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- Convenors:
-
Nikolaos Olma
(Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Rishabh Raghavan (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 23 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
The panel examines the techniques and technologies by which environmental damage and harm on the individual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, manifested and repressed, thus shedding light onto the nexus of epistemic uncertainty and environmental injustice.
Long Abstract:
Capitalist extractivism, industrialism, militarism, and ongoing forms of colonialism leave the planet damaged. Be it the loss of habitats for human communities and other forms of life or the amounts of toxic contaminants that suffuse the environment, the very reality of environmental damage is often contested as it gets tangled in processes of knowing, unknowing, denial, disavowal, and ignorance. Powerful actors—state authorities, corporations, the military—all play a central role in such politics of (un)knowing by exercising monopolies on scientific and expert knowledge, thereby prescribing what ought to be known and unknown in order to protect their political, economic, and strategic interests. Civil society organisations, activist groups, and individuals often protest such epistemic and environmental injustices, fighting for greater transparency and access to knowledge. But what counts as knowledge is frequently disputed—even when it comes in the form of hard scientific evidence—not only by the vested interests of power, but also by those who bear the burden of environmental harm. For it is not uncommon for people and groups to harness practices of (un)knowing to deal with environmental degradation in ways that might allow them to escape stigmatisation, resist or refuse empowered constraints, or simply live lives that are more meaningful.
This panel invites ethnographically-rich papers that examine the techniques and technologies by which environmental damage and harm on the individual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, manifested and repressed, thus shedding light onto the nexus of epistemic uncertainty and environmental injustice in late industrialism.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 23 July, 2024, -Yuanhui Ding (International Institute for the Study of Nomadic Civilizations)
Paper short abstract:
As environmental damages unsettle the lifeworld of local groups, emotions they might experience towards the harm could be highly fractured and clashing, involving interlacing values that disturb the (un)knowing of pain and gain of the indigenous, bringing on greater precarities and vulnerabilities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper reveals how feelings amidst ecological damages enact, disguise, and unveil each other, in conjuncture with radically changing socio-historical conditions and personal living circumstances. In my case, practices influencing the environment are evaluated fiercely contrasting throughout 30 years, thanks to altered local lifestyles and shifted environmental ideas of the state and indigenous communities. The sudden disruption has voided how the residents interpret their relationships with the environment in the past and the future, leading to tangled emotions that cause profound weight in life. My fieldwork investigated a Tibetan herding community in northwestern China whose ancestral pastureland underwent excessive state-led excavation from the socialist time, until 2016 it's taken as national conservation with the resettlement of herders. Although mining persisted since the 1950s, hurtful experiences of nomads were significantly obscured by the authority of the state, coming-along infrastructural supplies, life-threatening material scarcity, and individuals’ incapacity to learn the full picture of mass-scale mining. The not-yet-realized agony emerged during resettlement as the state legitimizes it by how destructive mining has been, which further complexes the pain with the anguish of leaving one’s habitat. However, the harm is again veiled over, even somewhat invalidated, for there’s a massive improvement in life quality after resettlement and a shared sense of responsibility to ‘protect ecology’. In the plight that harms are consoled with appreciated gains whereas gains come with distressful expenses, local dwellers are stuck in epistemic uncertainty of recognizing how to ever live justly with the environment and to maintain their lifeworld integrity.
Mally Stelmaszyk (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation is about the ways in which shamanic practice is engaged in navigating and responding to the current climatic and geopolitical crisis in Far East Siberia through proposing experimental multiversal projects.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation is about the ways in which shamanic practice is engaged in navigating and responding to the current climatic and geopolitical crisis in Far East Siberia through proposing experimental multiversal projects. It traces the manner in which a Nanai shaman brings together diverse techniques, such as shamanic dreams, storytelling, Christian prayers and game playing to materialise fragile moments of what this discussion names ontological porosity between different systems of knowing-being-doing. Focusing further on the tensions that this process implies, the presentation offers reflections on the notions of protest movements and resistance in areas of enforced silence and neglect. The insights carry implications for conceptual models addressing multiversal designs, such as political ontology, and the place of shamanic thought and practice within them.
