Presentation short abstract:

This talk is an invitation to look beyond compartmentalized thinking and disciplinary boundaries, attune your methods, and dive into the complexity of a multispecies emergency. It is based on fieldwork among scientists and Maori elders in their struggle to preserve New Zealand's kauri forests.

Presentation long abstract:

It all started with a realization: The seeds I held in my hands became the two-centimetre sprouts quietly sitting on top of my desk. They hold the potential to live thousands of years and grow fifty meters. Kauri is among the most ancient tree species in the world. It is believed to have been growing on these shores since the Jurassic time. Throughout their long evolutionary history, kauri survived asteroid impacts, earthquakes, volcanoes, tide waves, the disruption of climate patterns and the reversal of Earth's magnetic poles. Yet, during the ravage of the colonial era, in less than 200 years, kauri forests were logged until the brink of extinction. When the urgency to protect what it was left became evident, an unexpected pathogen, described as a biological bulldozer, arrived.

The many human interventions designed to obtain immediate outcomes often dismiss kauri's own pace and power, significatively altering their potential futures. This talk elaborates on concepts like "making kin" (Haraway), "mothering" (Simard), "whanaungatanga" (Maori ancestral wisdom) to reimagine biodiverse futures. It re-examines the role of humans in the "wild" and moves species conservation beyond sterilised scientific scales.

Presentation short abstract:

Can we find the relational conditions for a communal future in a history of interspecies conflict? How co-presence - even when in competition - might lead to a sense of co-belonging and an openness to communicate and share the world with wildlife

Presentation long abstract:

Analysis of “conflict” often positions human and wildlife in competition for resources, while compartmentalising the world into divergent perspectives and domains. However, as anthropologists have argued, other modes of interspecies relations can exist alongside antagonism in a common environment.

This paper will focus on a group of farmers undermined by crop depredations from wildlife, yet who went on to play a vital role in securing a wildlife corridor that passed through their property. How did this act of solidarity in a shared landscape emerge? Can we find the relational conditions for a communal future in this history of conflict?

Ethnography can articulate the vulnerability of living with a wild more-than-human agency, and how co-presence - even when in conflict - can lead to a sense of co-belonging. In particular, I will analyse a sacrificial practice that demonstrates a willingness to communicate with and partly concede the world to the more-than-human. The oft-cited attitude of tolerance is insufficient for conceptualising the political and hopeful possibilities of human-wildlife coexistence

Presentation short abstract:

This paper describes the multispecies entanglements (past and present) that Scottish rewilders are turning to in the search for a new, collaborative “wild” that offers liveability for all species, and reflects on how histories of extinction are drawing rewilders into new ecological responsibilities.

Presentation long abstract:

“The biggest [environmental] challenge is that, although people are trying to fix little things, perhaps even believe in self-governing ecosystems and stepping back [from landscape management], we cannot get full trophic cascades without top predators,” one of my collaborators tells me. It has been around three-hundred years since wolves, the last remaining large predators, were extirpated from Scotland. Amongst the reasons for their persecution was the perception that they posed a competition to humans in the hunting of deer and the consumption of domesticated livestock. But in the absence of wolves, Scottish landscapes have transformed: Deer populations have boomed and, with the increased grazing pressure, forests have dwindled – and with them, many critters that depend on this habitat. Contesting narratives of interspecies competition, Scottish rewilders are increasingly turning their attention to wolves and other “missing keystone species” who they consider to be essential contributors to Scottish econsystems, and whose absences are thought to impact Scottish biodiversity gravely.

Based on ethnographic research with Scottish rewilding initiatives, this presentation describes the multispecies entanglements – past and present – that my collaborators are turning towards in their search for a new, collaborative “wild” that offers liveability for all species. It pays particular attention to the ways in which histories of extinction are drawing rewilders into new interspecies relations and issuing them with new environmental responsibilities, where, for example, in absence of other predators “humans must be the wolves” and take on the tasks they would have otherwise performed in Scottish ecosystems.

Presentation short abstract:

The “wild” is often imagined out of the “urban.” However, human-more-than-human relations and collaborations take place in in urban settings in intriguing and interesting ways. This study ethnographically examines the possibilities of such relations in the urban natures of Asunción, Paraguay.

Presentation long abstract:

The floodplains of Asunción, capital city of Paraguay, have been going through major transformation. Since 2010, construction of a large-scale river front avenue, bordering the city’s outskirts from North to South, has started. These areas of the city, known as Bañados, are home to marginalized semi-nomadic communities that cyclically move with the flooding of the Paraguayan river. Similarly, despite the proximity to the built urban environments and pollution, these areas are also home for a surprising variety of fauna and flora. Forming a unique socio-ecology with the neighboring river and its ecosystem, the Bañados communities’ semi-nomadic lifestyle have contributed to a slower form of (un)settled urbanization. This have facilitated spontaneous yet complex more-than-human collaborations. The floodplains of Asunción are hybrid spaces, where the normative separation of the “wild” and the “urban” is often unclear. The riverfront avenue project, however, fails to recognize these areas’ historically rooted socio-ecologies. With the floodplains and natural ponds of the south region of the city being sand filled, this year estranged crabs appeared in the streets of Asunción’s south neighborhoods. Thousands of kilometers from the sea in a landlock country, many did not know crabs can live in freshwater. Crabs and frogs’ street fights are now common. In the North, car traffic is often interrupted by large yellow anacondas, mysteriously crossing their ways between the city and the river. Ethnographically looking at the “built” and “wild” infrastructures of Asunción, this study examines the temporal and spatial clash between different ways of imagining an urban nature.

