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- Convenors:
-
Jean Chamel
(Université de Lausanne)
Sebastien Roux (CNRS)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 6 College Park (6CP), 0G/026
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How are those concerned by environmental destruction experiencing loss-related emotions? How are regimes of affectivity related to sadness and despair - but also hope - socially distributed and culturally expressed? And how, and to what extent, do these feelings fuel alternative political action?
Long Abstract:
Amid climatic and environmental changes, an increasing number of persons forecast and/or experience the deterioration of their "lifeworld" (Ingold 2000). Across a wide variety of locales and situations, there exist those who consider the world in which they are currently living as being irremediably damaged. For them, our current ecological crises are not merely theoretical: in fact, landscapes are being transformed, biodiversity is shrinking, etc. Still, these evolutions accompany a vast range of emotions, all related to the feeling of loss: sadness, melancholy, remorse, regret, anxiety and even despair. In 2005, Glenn Albrecht coined the term "solastalgia" to qualify the emotional distress caused by environmental changes.
Drawing on empirical data and ethnographic accounts, we aim to complexify our understanding of these emotional reactions, and to consider the diversity and specificity of loss-related regimes of affectivity. How are such feelings socially distributed and culturally expressed? How do those who feel concerned about environmental destruction experience, and deal with, these specific emotions? And how, and to what extent, do these feelings fuel alternative political actions and initiatives? Indeed, as Anna Tsing suggests (2015), even feelings such as loss can reveal new possibilities and opportunities, leading individuals to reconsider their lives among the "ruins of capitalism" and to modify their relations with themselves and others. Accordingly, this panel will not only consider how ecological destruction provokes new emotions and feelings; it will also interrogate that which loss may, paradoxically, produce, leading us to reconsider what it is to live in a "damaged" world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
In the paper, author wants to raise a question of how the disappearance of wetlands in eastern Poland has led to the formation of affects that have consequently enabled the inhabitants of these areas to shape new narratives and modes of engagement with more-than-human worlds.
Paper long abstract:
In the 1970s, wetlands along two rivers of eastern Poland – the Biebrza and the Narew – were consistently drained. It was a part of the modernization policy of the Polish People's Republic. As a consequence, the unique ecosystems co-shaped by the inhabitants of these places for the last few hundred years were destroyed. Intensification and mechanization of local farming, eutrophication of waters and change of biodiverse areas into monoculture ones also contributed to the devastation.
In the paper I want to raise a question of how the disappearance of wetlands in eastern Poland over the past fifty years has led to the formation of affects that have consequently enabled the inhabitants of these areas to shape new narratives and modes of engagement with more-than-human worlds. I am also interested in relations between affects and situated nooscapes in which natural science merges with common and traditional knowledge.
The first affect analyzed in this paper is "pragmatic nostalgia" for lost times. It finds its expression in the work of local guides and stories told during their travels through the spatially separated areas of national parks. The second distinctive affect is "careful love" manifested by naturalization, conservation, and research activities. The last one can be described as "everyday concern" and linked with educational and rescue activities. Ultimately, I will show that each of these affects, emerging from drying wetlands, organizes the thoughts and actions to stop environmental damage.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to identify, describe and analyze the content, meanings, and function of the visual narratives about environmental devastation, and examine the role new media technologies have in the shaping of new social movements in Serbia.
Paper long abstract:
In Serbia, in the last few years, the issue of environmental devastation has gained great importance, especially with the growing trend of privatization of natural resources, foreign investment in the new and old mining sites, and the social, cultural, and environmental catastrophe that inevitably follows. That resulted in the establishment of many novel (in)formal local environmental organizations, with a strong social media presence, dedicated to raising environmental awareness in the general public and calling for social and political change. One way of communicating their messages and informing the wider public about ecological problems and future environmental devastation is by creating visually appealing (but also disturbing) digitally manipulated images. In these digitally created and shared images catastrophic consequences of ecologically disastrous projects (such as the planned Rio Tinto mine and the construction of run-of-the-river SHPPs) are visualized. This paper aims to identify, describe and analyze the content, meanings, and function of these visual narratives about fear and hope, pessimism and activism, and to critically evaluate messages about (post)apocalyptic environmentalism.