Vladimir Gil Ramón (Catholic University (PUCP) EI - Columbia University)
Paper short abstract:
The research studies epistemic differences around a technological disaster. The results discuss lessons for environmental justice of damage compensation, and for public participation in monitoring and remediation of the socio-environmental impact of infrastructure projects.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic studies of socio-environmental risk and socio-technologies of power presented in my book Fighting for Andean Resources, the research debates epistemic differences among various groups involved in a disaster of an oil spill. The study discusses contextual lessons of techniques of biopolitical governance that do not map neatly onto livelihoods of disaster-affected communities (Barrios 2017). The analysis of damage compensation and public participation in monitoring and remediation for the socio-environmental impact of infrastructure projects reveals biopolitical strategies. Repsol's recent oil spill on the Peruvian coast is widely recognized as the largest national technological disaster. In similar disasters, multiple socio-environmental impacts were not initially acknowledged by the emergency or remediation team. It was academics who included resident views and identified cumulative impacts on populations -especially human- and various ecosystems. The research identifies central aspects to improve monitoring and compensation systems, better reflecting complexity, beyond reductionism associated with emergency management. Fishermen forced government entities to include monitoring points ignored by experts and currently claim for a fair compensation. The analysis of the local perception of the affected marine ecosystem and the environmental impacts, contrasting findings of the emergency and remediation team, will contribute to a better understanding of the local response to the degradation of the ecosystem and the discussion of valuation for compensation. The discussion of forms of knowledge focused on fishermen's demands, highlighting affectations to their livelihood, all articulates an empirical and theoretical contribution for environmental justice studies.
Laura Goyhenex (University of Aberdeen) Tatiana Argounova-Low (University of Aberdeen) David Anderson (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper looks at a nuclear remediation project on a First Nation’s territory, and the related exploitation and contamination of indigenous bodies and lands. It discusses challenged meanings of harm and how knowledge about radioactive materials is constructed and/or obliterated in the region.
Paper long abstract:
The Northern Transportation Route is an ongoing project that aims to clean up contaminations related to the transportation of pitchblende (a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral) on water and land trails between the 1930s and 1960s in the Northwest Territories and Alberta, Canada. Part of the refined pitchblende was transported to the United-States and used in the Manhattan project. For part of the route, A Dene First Nation (Alberta, Canada) is leading its own community-based environmental monitoring to verify and assess past reports on contamination on its reserve produced by consultancy companies and governments. In contrast to those studies, this project seeks to amplify residents’ voices and knowledge of contaminations (encompassing stories, dreams, prophecies) and define its own standards of radiations’ harmfulness.
It is this tension between Dene voices and settler institutions that will be discussed in this paper, as part of ongoing research on settler colonial infrastructures and their impacts on indigenous livelihood. It investigates how knowledge of radiations from spilled ore is standardized, disseminated, and challenged. In the larger context of resource extraction history of Canada, this paper will discuss the exploitation and contamination of indigenous bodies and lands, the (challenged) meanings of harm, especially by Indigenous communities, and how knowledge about radioactive materials is constructed and/or obliterated in the regions.
Emily Ragus (University of Amsterdam) Linda Musariri (University of Witwatersrand)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the interconnection between Black men from informal settlements and environmental disasters, focusing on the 2022 South African floods. This examination considers both bodies, the physical and the environmental body, as matter out of place entities and subjected to ruin.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the destructive interconnection between Black men and environmental disasters within South Africa's informal settlements. Drawing on the concept of ruination of the body we present the case study of a key informant Peace, a black South African man who was murdered in Durban, South Africa in December 2023. We draw parallels between the Black male body and the urban landscape of an informal settlement, as misplaced entities. This perspective sheds light on the transformation of environmental violence, exemplified by the 2022 KwaZulu Natal floods, into interpersonal aggression, culminating in the simultaneous ruination of human and urban bodies. The paper critically examines the prevailing narrative that labels Black men as inherently violent, arguing that this view overlooks the crucial interactions between environmental violence and the subsequent emergence of interpersonal violence as a survival strategy.
