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- Convenors:
-
Nasima Selim
(University of Bayreuth)
Judith Albrecht (Humboldt University)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Working groups:
- Public Anthropology
Short Abstract:
Public struggles with environmental degradation mobilize multiple media that we as anthropologists need to engage with. How can multimodal articulations contribute to these environmental struggles critically by engaging with the universal rights, the commons, and the undercommons frameworks?
Long Abstract:
Public struggles with environmental degradation mobilize multiple media that we as anthropologists need to engage with. How can multimodal articulations contribute to these environmental struggles by critically engaging with the universal rights, the commons, and the undercommons frameworks? Mbembe calls the “universal right to breathe” as a fundamental right to existence” (Mbembe 2021, S61). The commons of “natural” elements such as air, water, land, are conceived as the process of ethical, equitable sharing of resources (Ford 2015). Yet how can these resources be equitably and ethically shared when inequalities are produced by the same systems that distribute these resources (Górska and Selim, forthcoming)? The undercommons frame claims to radically “refuse to ask for recognition…to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that,..., limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls” (Halberstam 2013, 6). The properties of a natural cultural element like air may interpellate forms of public struggles with air pollution that radically differs from water, wildfire, or landslides. How do such differences and relatedness play a role in the ways environmental degradations are understood? How are they articulated across media and diverse contexts? How are they addressed in these public struggles? This workshop invites contributions that engage with these questions and/or raise new ones. Please submit an abstract with multimodal expressions such as creative non/fiction, sounds, images, visual art, films, performances, and installations centering on public struggles with environmental degradation.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
Brickfields mark urbanization and the devastation of the environment and health. Ramzan, a fictional character, is in a dilemma of working in a brickfield to live and the pain of watching the abolishment of waterbodies. He looks for a way to combat it.
Contribution long abstract:
Brickfields mark urbanization, simultaneously by their physical existence, visual representation, and narratives across the literary genres. More so in the Bangladeshi situation where urbanization took abrupt turns and resulted in unanticipated consequences, compared to the European cities and towns, during and since the colonial period. Brickfields in Bangladesh are a space of environmental manipulation and severe air pollution. Further, these have no security or health measures for the workers, a very underpaid category even by Bangladeshi standards. Workers often face stern health hazards and accidents that result in death or lifelong paralyzed conditions that leave them unemployed. They suffer from fatigue and depression as well. My fictional presentation, however, concerns a different but serious aspect of the brickfields. Brickfields often emerge in some public domain (khas land) or abolishing seasonal water bodies or marshland (haor in local terms). Manipulating the state laws, and having been blessed by some corrupt governance system, the owners of these brickfields get a ‘lease’ of these lands that eventually eat up the water bodies forever. The protagonist of my fictional story, Ramzan, finds himself in a dilemma of working in a brickfield for his and his wife’s mere living and feeling the pain of watching the abolishment of these waterbodies that used to be part of his/their life. A distressed and superstitious Ramzan looks for a way to combat it. The presentation will be based on a fictional work I did years back in the local language.
Contribution short abstract:
How does an elemental song affect the singer and resonate with her transnational audience? Drawing on Moushumi Bhowmik’s "song of the five elements" and the author's conspiratory ethnography in South Asia, the paper explores the ecopoethics of resistance in a suffocating planet.
Contribution long abstract:
(In collaboration with Moushumi Bhowmik)
Where does a song originate, and where does it travel after being sung, resonating across the dimensions of spacetime? How does an elemental song affect the singer and resonate with her transnational audience on a suffocating planet? This article explores these questions in the company of “a song of the five elements”, by the acclaimed songwriter, singer, and scholar Moushumi Bhowmik. Drawing on South Asian vernacular cosmologies of the five elements (panchabhuta), particularly the often-overlooked fifth element, akash/byom (sky/space), the paper critiques the dominance of Empedoclean four-element framework in Eurocentric cosmology. Through a conspiratory (L. conspirare, breathing together) ethnography of transnational encounters across South Asia and Western Europe, this paper highlights the “ecopoethical affinity” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2021) inherent in such forms of vernacular song-making and elemental thought. By bridging ecological, poetic, and ethical imaginaries of the elements, we explore their capacity to inspire an ecopoethic resistance – redefining the politics of suffocation and imagining new “breathing spaces” for life on a post-pandemic planet.
Keywords: breathing space, conspiratory ethnography, ecopoethics, element, resistance, song, politics of suffocation, vernacular song-making.
Contribution short abstract:
Against this backdrop of fractured relations, this research explores why and how alliances among these diverse actors and movements—particularly between environmental struggles and women’s movements—have failed to materialize.
Contribution long abstract:
The recent expansion of South Africa’s coal mining sector has had devastating effects on Somkhele, a southeastern village where the community endures air pollution, water scarcity, health problems, and displacement. These challenges disproportionately affect women, who primarily bear responsibilities for caregiving, farming, and securing water, critically undermining women’s ability to sustain their livelihoods. Civil society organizations from Johannesburg have joined forces with rural women to campaign against food and water insecurity. However, these efforts have not produced sustainable solutions, and the divide between rural and urban women persists. Against this backdrop of fractured relations, this research explores why and how alliances among these diverse actors and movements—particularly between environmental struggles and women’s movements—have failed to materialize. Haraway (1992) describes "political articulations" as the connections diverse actors form to create new collective eco-political entities that enable them to coexist. Yet, such articulations are inherently fragile and may either succeed or fail (Haraway, 1992). Drawing on this concept, I argue that place-based differences are crucial in fostering more transformative articulations that address the intersections of environmental degradation with gender, race, and class. In this workshop, I will present my analysis of the political (non-)articulations among rural women, urban women, and global organizations based on fieldwork data as well as archival research on feminist organizations such as La Via Campesina and the World March of Women. Alongside theoretical and empirical discussions, I will share photo documentation from my fieldwork and a written installation that examines how different movements and organizations frame feminism.
Contribution short abstract:
The river Spree is experiencing increasing pressure due to climate change and the legacy of hydraulic infrastructure. I reflect on multimodal collaborations between my ethnographic research, artistic interventions and modes of communication, for new spaces to think about this changing waterscape.
Contribution long abstract:
Terrestrial water resources are under increasing pressure from climate change, and human-water interactions are being challenged to avoid arid landscapes. For centuries, the river Spree's waterways in Berlin-Brandenburg have been controlled by engineering structures such as drainage, canalisation and sluice systems. However, hydrological and political uncertainties about how to respond to rapid (planetary) environmental change are undermining confidence in this regulation of hydraulic infrastructure. Recent droughts in the region have heightened the sense of imminent aridity and are influencing discussions about sustainable water management along the River Spree. The water level of the river has been influenced by former mining sites upstream in the Lusatia region. Following the closure of these mines, the lack of mine water will result in a decline in water supply and changes in water quality. Local debates are currently addressing changes in technical structures, often excluding other approaches and the everyday realities of residents, while bound to anthropogenic striving for progress. However, novel approaches and dialogues are currently under discussion. In this paper, I reflect on multimodal collaborations between my ethnographic research, artistic interventions with water sounds and evolving modes of communication, which aim to open new spaces to think about a changing waterscape. I draw on examples such as the multimodal installation 'Conversations with the Spree' working with people in the Spreewald and Berlin, sound artists and science communication, to listen anew and create public dialogues about and with the river in times of crisis.