as residents grapple with the material, socioeconomic, affective, and ecological traces of (post-)industrialism, and consider the presence of radioactive materials that decay only over thousands of years. What scenarios for what types of (working, living) future landscapes might be envisaged for such areas? In which, and whose, conceptions of the good life would these scenarios be grounded, and to what extent might this ‘good life’ be extended to more-than-human actors? What might a shift from nuclear operations to ‘environmental remediation’ really entail, apart from a rhetorical move on the part of the nuclear industry—might such a shift reconfigure relations between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, or bring ecological and societal futures in closer alignment? Preparing to work through such questions ethnographically, the research team finds itself in a stimulating speculative mode that stands, however, in some disciplinary tension with their differing conceptions of what constitutes ‘good science’ or ‘proper scientific writing’.