Contribution short abstract:

In this talk, I will reflect on living through the end of the world (again) and the possibility of resistance, by re-visiting the village that centers my ethnography of life and war in South Lebanon, which was blown up and completely destroyed by Israel in October 2024.

Contribution long abstract:

In this talk, I will reflect on living through the end of the world (again) by re-visiting the village that centers my ethnography of life and war in South Lebanon "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (2022). This village and 37 other border villages, were blown up and completely destroyed by Israel in October 2024. The villages were forcibly emptied, the homes were turned to rubble, the olive groves were burned and uprooted, and the military resistance that had liberated South Lebanon in 2000 and successfully defended it in 2006, was dealt a devastating, almost deadly blow. Based on fieldwork conducted after the latest terrible war to destroy and devastate South Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024, I will revisit the possibility of resistance and renewal after the end of the world. With military resistance in abeyance, it is life that must resist the intentional destruction of the Israeli war machine.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper asks how people (re)inhabit war-disturbed environments. It focuses on human-soil disturbances caused by explosive war remains contamination. Following various forms of 'guerilla demining' activities, it shows how these constitute a world-making practice of elemental infrapolitics.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper asks how people (re)inhabit war-disturbed environments. Wars create and leave behind ‘deadly environments’ (Henig 2020) contaminated with radioactive, toxic, explosive remains and discard, thereby violently reconfiguring relations between people and the natural elements such as air, soil, and water. Drawing on fieldwork in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which humanitarian demining efforts have been largely halted, I move my ethnographic gaze ‘down to earth’ to elucidate geosocial relations between people and soil that is contaminated by explosive war remains, and landmines in particular. I follow several individuals - a hunter, a trickster, a carer, and a forensic expert - who have been engaged in acts of ‘guerrilla demining’. This notion refers to grassroots, often illegal, idiosyncratic but sustained activities of monitoring the contamination, and clearing explosive war remains from the soil, be it in the fields, pastures, forest, or mass graves. Since these acts take place beyond the purview of the state and of the international humanitarian demining organisations, I consider guerrilla demining as a form of infrapolitics (after James Scott). While guerrilla demining requires a deep localised knowledge of the soil (and sometimes of the fire), the terrain, and the explosives, it is more than a survival tactic. It is also pursued out of a deep sense of geosocial care for the soil, the livestock, the living, and the dead. What thus emerges from ‘the accumulation of thousands … of such small acts [of care]’ (Scott 2012), I argue, is a world-making practice of elemental infrapolitics.

Contribution short abstract:

My ethnographies in the Middle East warscapes are stories other-than-humans entangled in wars to spotlight the larger question of who and what is human. Other-than-humans are trigger moments for combatants who make sense of life in the heat of combat when they see animals killed or used for warfare.

Contribution long abstract:

Middle East warscapes are full of surprises such as other-than-humans like dogs, felines, birds, mosquitos, lost domesticated animals, flowers, and weeds. The other-than-humans can be a nuisance, induce fleeting moments of laughter, endanger combatants, or even be used against each other or the enemy for a successful mission. Based on my ethnographies in the Middle East warscapes (Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon), I explain how other-than-humans are entangled in wars and spotlight the larger question of who and what is human. I discuss other-than-humans as the nodal point and trigger moments for combatants who make sense of life in the heat of combat when they see animals killed or used for warfare and ask themselves whose life must be disposed of to save others. This question does not emerge as much when combatants see the fall of their peers or comrades but encounters with dead, dying, suffering, or killed other-than-human evoke an affective communion with life in combatants, and they question whose life is disposable. Through the encounters with other-than-humans and what they do for and to combatants, I argue wars are not mere theatres of conflicts but wars are affective textures of humanity exposing inhumanities and the irreparability of life because wars are the bottom line and the hard truth of whose life is disposable and living with the fact that Middle East warscapes are scenes of expelling Muslims from the category of human.

Contribution short abstract:

What ‘un(der)commons’ is possible in the aftermath of genocide that has ruptured worlds also by way of racialized exclusions from property regimes? More-than-human ecologies play a key role by affording moments of recognition and affective connections across historical divides.

Contribution long abstract:

In my presentation, I ask what ‘un(der)commons’ are possible in the long aftermath of genocide and what role the more-than-human plays in this. I do so by looking at descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide that ‘return’ to Western Armenia/Northern Kurdistan/Eastern Anatolia in search for traces and answers to a history of unfathomable loss and rupture. These encounters take the form of a confrontation between differently sourced fragments of knowledge and memory and the materiality of the land. They entail dwelling momentarily and sensuously in a landscape made up of trees, scattered stones and soil. I understand this modality of return and engagement as also speaking of the history of a racialized property regime that emerged with and through the Armenian genocide in the context of the First World War. This racialized property regime is built on the exclusion of non-Muslims from entitlement to land and property and constitutes the politico-economic and material dimension of the world-rupturing power of genocide. What commonalities or alternative publics become apprehensible across this divide? These involve, I argue, the more-than-human in a fundamental way. In the wake of destruction, water, mountains, trees and soils gain in significance and affect. More-than-human ecologies become hospitable to the work of the imaginary in a way not afforded by a built environment reduced to unrecognizable rubble. They offer moments of recognition and affective shelter as well as affordances of an un(der)commons, a coming together across (or in) heterogeneity.

Contribution short abstract:

In Palestine, water control is used as a tool of dispossession by the Israeli settler colonial project. This paper examines how communal water knowledge(s) and practices remain a vital source of Indigenous resistance through fostering relationalities of care, stewardship and reciprocity.

