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- Convenors:
-
Hilal Alkan
(Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Anne Meneley (Trent University)
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- Discussant:
-
Nefissa Naguib
(University of Oslo)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/007
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores migration and displacement as multispecies processes and looks into the ways how migrants remember, care for and root with plants. As co-temporous growth and multispecies orientations to past and future are investigated, a new horizon for anthropology of displacement is defined.
Long Abstract:
‘Becoming human [is] an interspecies collaborative project; we become who we are in the company of other beings’ says Deborah Bird Rose (2011, 11). Following from that, this panel explores how human beings, who in the metaphorical language of anthropologies of migration and displacement are uprooted and transplanted, later take root in their new homes and grow in interaction with companion plants, for whom these tasks have a very literal meaning. It also investigates the multispecies losses that mark displacement, and people’s creative and caring endeavors to deal with such losses as part of becoming who they are.
Migrants take the climatic and seasonal challenges of the new lands together with the plants they grow at home, in gardens or in refugee camps. Growing plants and growing co-temporaneously with them is a memory work, as well as a deliberate effort to establish a fresh sense of belonging and to overcome senses of uprootedness. Yet, growing a plant is also a work of hope: the hope about inevitable life-forces, the hope to root again, or possibly the hope to return. Hence plant-care is as much a way of mourning and healing, as an act of cherishing cultural, olfactory and culinary connections to previous and present homelands.
Possible topics include:
- Migrant food growing
- Plants as anchors to migrant pasts and presents
- Gardening as reconstruction of home-spaces
- Plant-care as life-making activity in displacement
- Home-making with plants
- Transborder seed sharing and cutting exchanges
- Plants as biographical vessels
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Hilal Alkan (Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks into the relationships different waves and generations of migrants from Turkey develop with the plants they grow and care for in Germany and explores the significance of multispecies networks in the processes of migrant home-making.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws from the research I am conducting, which looks into the relationships different waves and generations of migrants from Turkey develop with the plants they grow and care for in Germany, in order to explore the significance of multispecies networks in the processes of migrant home-making. In the context of migration and displacement human and plant migrants share the challenges of acclimatization and adaptation in new contexts. Human-beings find in plants not only the metaphors for their struggles (rooting, being uprooted, branching, blossoming..etc) but also they take them as companions. While caring for their plants, migrants invest in settling and turning a foreign place into a home, both for themselves but also for the plants, who sometimes carry the scents, colors and textures of the home that is left behind. For migrants from Turkey, this involves a material exchange of seeds, cuttings and plant transfers in very unlikely conditions between two countries, that is followed by attentive hands-on care practices to help plants survive.
Renata Hryciuk (Warsaw University)
Paper short abstract:
Using an autoethnographic lens I scrutinize the role an herb poleo has come to play in my transnational foodways and professional life. I focus on affective and embodied relations I have developed with this herb over the years and the role it plays in my imaginaries of good transnational life.
Paper long abstract:
Poleo (hedeoma drummondii also known as Drummond's false pennyroyal) forms part of a traditional, ritual culinary culture and ethnomedicinal practices in Oaxaca (Southern Mexico). Rich in antioxidants and pleasant flavor the herb is served as medicinal infusion (e.g. popular remedy for hangover and indigestion) in indigenous communities and used as a culinary spice/endemic ingredient in emerging local gastronomy patronized by culinary tourists, expats and amenity migrants. Commercialized at both traditional and organic markets, restaurants, gourmet shops and on-line it has recently become a mobile actor: from a unique Oaxacan cultural heritage to transnational foodways of tourists and different groups of migrants.
During the past decade, when I have been living off and on in Oaxaca doing fieldwork on gendered food heritage, I became a poleo aficionado (enthusiast) myself. I would always carry back home many bags of dry herbs for self-consumption as well as for my friends and relatives. Poleo is always a most welcome gift.
Using an autoethnographic lens I aim at scrutinizing the role poleo has come to play in my transnational foodways and professional life. As an anthropologist studying foodways (thus often consuming too much of food and drink) I start moving/travelling with poleo not only to savor its taste but to benefit from its curative properties. I focus on affective and embodied relations I have developed with this particular herb over the years and the role it plays in my imaginaries of good transnational life.
Darya Tsymbalyuk
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I narrate experiences of migration through a multispecies perspective, focusing on stories about gardens and houseplants in narratives of people displaced from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Ukraine.
Paper long abstract:
My homeland Ukraine has been brutally attacked by Russia. This war did not start in 2022, it started in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded parts of Donbas. In this paper, I share stories of people who were first affected by the war against Ukraine. They already fled the war in 2014 and many are now fleeing it again. In the past years, I have been interviewing and writing about people displaced from Donbas from a multispecies perspective. I focus on stories about gardens and houseplants, and the rupture of relations between people and plants. In this paper, I will present testimonies I have recorded between 2015 and 2019, reflecting on migration and entanglements of people and plants.