Paper short abstract:

To counter imaginaries of techno-dystopian/solutionist futures, this contribution brings ethnography of a lab, and in particular audiovisual methods to the understanding of image recognition algorithms and by doing so it argues for alternative, speculative, slow AI futures.

Paper long abstract:

Automation and efficiency are at the core of the uses of AI and the imaginations of their futures. In this contribution I build on empirical material that comes from a computer science lab in Romania where a group of computer scientists develop image recognition models. In this lab we learn that for an algorithm to work “properly”, to produce this imagined speed, their scientists must slow down. Teaching an algorithm to see is a tedious process contingent on, among others, the availability of training data. In addition, speeding is not always desirable. If an algorithm learns too fast, it can easily “overlearn”, leading to blind spots. For instance, when the training dataset is not diverse enough, the algorithm might perform extremely well in the lab setting, but utterly fail when used on data from the “wild”. Speed here is not desirable. It is even risky, and computer scientists try to intervene in this velocity by diversifying their data by distorting the training images or introducing “noise” into the dataset. This is a cautionary tale for anthropologists as well, as they try to keep pace with developments in AI in a timely manner. In this paper I propose to counter the fast AI future with audiovisual methods, in particular observational filmmaking. Observing with a film camera and editing a film is a similarly tedious process, that can allow us to pause with the different temporalities and velocities algorithmic systems entail and by doing so to ponder about alternative AI futures.

Paper short abstract:

Since devolution, future-making has never been so much in the hands of Nunavut residents. I examine the role of infrastructure, especially transportation, in community members' desires on the path to territorial food sovereignty and ask how development can better align with Inuit needs.

Paper long abstract:

The beginning of a new future was made official on January 18th, 2024 in the capital of Canada’s youngest Arctic territory. In an agreement between the federal government and the Government of Nunavut, control over Nunavut’s lands and waters was handed over to the territorial administration, a final step in a long process of devolution. While this decision is monumental, it was greeted by some and begrudged by others. Although Nunavut may be considered a geographic periphery, it is of central importance for the majority Inuit population and other long-term residents, as well as for resource extraction companies and the military. Naturally, the futures these groups imagine for the territory do not all align. The Nunavut land claims agreement and devolution process are an example of successful counter imaginaries that have been socially and politically mobilized to create a process for Inuit to take decision-making back into their own hands. Based on data collected through ethnographic engagement since May 2022, this research looks into future-making from the perspective of some of Canada’s most “remote” residents. In a series of workshops and interviews, I asked community members what their ideas and desires for the future of their settlement and territory are. With the help of video material, photographs and audio recordings, I examine residents’ demands in relation to infrastructure development, especially pertaining to transportation and food sovereignty. I apply the qaggiq model (McGrath 2018) to explore how an Inuit-centered infrastructure development approach can better fill the needs of Nunavummiut.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how individuals in the British organic subculture produce understandings of value in the horticultural supply chain, radically differ from dominant capitalist systems. Based on 1 year of fieldwork, it analyses practices which locate value in community, sociality, and environment.

Paper long abstract:

Since the advent of Brexit there has been elevated scrutiny on the ability of supranational supply chains to deliver horticultural produce to British shops. Added to this are widespread concerns that such hypercapitalised food production is one of the primary drivers of anthropogenic climate change and human ill health. In this milieu, there are increasing numbers of grassroots community organisations, charities, and cooperatives manifesting what they believe should be the future of food production, by “growing what they can, where they can” in market gardens and other small scale, localised growing projects.

Based on 12 months fieldwork in England with organic market gardeners and organic wholesaler labourers, this paper explores the assemblage of sociality and action through which a loose community of people experiment with new (and old) modes of horticultural production. It demonstrates how these people are engaged in reimagining what the future of food production may look like beyond capital imperatives and alienated horticultural produce. To do so, it analyses the market garden practices of land restoration, nutrient retention, and the conceptions of the labour of humans and nonhumans alike.