Presentation short abstract:

This paper analyses the politics of care and management of feral cat colonies in Rome, looking at feeding practices and welfare policies in the city. The collaborative action of different social actors shapes the urban ecological niches where stray cats and other beings live.

Presentation long abstract:

This paper analyses the politics of care and management of feral cat colonies in Rome, looking at feeding practices and welfare dynamics put in place by private volunteers, administrative personnel, and veterinarians. Rome hosts more than 4000 feral cat colonies and some of the largest colonies in Europe, situated around touristic attractions and archaeological sites, but also in peripheral and marginal locations. In these settings, stray cats maintain an ambivalent status as urban pests to be controlled, beloved pets to be looked after, and untamed animals who enjoy their freedom and space. Colonies are censed and managed at an administrative level, with the help of vets, animal welfare associations or self-managed groups of volunteers whose interaction with cats shape notions of ferality and domesticity in the urban environment.

As feral cats are cared for and assisted through this collaborative effort, cat-feeding practices involve, directly and indirectly, other species cohabiting the same ecological niche, such as pigeons, rodents, or seagulls. Drawing from ethnographic data, I will look at how these contact zones foster not only competitive relations but also commensality, care and trust in multispecies urban ecologies.

Presentation short abstract:

Focusing on the history of one Sapara community in the Ecuadorian Amazon this presentation argues that wilderness can be understood as lack of relations between humans and non-humans. The forest is not tamed, but made safe for dwelling through agreements between humans, spirits, plants and animals.

Presentation long abstract:

Focusing on the history of a certain Sapara community in the Ecuadorian Amazon this presentation argues that wilderness is understood as lack of relations between humans and non-humans, challenging the Cartesian nature/culture dualism that denies the possibility of a more-than-human society.

The forest is not "tamed", but made safe for interaction through agreements between humans, spirits, plants and animals. These agreements are made through dreams and visions, and become realized in hunting practices, choices of a cultivation site, food taboos and areas where one should not venture, swim, hunt etc. The community members are wholly aware of the functionalist aspects of ecological sustainability that these agreements entail, and with their profound relations with their more-than-human society, their commitment to do their part for protecting their territory against extractive industries is unwavering.

While the dichotomy between nature and culture, wild and tame, is not present in the quotidian life of the community members, the concept of "wild" does exist. What is wild, however, is not the forest of the living territory, where relations with non-humans have been established and cared for, but the forest outside this society, where the non-humans are hostile and can readily harm those who enter their living spaces.

The communal history presented here begins with this hostile forest and tells the long story of how the founders of the community interacted with their cohabiting non-humans, creating a society beyond what is commonly understood as a community.

Presentation short abstract:

This contribution shows how human-dolphin relations in a place that arguably never has been wild are not framed as a matter of natural competition, but rather as a form of mutual aid, where fish is exchanged for economic profit, and spiritual boundaries between species become blurred.

Presentation long abstract:

To the untrained eye, the patch of land in the triangle between the Aguarico and Napo rivers in the Ecuadorian Amazon looks like undisturbed primary forest – totally wild. However, local accounts and historical documents show proof of the centuries-old cultivated space this place really is. A web of relations, both (colonially) extractive, communal and across species has created the present, where local indigenous people, in collaboration with an international conservation NGO, have started a project of feeding pink river dolphins in order to foster their communal economy through tourism.

Even though fish are common food for both dolphins and humans in the region, in this case human-dolphin relations are not framed as a matter of natural competition. Much rather, it is seen as a practical form of mutual aid, where dolphins get free fish in exchange for showing themselves to tourists. The fact that after several years the dolphins still regularly attend the feeding station shows that there must be some kind of mutual profit. Additionally, local legends about human-dolphin transformations blur the boundaries between species. Hence, this case can be seen as an example of communal relations across species in a place that has stopped to be wild a very long time ago.

Presentation short abstract:

This presentation challenges the idea of the sea as a wild, ungoverned domain where only the rule of capture reigns. It argues that the "wildness" of the sea is not a "natural" state but brought about by technological development within fisheries that drives competition over collaboration.

Presentation long abstract:

Since the 1980s, fishing industry in Mumbai has become dominated by bottom trawling and purse seine fishing to the detriment of traditional, passive methods. Even Kolis, indigenous fishers known as the original inhabitants of the city, have largely abandoned their traditional practices in favor of active fishing gear. Madh Island in the northern fringes of Mumbai is among the few places where a centuries-old fishing method based on stationary bag nets (dol) is still widely used.

