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- Convenors:
-
Lisa Francesca Rail
(University of Vienna)
Susanna Gartler (Austrian Polar Research InstituteUniversity of Vienna)
Wolfgang Kraus (University of Vienna)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Land commons shaped by subsistence practices in high altitudes and high latitudes (e.g. hunting, fishing or mobile pastoralism) face economic and ecological pressure in both (Sub)Arctic and mountainous areas. We explore the role of well-being, value, and identity in these commons' persistence.
Long Abstract:
We invite papers exploring how collective care for land, agroecology, atmospheric carbon reduction, and food sovereignty become entangled with well-being, culture, and identity. Regionally, we encourage contributions dealing with - but not limited to - transforming Indigenous lands in the (Sub-)Arctic and mountainous areas. We combine our research sites in the Yukon, the Austrian Alp, and the Moroccan High Atlas to reflect on future well-being on thawing permafrost in high altitudes and latitudes through commonalities in the non-capitalist circulation of value on common lands. These regions are sites of expansive stretches of forests, grassland, and tundra used by communities for foraging and mobile pastoralism. Collective stewardship is not a common form of property relations in Canada, Austria, nor Morocco, yet, in those sites the tenacity of common lands is explained and cherished in terms of value, tradition, culture, and identity - not as radical (economic) alterity. Subsistence practices play a major role in sustaining a good life in arctic and alpine regions. In both, however, food security is under ecological pressure from climate changes as well as under economic pressure from industrialized agriculture and by the mining and tourism sector. At the same time, in political discourse these accustomed subsistence strategies are recurrently deemed 'uneconomic'. Countering this, we hold that in the commons value is generated not through market mechanisms but oriented towards non-alienated maintenance, gift giving, and sharing. Moreover, these thick cultural landscapes can be carriers of hopes for sustainable societies in regions otherwise rendered 'unfavorably remote and inhospitable'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Siran Liang (Technische Universität Braunschweig)
Paper short abstract:
This four-month ethnographic study conducted in 2021 investigates subsistence-orientated yak-herding practices at a Tibetan community located at 4800m altitude on the Changtang grassland (Nagqu, Tibet) as well as yak herders' experience of environmental, social and economic changes.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation is based on my four-month ethnographic research with yak-herding communities in Tibet 2021. Drawing on the mundane daily life on the grassland, I illustrate that yak pastoralism, a highland lifeway at an arid land where environmental conditions precluded agriculture, involves sophisticated herding and milking skills as well as a set of animal caring practices. Subsistence-oriented yak herding is often labeled as 'backward'. Here I present how the yak-herding practices follow grassland logic and are more sustainable and ethical than the market-oriented bovine industry. I will then discuss the challenges yak herders are facing in the context of climate change and modernization. I argue that thinking with the subsistence-oriented yak-herding practices can help us to reflect on our relationship with non-human beings in the Anthropocene.
Tobias Haller (University of Bern)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is based on a comparative research in Switzerland on commoners organizations in Alpine areas in all language regions of the country. It shows the importance of coping with pressures from market and state and the will to maintain the commons that goes beyond economic gain.
Paper long abstract:
Since the work of Elinor Ostrom on Governing the Commons also based on the work of Robert Netting, Swiss commoners organizations are seen as being THE case against the tragedy of the commons and the avenue towards sustainability. The proof was the way these framer groups were installing and maintaining institutions for the sustainable governance of their forests, pastures and water sources. The SNF funded project SCALES (Sustainable Commons Adaptation to Landscape Ecosystems in Switzerland) had a look at this labelling in a comparative way in five areas in Switzerland in the German, French and Italian speaking parts of the country. The aim was to see how since the mid 18th century until today these commoners organizations were able to adapt to market and state conditions. The project shows that since the reduction of the value of common-pool resources such as timber and pasture related agricultural products the commoners are under high pressure, which the subsidies from the state cannot fully address. At the same time, we also see how commoners organizations cope differently with these pressures and have to balance with the market and the state in the context of legally guaranteed common property ownership. The commoners organizations are differently successful of doing this which was related to their bargaining power to state and municipalities but as well by the new solutions in a kind of Swiss commons lab, which also depended highly on how high the value of maintaining the commons was compared to the financial pressures.
Lisa Francesca Rail (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
I explore negotiations over economic and non-economic value in the persistence of common pastures in the Austrian Alps. I argue for the indispensable role of cultural valuation in the upkeep of transhumant animal husbandry and for combining commons theory with anthropological theories of value.
Paper long abstract:
Small-scale transhumant animal husbandry in the Austrian Alps is under economic pressure: farms in mountainous areas cannot compete with less labor intensive, scaled-up milk and meat production in the low lands. This is pertinent for both the past and future persistence of alpine commons. On the one hand the remoteness of these commons has been suggested as reason for why they have not become subject to enclosure. On the other the non-viability of mountain farms has led to substantial closures of farms and the abandonment of alps since decades. Many alpine commons struggle to sufficiently stock their pastures and to share the workload of managing them with few remaining farming members. In this context the explicit mobilization of non-economic value plays is crucial for the maintenance of alpine farming and its commons: internally farmers explain their continued livestock keeping in terms of identity, the beauty of work processes, and tradition; externally the maintenance of alps is framed as care for a biodiversity-rich and cultivated landscape – as ecological and cultural service for the public, for which both farmers and rural politicians, as well as higher level civil servants demand monetary reimbursement. Beyond this ethnographic context I take the paper towards broader conceptual considerations, namely towards the role of theories of value for understanding the commons. I propose going beyond the Ostromian framework of collective action as ultimately the outcome of individuals weighing costs and benefits and instead turning to anthropological theories of value, social cohesion, and property in non-capitalist socialities.