Paper short abstract:

This presentation juxtaposes Hastrup's reflections on the transformative power of moments of encounter with Tylor's concept of "survivals" to explore the ways in which an engagement with the presence the untimely can open new pathways for thought and imagination.

Paper long abstract:

A recurring theme in Kirsten Hastrup's work is the transformative power of moments of encounter: a sighting of one of the "hidden people" on a fog-shrouded Icelandic mountainside, when distinctions between reality and unreality appear suddenly malleable and uncertain; or the impingement of the "argument" of the Arctic ice upon worlds of human thought and imagination, forcing an acknowledgement of other than human presences that exceed human purposes and understandings. This presentation stages an encounter of its own between Hastrup's reflections and Edward Tylor's concept of "survivals" (beliefs, practices, customs etc. "carried on" to the present from an earlier state of society), which was to influence Aby Warburg's studies of the "afterlife" of images from pagan antiquity in the European Renaissance and, latterly, has been given renewed currency in the work of anthropologist Carlo Severi and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman. These scholars emphasize not the stadial theory of social evolution that frames Tylor's discussion but rather the disruptive, untimely quality of survivals, their capacity to call into question the seeming coherence and self-evidence of the present by making manifest that which is contemporaneous with it, yet appears not to belong to it. Understood thus, I argue, survivals force us to question such familiar binaries as past/present, reality/fiction, nature/culture, human/nonhuman. My aim is to consider survivals as potential scenes of encounter and to place Hastrup's insights in dialogue with those of a number of thinkers who have not often been discussed in relation to her work.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Iceland, the paper seeks to explore crisis-driven futures in making. It focuses on the context of imagining and anticipating crisis, which results from recognising the emerging signs of the near past events and practices in the present-day Icelandic landscape.

Paper long abstract:

The economic crisis that hit Iceland in 2008 revealed the existing interdependencies between global forces, local worlds and emplaced practices. Neoliberal reconfigurations of Icelandic political economy and the production of new subjectivities in the 1990s led not only to significant social and cultural changes in Iceland, but also prepared a fertile ground for the crisis-to-come. After the financial bubble burst, many Icelanders faced harsh reality and while experiencing austerity measures and precarisation of lives, they constructed various crisis-driven narratives, strategies and practices of muddling through the post-crisis situation.

Today, Iceland is booming. However, despite the fast recovery, the uncertain future looms large in the present but cannot be fully explored and comprehend. For many Icelanders, the present triggers the memories and experiences of the recent past. Everyday life occurrences, socio-cultural practices and changes in the Icelandic landscape are then seen as reminders of not only "what has happened", but also "what is about to happen". Icelandic Uchronia, introduced by Kirsten Hastrup, seems to be at play here; however, the causation-in-duration is also driven by neoliberal transformations in Icelandic social and cultural imaginaries as well as future-oriented gaze. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and Hastrup's findings, the paper focuses on ways in which Icelanders imagine uncertain futures and anticipate (yet another) crisis. By exploring cultural meanings and social practices in everyday life, I attempt to problematise the relationship between past, present and future as well as move beyond the traditional understanding of crisis as "rupture" or "aberrant" departure from "normalcy".

Paper short abstract:

Inspired by Kirsten Hastrup's work on natural-social entanglements and 'scales of attention', the paper explores how watersheds are constituted by traveling concepts and plural practices, which also produce diverse versions of water and different yet entangled waterworlds in local/global encounters.

Paper long abstract:

Inspired by Kirsten Hastrup's work on climate change and water, and particularly her insights into scaling and natural-social entanglements, I will discuss how water and watersheds are made by a plurality of global and local concepts and practices. As Kirsten Hastrup has argued, the local and the global are always enfolded in each other, and this insight requires anthropologists to acknowledge different points of perception and possible scales of attention in ethnographic research. This paper will challenge conventional understandings of 'water' and 'watersheds' by showing that watersheds are not stable and entirely 'natural' entities. It takes a lot of work to make water flow, and watersheds are constituted by a plurality of water practices, which also produce diverse versions of water and different yet entangled water worlds. The concept of 'watershed' travels globally and is implemented locally by endeavours to gather diverse practices and transform water into a standardized resource by measurements and regulations. However, as water refuses to be contained within a singular definition, it constantly multiplies. I argue that there is a need to take this excess and multiplicity seriously in order to achieve a fuller understanding of water and watersheds. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Colca-Majes watershed in southern Peru, I examine the entanglements of human and environmental agencies and show that water is not a neutral and universal substance, and not only a contested 'resource', but also an unruly liquid, a vital force and a living being.

Paper short abstract:

The club stone is a rock where little auks reconvene several times during their life-time. Mirroring anthropological practices in the club stone, we show how a rock in Thule can move through time and space, and collapse the gap between field and desk.

Paper long abstract:

This paper unfolds around a biological phenomenon - the club stone - a rock where groups of little auks reconvene several times during a mating season, and year upon year. Kirsten Hastrup and the authors of this paper, became aware of this phenomenon during a cross-disciplinary expedition to The North Water polynya Area in the High Arctic of Greenland, also known as Avanersuaq or Thule.

We tell the story of discovery of the club stone, and by unfolding the layers of multi-species sociality and manifold meanings that we found, the paper examines the potentials and challenges implied when collaborating across species and disciplines, across academic hierarchies, and across colonial and ecological histories. Mirroring empirical and analytical practices of anthropology in the club stone, we shed light on the intimate and subtle attentions and attitudes through which anthropology approaches the world and generates powerful knowledge and statements, and we show how a stone on a talis slope in Northwest Greenland can conceptually move through time and space, and move anthropological subjectivities and insights on its way. By doing so, the gap between field and desk in anthropological knowledge-making, is collapsed.