Short Abstract:

This workshop focuses on temporalities of resource use beyond the futuristic and productionist timescape of Green Growth. How may the commoning of long-established yet marginalised ideas and diverse temporalities help to un-common dominant views of sustainability in political and academic discourse?

Long Abstract:

Sustainability encompasses various strategies and practices mobilised by public and private actors to mitigate the harmful effects of capitalistic forms of value extraction. To tackle the overconsumption of resources and exploitation of people and environments, policies promote the reuse and recycling of materials within circular economies, while researchers eagerly develop technological and (socio)economic improvements. With its emphasis on innovation in the service of upcoming generations, sustainability seems to enjoy an appealing temporality: It is up to date and firmly geared towards the future, thereby usually overlooking long-established examples of sustainability. In other words, rather than undermining techno-scientific futurity (Puig de la Bellacasa 2015), sustainability in its dominant form blends perfectly into the productionist timescape of Green Growth.

Engaging with a productive tension between commoning and un-commoning, this workshop focuses on temporalities of resource use which do not succumb to the logic of productionism. We invite contributors to engage with diverse temporalities of sustainability, which include, but are not limited to, seasonalities, ancestries, (un-)certainties and (im)probabilities. Commoning yet disregarded practices and temporalities of sustainability foregrounds human-environment relations that may be informal, acquire meaning not primarily in economic terms, engage care-fully with nonhumans, and mobilise diverse cultural repertoires. Overarching questions of this workshop concern the epistemic stakes of anthropological research on sustainability: What do commoning and un-commoning mean for understanding and practicing sustainability? What are their mutual tensions, forms of coexistence, and limits? How may the commoning of marginalised wisdom help to un-common dominant views of sustainability in political and academic discourse?

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