For dol netters, the sea is a god and informally governed space of more-than-human cohabitation. From dol netters' point of view, foreign-introduced gear such as trawls and purse seines drive efficiency and competition whereas traditional methods cultivate the sustainable coexistence of human beings and marine animals in the sea. In their interactions with the regional government, Koli dol netters thus mobilize a division to destructive and traditional (pāramparik) fishing methods, the latter constituting a practice that cultivates the sea. Through petitions, demonstrations, and negotiations, dol netters are seeking to make the state recognize them as cultivators of the sea in law and its implementation, and to impose stricter regulations on trawls and purse seines. The survival of dol netters essentially depends on curtailing the "wildness" of active fishing methods.

Presentation short abstract:

Projects of oyster cultivation aim to and rely on creating ‘domesticating insides’ and ‘wild outsides’ and to draw mollusc gleaners and oysters into these insides. Unruly molluscs and waters and gleaners who undermine projects, however, form a ‘wild’ alliance and thereby resist domestication.

Presentation long abstract:

Gleaning for molluscs in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal unfolds across an extensive deltaic water-and landscape. It is about repetition with difference and never ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’, as there are always molluscs staying out there to be eventually found another day.

Lately, gleaning has become targeted by NGO interventions. Thereby, molluscs have been described as ‘wild’ and gleaners as ‘dynamic’, yet ‘archaic’, practicing a ‘traditional’ work that is ‘developable’.

In this paper I trace projects of oyster cultivation. These aim to and rely on creating ‘domesticating insides’ and ‘wild outsides’ while little changing oysters’ morphology or behaviour. Rather, human labour, time and technology become indicators of how ‘professional’ a project is and how ‘domesticated’ the resulting oysters and how ‘cultivated’ their consumers are.

Not establishing closed breeding cycles, such projects continue to rely on ‘outside’ oysters attaching themselves to the sites and the connecting, unruly flux of water. Yet, oysters do not always attach as planned or grow in different temporalities. And shifting tides and currents might also change oyster mobility. Because sites and planned tasks remain entangled with this unruliness of molluscs and waters, the projects struggle to establish continuity and deliver on their crucial promises of professionalism.

Gleaners seek to exploit this arrhythmicity. They uphold their ‘traditional’, rhythmic gleaning practice and integrate work for the projects as mere additions rather than fully committing to them. In complicating oyster cultivation while upholding their ongoing gleaning practice, gleaners thereby forge an alliance with ‘wild’ oysters and also circumvent their own domestication.

Presentation short abstract:

Sicilian oliviculturalists regularly refer to “living the land” (vivere la terra) blurring the lines of separation between so-called human and wild nature. As such, Sicilian oliviculture is an example of relational world-making projects that troubles easy definitions of wild and domesticated.

Presentation long abstract:

This lightning talk, based on sensorial ethnographic fieldwork, presents the case of Sicilian oliviculture in considering more-than-human communal relations. Sicilian oliviculturalists regularly refer to “living the land” (vivere la terra) blurring the lines of separation between so-called human and wild nature. Not living on or with or by the land, ways something similar might be phrased in English, but simply living the land. This phrasing illustrates and underscores a directness or immediacy of engagement, and a daily and prolonged intimacy—participants gave examples like checking on their olive trees every day; giving them food to eat and water to drink; and monitoring their branches for blossoms, new growth, and signs of pest and disease; year in and year out.

A political ecological approach requires paying attention to the local impacts of global systems of economic and political power, and at the same time paying attention to the ecology of the living systems under study. Olive trees themselves blur the lines between wild and domesticated, since oftentimes domestic varieties of olive are grafted onto wild rootstock; or wild olives are used as hedgerows to assist domesticated varieties in successful pollination. I consider the relationships of organisms to one another and to their surroundings, following Tim Ingold (2002, 2005), in prioritizing relationality, and Anna Tsing in emphasizing world-making projects (2015). Thinking in terms of living landscapes draws on the concept of socionature—that the human and the non- and more-than human are inextricably related and bound together—wild, domesticated, or both/neither.

Presentation short abstract:

Dangerous microbes (pathogens and super bugs) signify a 'wildness' that arises out of and threatens industrial livestock farming and public health. We investigate the spatial flow of dangerous microbes in producing proteins in and outside of the farm and their affective presence in calculating risk.

Presentation long abstract:

Supplying national and international markets with animal proteins via industrial agriculture has produced unintended by-products of uncontrollable pathogens and drug-resistant microbes. Microbial agents indifferently transgress species' boundaries and, by doing so, elude the traditional domestic/wild dichotomy. While microbial populations make use of natural infrastructures (water, air) and (non-)human host bodies to pass on resistance genes, compartmentalized breeding, production and slaughter operations prevent the next generation of livestock from inheriting their own responsive defence mechanisms. Therefore, the overly crowded monospecies production of industrial animal agriculture provides a petri dish for potentially dangerous microbial life to burn through populations and potentially emerge more lethal as they spill over into adjacent ecosystems. Our ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in India and Germany analyzes the spatialization processes of such 'microbial geographies', by observing more-than-human actors in and around livestock farming that co-produce 'wild' and 'unruly' conditions of life that threaten the health of publics and the security of animal protein supply chains. We suggest that these human-animal-microbial commons are neither competitive nor collaborative and are often the result of calculated risks in the production process.