Paper short abstract:
How does the perception of environmental harm fuel ecopolitical resistance? This paper looks at the effect of tunnelling on the loss of groundwater in the Western Alps, exploring how expert knowledge, memory, and political action are mobilised.
Paper long abstract:
The new Lyon-Turin railway line (NLTL) is a major infrastructure megaproject that includes a 57-km long tunnel beneath the Western Alps, across the border between France and Italy. For decades, campaigners on both sides of the border have mobilised to stop this project from going ahead, pointing to a range of environmental harms, as well as other social, economic and political issues. One of the major forms of environmental damage is the loss of groundwater sources, which is one of the main conditions for life at high altitudes, not only for humans but also for entire ecosystems that have adapted to mountainous environments.
The risk posed by underground tunnelling to groundwater marks a permanent threshold of liveability, an issue that is at the forefront of the minds of activists and local residents, both as something that is projected in the future, and as a well-known consequence of previous tunnelling operations. This is true on both sides of the border, where several sources have already dried up as the result of past tunnelling work. It is widely expected, however, that the consequences of NLTL on groundwater sources will be much more severe.
This paper seeks to account for how this anticipation of loss is put to work in the ecopolitical resistance against NLTL. It does so by exploring how expert knowledge, memory, and everyday perception are mobilised, enabling groundwater to emerge as a vulnerable site of permanent ecological harm that carries consequences for all forms of life in these environments.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study of preparedness and survivalism in the United States, this communication aims to question conservative reactions to the ecological crisis and the damages it causes.
Paper long abstract:
For many, a damaged world is not just a wounded, soiled or lost world. It is also a dangerous world for which one must "prepare". In the United States, preparedness - as an individual and collective strategy to prepare for and educate against disaster - is attracting a growing number of individuals who are worried about the world to come.
These groups are radically conservative, or even close to ultra-right factions, and are developing unique techniques and discourses on the world to come and its dangers.
If preppers have been anticipating for decades the possibility of a nuclear attack, an immigration "invasion", a new civil war or a pandemic, they now integrate the ecological crisis as a major factor of social and political destabilization which should be anticipated.
By focusing on the affects circulating within this universe - and in particular anger, resentment, and hatred - this presentation intends to document little-known reactions to loss, and to complexify our understanding of ecological sensitivity and of the alternative political projects that it may fuel, including reactionary ones.
Paper short abstract:
Research on climate change and youth focuses on activism. This paper investigates emotional responses to the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods in Africa using empirical data from a two-year project with eight young African researchers to produce a virtual museum of youth livelihoods.
Paper long abstract:
Research on climate change and youth is dominated by a focus on activism, mobilisation and dissent. While attention to expressions of youth agency, within and beyond traditional political processes is important, in this paper I argue that emotional responses to the impact of climate change on youth livelihoods requires closer scrutiny. Specifically, I am interested in exploring young people’s affective experiences of the changing nature of work in the context of climate change concerns. As stable waged and salaried labour is increasingly accepted as elusive in precarious environments, the collective condition of individual insecurity disproportionately distributed amongst young people navigating uncertainty has been theorised in terms of ‘the hustle’ (Thieme 2017) as a response to prolonged states of ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012). How is this experience layered with climate anxieties? How do young people in Africa navigate experiences of ‘making do’ or ‘making a living’ in contexts shaped by ecological destruction? As young people in Africa navigate precarious labour markets, experiences of uncertainty are both normalized and affirmed – how does this in turn impact on their climate emotions? This paper offers empirical data and ethnographic accounts from a two-year project with eight young African researchers on a two-year fellowship in South Africa to produce a virtual museum of youth livelihoods on the continent. The paper aims to expand both current research on youth livelihoods and affective research on climate change; and include the voices of young people to widen space for youth in climate change research, beyond activism.