Contribution long abstract:

In settler colonial contexts, control over water functions as a mechanism of dispossession and domination. In Palestine, water has been the site of overt weaponization and theft by Israeli settler colonial control, perpetuating extractivist logics and practices designed to erase Palestinian presence on the land.

This paper examines ‘Njasa cisterns, traditional water storage systems, as vital communal infrastructures and living knowledge systems central to the resilience of Palestinian herding communities. Countering colonial and orientalist frameworks that commodify water and reduce its meaning and valuation to mere techno-managerial logics, we highlight how ‘Njasa knowledge(s) and knowledge holders embody an ethics of care, reciprocity, and commons, fostering deeper relationality with land and water.

Through ethnographic research with communities in the occupied West Bank, we explore how cisterns knowledge(s) operate as dynamic systems sustained by intergenerational knowledge-sharing, shared stewardship, and mutual care. These cisterns are not only reservoirs of water but also sites of communal resistance, preserving ecological and cultural ties and countering systemic dispossession. We also examine how communal water knowledge-sharing extends into new practices in physical and virtual spaces, enabling the sharing and evolution of Indigenous practices under conditions of (settler)colonial erasure, ecological collapse and climate change.

By positioning ‘Njasa cisterns as sites of resistance and relational commoning, this work contributes to the decolonial turn in water studies, advocating for methodologies that honor and strengthen Indigenous communities’ sovereignty, cultural resilience, and steadfast presence on their land amidst relentless settler colonial oppression.

Contribution short abstract:

Soup Kitchens (itkieah) are charity organizations that have been re-utilized to ensure access to cooked food for people in the Gaza Strip. Volunteer's work in the soup kitchens in the face of war and famine. We ask, how do people draw on indigenous social institutions to ensure survival?

Contribution long abstract:

The Gaza Strip has been kept on the threshold of starvation and famine from the start of the most recent israeli invasion. Keeping ‘Gazans on a diet’ by maintaining the siege and targeting food production capacities in the Strip predates this current onslaught by over a decade and a half. Despite, and in the face of, industrial scale warfare Palestinians in Gaza are resisting starvation, famine, and genocide in uncounted ways. One of the most important of these ways is ensuring sustenance to the near two million IDP’s now in shelters and “safe zones.” Today, the most common source for attaining (cooked) food is the ‘itkieah’ -soup kitchens- which are found in formal and informal shelters throughout the Gaza Strip. In these shelters, people donate food supplies, others contribute by cooking the food, or distributing it, or cleaning. This ouneh, or mutual assistance and solidarity- is ensuring people have access to food. Both the social practice of ouneh and the institution of itaki (plr. itkieah) are indigenous concepts with rich Arab-Islamic histories. As such, we ask how do people draw on indigenous social institutions and practices to ensure survival? We argue that while ouneh can take on many forms -and indeed does- its use today in soup kitchen ensures social reproduction at a time of cleansing, while itaki have been shifted from charity institutions to an institution adjusted to suit the needs of an entire population.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores the processes of respiration and reparation at the official "zones of combat dust" over the dried beds of Mesopotamian Marshlands in the aftermath of wars and sanctions.

Contribution long abstract:

The immense haze of dust that raises with the wind from the dried beds of Mesopotamian marshlands has drastically changed air and life across Iran and Iraq southern borders in the past decade. This paper explores life in the bad air through an ethnographic engagement with multi-species encounters and affective resonances that shape around green future making at the official zones of combat dust operations in Iran. I show how the oil-rich marshlands have become a laboratory of war-devastated and sanction-ridden reparational experimentations where engineers, scientists, environmental activists, farmers, and traders cooperate and compete to control the air. Drawing on the processes of respiration and photosynthesis, this paper highlights the contours of greening from plantation to rehabilitation and revival as they elude particular habitual knowledge and sensory practices of the marshlands. While understanding the life of Marsh Arabs is long entangled in the nostalgic ebbs of "Mesopotamian culture" in the anthropological debates, I draw on war ecology and hazardous atmosphere to revisit the terms of nativity, indigenousness and breathing hierarchies. Social life here grows in the ruptures and wreckage of structurally violent worlds, where militarized biospheres yield planetary ecological effects.

Contribution short abstract:

In Bandar Abbas, Iran, non-elites omit sanctions from daily discourse, using silence as a coping mechanism to normalize life under persistent economic strain. This omission helps resist fixation on sanctions' termination, navigating an indefinite, attritional force affecting all sectors.

Contribution long abstract:

Iran is not the only country to have endured prolonged economic sanctions, but it holds the distinction of being subjected to one of the most extensive and comprehensive sanction regimes in history. Studies reveal that these sanctions were designed to inflict the consequences of military conflict on Iran without requiring the sanctioning countries, primarily the United States, to bear the costs of war.

However, during my ethnographic research in Bandar Abbas—a strategic, historic port located on the narrow Strait of Hormuz—I noticed that sanctions are conspicuously absent from the daily discourse of ordinary people. Fishers, smugglers, seafarers, merchants, and other non-elites rarely, if ever, mention sanctions in their conversations.

Despite statistical indicators showing the pervasive effects of sanctions across all sectors, this lack of "talking sanctions" among non-elites contrasts sharply with the perspective of technocrats and elites, who liken it to ignoring water while drowning. In this study, I explore how this omission reflects the temporality of sanctions—an ongoing, open-ended, attritional force against the environment and society.

Based on my ethnographic findings, I argue that this collective silence serves as a coping mechanism, allowing people to avoid fixating on the uncertain termination of sanctions. By excluding the language of sanctions from their daily lives, they attempt to normalize an existence that sanctions seek to disrupt. Without this omission, the omnipresence of sanctions could dominate their everyday lives, effectively suspending life until sanctions are lifted.