Abstract:

Research that focuses broadly on human understandings of and impacts on the environment is in the ‘fortunate’ position of being almost self-evidently necessary in a situation identified as one of global ecological crisis. Faced with forms of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon 2011) and accelerated processes such as mass species extinctions also in Central Eurasia, we are challenged to create new forms of understanding, and impacting these crises.

Environmental Humanities stakes its claim precisely on disturbing the disciplinary divides that are premised on a rigid division between the study of human and non-human life. An environmental humanities agenda helpfully unsettles notions of what e.g. historians, anthropologists and geographers can and should study, to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene and other, more-than-just-intellectual puzzles. Research examining environmental relations in Central Eurasia has grown greatly across disciplines for the past decade, making it high time to take stock of this accrued scholarship, identify its strengths, and reflect on how to push its current limits.

The book ‘Environmental Humanities in Central Asia’, edited by Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Beatrice Penati will be published by Routledge in 2023. With contributions by activist-researchers, archaeologists, political scientists and religious scholars from both Central Asia itself and beyond, the volume attempts a first state-of-the-art collection. In this panel, we critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this particular ‘stock-take’. Together with colleagues from related fields (Marc Elie, Chida Tetsuro), we explore where and how environmental humanities could be supported in the broader region, between plural academic traditions. We will address key interests in the environmental humanities of Central Asia such as human-animal relations, natural resource ‘development’ and extractivism, disasters and environmental degradation. We will also consider the important intersections with colonial and modernisation projects that privilege different forms of environmental knowledge-making. The panelists will suggest paths for future research, as well as teaching and training opportunities that encourage cross-pollination of methods between different research traditions engaged with environmental issues. We welcome an open discussion with the audience about paths towards methodological innovation and engaged scholarship alike.