Short Abstract

How do crises reshape practices of care across Oceania? This workshop explores anthropological, artistic and activist perspectives on environmental, political, and cultural crises, examining how care affectively mobilizes communities, materialities, and futures.

Long Abstract

Across Oceania, communities are confronted with intersecting crises, including climate change, environmental degradation, colonial legacies, political instability, the impact of extractive industries, and the ongoing transformation of cultural heritage. Crises, however, do not only produce vulnerability, stagnation, and loss. They also generate critical practices of care, as well as resilience and resistance that potentially sustain relationships between people, ancestors, landscapes, and institutions.

This workshop brings together anthropological, artistic, and activist perspectives to examine how crises affectively move people and objects and how practices of care shape responses to uncertainty across Oceania. We invite contributions that explore ethnographic and collaborative research on Indigenous knowledge, environmental stewardship, heritage preservation, repatriation, disaster recovery, mobility and displacement, as well as artistic and activist interventions.

The workshop directly engages with the conference theme by examining how actors are moved by crises, and actively move others, through practices of care, solidarity, and resistance. It also encourages methodological reflection on collaborative and decolonial research and the role of anthropology in fostering more equitable relationships between communities, researchers, and cultural institutions. In creating dialogue between scholars and artistic practitioners, the workshop aims to foster conversations across disciplinary boundaries and explore how anthropological knowledge and practice can contribute to envisioning more just futures in Oceania.