Norbert Pötzsch (Georg-August-University Göttingen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper illuminates the agency of various individuals, and government ministries on voicing or silencing information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change in the Kingdom of Tonga. Accordingly, responses to these environmental degradations differ significantly.
Paper long abstract:
The Kingdom of Tonga has recently witnessed an explosion in traffic on its roads, the result of a staggering 42000 motor vehicles being newly registered within the last 15 years. At the same time, the country is fighting the results of climate change, and hereby tries to reduce its own carbon emissions to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution. To understand how these two seemingly contradictory environmentally harmful dynamics work side by side, my paper will ask the question: What agency is expressed by various individuals and government ministries to voice or silence information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change in Tonga? In my research, it became evident that the agency of the relevant entities transcends a mixture of their properties and capabilities. Rather, their agency is an emergent result of complex, interdependent assemblages. Central to these developments are different individuals, and government ministries, among whom varying intersecting political, economic, environmental, and personal interests as well as different approaches to the ongoing democratization exist. Depending on their different interests and approaches, providing information on the impacts of the growth of motor vehicles and climate change is rarely common between government ministries and the public. The public itself relies mostly on an own set of techniques to gather information about what is going on around them. So, the agency of voicing or silencing information becomes a powerful tool in everyday life in the Kingdom of Tonga and dictates responses to environmental degradation.
Roos Metselaar (University of Amsterdam) René Nissen (University of Amsterdam) Sam van der Lugt (University of Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
People living close to a fluorochemical plant in The Netherlands do not just have to grapple with PFAS pollution, but also with official knowledge and advice about PFAS exposure. Building on our ethnographic research and auto-ethnographic experiment, we explore how public information about toxic che
Paper long abstract:
Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) – toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulating pollutants – are now said to be ‘everywhere’ in the environment. This causes troubles, especially for communities in particularly polluted areas, such as the swimmers, eaters, gardeners, and fishers living near a fluorochemical plant in The Netherlands, where we did ethnographic research.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) now advises a maximum intake of PFAS of 4.4 nanograms per kg of body weight per week. National health authorities translate this value into information that supposedly enables citizens to make ‘responsible choices’ to limit exposure. Distributing information thus aims to care for the health of citizens without compromising their freedom. This approach follows a linear model of decision-action: (1) value-neutral knowledge about pollution is collected, (2) relevant values are weighed, and (3) subsequent action is taken.
Our ethnographic research shows, however, that more scientific knowledge about PFAS does not help make better decisions but creates new troubles to grapple with. To understand what is going wrong as official information meets practical concerns, we embarked on the auto-ethnographic experiment of trying to follow public guidance on PFAS exposure for one week. Our experiences while aiming to follow the guidelines illustrate troubles with modeling a population as rational decision-makers and raise questions about efforts to care for the affected communities trying to grapple with official information and scientific knowledge in their everyday practices. We argue that it is important to think beyond the ‘decision-making citizen’ as the figure to care for.
Miloš Đurović (University of Regensburg)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the rejection of the notion of air pollution among some residents of what is often reported as “the most polluted town in Montenegro”, not merely as a disposition of “unknowing” or “toxic confusion" but an expression of agency within the “slow techno-ecological disaster”.
Paper long abstract:
In contrast to public resistance of local communities to pollution, those who are rejecting the notion of being the “suffering subjects”, ignoring the environmental harm or devaluing it, have not been explored so much within ethnographies of environmental injustice. While most of my interlocutors in the town of northern Montenegro expressed long-standing environmental suffering created primarily by the industrial and non-industrial coal combustion, some residents rejected the idea of their coal-mining town – which also hosts the coal-fired power station – being “particularly polluted”.
Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this paper seeks to explore the agency of those questioning and rejecting the image of “the most polluted town in the country” and its toxicity. I will explore how the agency of the “polluted subjects at the periphery” is not only expressed through social mobilisation or more intimate forms of resistance but it can be articulated through the rejection of pollution of the built environment itself. I will show that the subjectivities of those who reject the notion of “being polluted” indeed may consist of, but also be constituted beyond the disposition of “unknowing” and “toxic confusion” (Auyero & Swistun 2009). The paper demonstrates that this position serves as a coping mechanism in the “slow techno-ecological disaster” setting and as a particular performative strategy built upon the experiences, values and affects within the peripheralised community.
Daniel Trlifaj (Charles University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on deadly air pollution in Sarajevo and practices through which this fluid phenomenon comes to be (un)known. Striving to know air pollution can simultaneously enable the struggle for environmental justice and perpetuate neo-imperial power structures and naturalize air pollution.
Paper long abstract:
Sarajevo Valley, home of the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, struggles with deadly air pollution. Winterly inversion blocks airflow through the valley and traps toxic pollutants from several decentralized sources, suffocating inhabitants and causing every fifth premature death in the region. Despite systematic efforts of civil society to tackle air pollution over the past two decades, the situation is worsening. Based on four-months of ethnographic research in Sarajevo and conceptually building on Shapiro’s (2015) ‘atmospheric attunement’, this paper explores what kind of air pollution is made (in)visible through techniques and technologies of knowledge-making in the context of post-Dayton Bosnia and their socio-political ramifications.
I identify two main sets of practices of knowing that stabilize otherwise fluid and slippery air pollution and render it discursively visible - 1. everyday bodily encounters in the moments of differentiation, changes of perception of air characteristics, embedded in personal bodily memories and seasonality of pollution and 2. techno-scientific measurements that grasp air pollution as a thresholded air particle concentration. I follow how people reconcile these practices and through them (un)naturalize air pollution and (un)make it a burning political topic. Simultaneously, I trace how international organizations harness some of those knowledge practices to perpetuate their epistemic and moral high-ground in relation to the inhabitants of Sarajevo.
Thus, inspired by Murphy (2008) and Davies (2022), I demonstrate how knowledge practices not only enable political struggle for environmental justice, but also help to perpetuate neo-imperial power structures, and reinforce the feeling of disempowerment among affected communities.
Magdalena Craciun (University of Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
Based on research on mundane engagements with plastics in Romania, I focus on how and by whom knowledge about microplastics is publicly disseminated; and what the implications of introducing microplastics as presence, out there, everywhere, might be on the understanding of plastics pollution.
Paper long abstract:
In November 2022, an NGO organised in Bucharest the premiere of the film ‘Swim to the sea’. This documents a peculiar project: that spring a German professor of chemistry swam the entire Danube River to raise awareness of plastic pollution among riverine communities. While leaving the auditorium, I overheard a conversation between the NGO representative and an acquaintance, who wondered why plastic waste was not shown in the film. She explained that ‘in Germany, they are a bit ahead of us. We organise clean-ups, they already talk about microplastics.’ This NGO has since collaborated with state authorities and universities and released on its website the results of a study on the quantity of microplastics in the Romanian section of the Danube River. This is not the only organisation that aims to educate the public about microplastics. I single it out because it claims to be the first to raise awareness about plastic pollution in Romania and is representative of a context wherein mainly civil society organisations offer environmental education, predominantly with corporate funding, plastic pollution is framed as waste management problem, and consumers are considered responsible for plastic waste. Based on research on mundane engagements with plastics, I focus on how and by whom knowledge about microplastics is publicly disseminated. I also (half)speculate on what the implications of introducing microplastics as a presence—out there, everywhere, without relating it to everyday life, without discussing persistence, potentials, harms, as currently done—might be on the understanding of and acting on plastics pollution.