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- Convenor:
-
Michael Bollig
(University of Cologne)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
- Working groups:
- Environmental Anthropology
- Location:
- Seminargebäude S14
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 September, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract
This workshop aims to rethink commoning as a multispecies undertaking. It examines multispecies communities in community-based conservation and discusses how commoning can be meaningfully extended to include nonhumans and what this implies for multispecies politics and environmental justice.
Long Abstract
Commoning has habitually been analyzed as the communal management of natural resources by humans. Multispecies studies, however, have highlighted that natural environments and nonhuman animals and plants are not mere resources but beings with agency, that share and co-constitute human lives. With this background in mind, this workshop explores what kinds of multispecies communities emerge from community-based conservation initiatives and to what extent they redefine commoning as a multispecies undertaking.
The workshop proposes to collect case studies of community-based conservation and examine the multispecies communities that emerge from such cases. By paying particular attention to how humans and nonhumans share space, resources and lives in community-based conservation settings – i.e. how commoning emerges across species boundaries – it questions: how is “community” being (re)defined in community-based conservation initiatives, and what changes if nonhuman species are included in the conceptualization of the commons? How is commoning extended to include nonhumans as actors capable of commoning? Moreover, this workshop is interested in what lessons can be drawn from community-based conservation for governing multispecies communities. Linking up to questions of multispecies politics and democracy, the workshop will consider how rights, institutions and governance are reinvented in community-based conservation to include not only humans but also nonhumans. It asks how we should think about justice if commoning includes nonhuman actors by reflecting which humans and nonhumans get a voice and rights and which ones are left behind. The workshop intends to include cases from around the globe to ensure a diversity of perspectives.
Accepted contributions
Session 1 Tuesday 30 September, 2025, - Session 2 Tuesday 30 September, 2025, -Contribution short abstract
This paper explores visions of 'networked arcs' and 'good growth' among urban gardenening practitioners in Berlin. These visions help conceptualizing modalities of more-than-human commoning and how they come to matter.
Contribution long abstract
Practitioners, activists or scholars attempting to secure less bad futures now frequently pursue regenerative approaches. They seek ways “to work toward world making that enhances the lives of others” (Deborah Bird Rose). This paper probes the role commons and commoning play within such figurations. Drawing on fieldwork among activists pursuing ‘regeneration’ in Berlin urban gardening projects, I argue that these efforts are driven by visions of what I call ‘networked arcs’ and of ‘good growth’.
As ‘networked arcs,’ urban gardening projects build on histories of zoos and botanical gardens, yet envision to enable biotic life to radiate out from gardens on their own terms (instead of inscribing and showcasing it within the parameters of, say, zoos). Pursuing ‘good growth,’ on the other hand, serves as a vital critique of a growth-obsessed present. Taken together, both these visions help conceptualizing modalities of more-than-human commoning and how they come to matter.
Contribution short abstract
In the Philippines, community-based conservation aiming to restore forests often relies on external support due to a lack of native seeds and seedlings. Expanding the “community”, I examine how bottom-up networks circulate seeds and knowledge to enable and shape future multispecies communities.
Contribution long abstract
How to enable multispecies communities in an altered archipelago? Following centuries of colonial rule in which Philippine forest landscapes were displaced, governmental agencies replaced biodiverse forests mainly with a small number of non-Philippine tree species. As a result, community-based conservation efforts interested in restoring native forests to recreate thriving habitats face a central problem: where to find different kinds of native seeds and seedlings?
In the last decade, interest in native plants and trees has grown in the Philippines leading to the establishment of several local and scientific initiatives aiming to address this problem. These new bottom-up reforestation communities and networks try to shift governmental reforestation paradigms. They circulate seeds and knowledge throughout their networks and train people – and even whole communities – in native tree planting.
Examining these practices, I aim to expand the concept of “community” in community-based conservation to highlight the role of knowledge exchange through newly emerging reforestation networks. These networks open up space to negotiate ideas about the “proper” relations to and belonging of non-human actors, especially in contexts in which governmental agencies have effectively reduced species diversity. By following the seeds, I show how circulated knowledge of trees and forest landscapes not only enables community-based conservation efforts in the first place but also shapes how future multispecies communities are envisioned.
Contribution short abstract
I show plural and conflictual human-environment relations in indigenous land management programs versus informal resource management by different indigenous Dayak groups in Kalimantan, Indonesia framed by concepts of political ecology and ontological anthropology.
Contribution long abstract
Struggles on access and control of land, forest and mining products are vibrant in the context of massive resource extraction in Indonesia. Indigenous land management programs in Kalimantan, implemented by local indigenous Dayak groups, promise to secure access to land and resources and to strengthen political, economic and cultural participation. However, conflicts arise amongst different indigenous Dayak groups about the control of resources and about different 'plural' conceptualizations of the environment. Land and forest can provide a livelihood through subsistence economy, can be the abode of spirits or provide raw materials for the industry. The semi-nomadic group Dayak Punan Murung practice a contextual access and a relational approach to forested area and manage natural resources informally in the community what is common amongst communities in Southeast Asia. However, their plural conceptions of land and forest are rarely integrated into formal indigenous land management programs. In these programs, land should be mapped, bounded and in private ownership. Moreover, Punan Murung feel co-opted and instrumentalised by urban based indigenous Dayak organisation. Thus, hegemonic notions of nature are not only enacted by the state but also by dominant indigenous groups. I show that conflictual human-environment relationships are based on different conceptions of land or forest, which are embedded in political contexts. In order to conceptualize these conflictual or overlapping human-environment relations, I combine approaches from political ecology and ontological anthropology.