In this rubric, producing organic food which can be accessed by all, is seen as something that may never be profitable, nor perhaps, should it be. Instead, growers contend that the future of horticulture can only emerge from localised, small scale community efforts which care little for profitability. As anything less – the profit-maximising status quo – will necessarily undo itself by rendering horticulture untenable through ecocide.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on Benjamin, I propose the concept of postfiguration to name the project of bringing the past into a present or desirable future, while exploring traditional popular culture as containing living elements that inspire alternatives to a capitalist-growth-driven future.

Paper long abstract:

Within the productivist leftism discourse, entrenched in a linear and evolutionary temporal framework, traditional popular culture typical of rural areas is often associated with the past. This past, in turn, is loaded with associations of nostalgia, conservatism and even reactionism. In contrast, the non-productivist left with its critique of the idea of progress, where degrowth finds its ideological footing, opens up the opportunity to develop a different perspective of the past and tradition. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's dialectical vision between the past and the future, I propose the concept of "post-figuration" to refer to the project of dialogue with the past and tradition that can give rise to ignite today, in Benjaminian terms, "revolutionary sparks". If prefiguration consists in bringing elements of the desirable future into the present, post-figuration would consist in bringing inspiring elements of the past into the present or the desirable future. As a way of nurturing this project, my research explores living elements of rural Iberian popular culture, usually disdained, that challenge dominant conceptions of governance, work and leisure: “concejos abiertos”, or bodies of direct democracy that have existed for centuries; “hacenderas”, or traditional forms of work sharing; and rural carnivals as rituals of subversion that have existed since time immemorial. These traditional legacies contain living elements that inspire alternative ways of life rather than a unilateral future of capitalist growth. I rethink the relationship between tradition and degrowth using these examples and showing how a future-oriented socio-ecological transition can be reconfigured as a "returning forward".

Paper short abstract:

The allure of projects is a future made somehow different. This paper, however, provincializes the project form, and its formatting of futurity, through a genealogy of project making and by exploring anti-projects, which refuse projects’ heroic agency and future orientation.

Paper long abstract:

The promise and allure of projects is a future made somehow different. Projects are premised on bring forth something new; they are premised on creation, invention, and improvement. Not surprisingly, then, the project form, with its combination of promissory vision and methodical planning, provides an especially evocative and pervasive way in which social actors imagine and make claims on the future. So ubiquitous are projects that the project form—that recognizable genre of purposive, managed action—often appears as a natural and universal mode of acting in the world.

This paper, however, works to historicize and provincialize the project form and its concomitant formatting of futurity. It first offers a genealogy of project making, showing how the modern conception of the project emerged within a world defined by European colonialism and nascent capitalism. In doing so, I seek to denaturalize the project form and the particular ways in which it formats future thinking. The paper then goes on to explore examples of anti-projects, or modes of action that refuse the heroic, anthropocentric agency and future orientation of projects. Anti-projects “stay with trouble” (Haraway 2016) and flourish at the fringes of dominant social formations. They turn away from the seductions of technofuturism, with its limitless queue of projects, and instead invoke solidarities and mutualities in the here and now. The paper asks: what theories of the future do anti-projects produce? And what kind of ethics and politics might they afford?

Paper short abstract:

This article explores how cattle farming practices are rethought in light of ecological concerns. Based on ethnographic research with agroecological farmers and researchers in the field of cattle genetics and breeding, it analyzes practices following aspirations for new metabolic relations.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last few years, there has been a large debate in the Netherlands regarding the concerns about the state of the ecology and biodiversity on how to reduce emissions, especially nitrogen, from agricultural land. While most farmers want to continue their intensive farming practices, some farmers are, on the fringes of the agricultural industry, attempting to shift to a more sustainable, circular, and ecological way of farming. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands with agroecological cattle farmers and with researchers in the field of genetics and breeding, this paper investigates the actors’ attempts to rethink the food system of the future. It explores the way these alternative ways of farming strive for other infrastructures and metabolic relations between the land and the animals (eg. getting rid of pesticides, fertilizers, concentrated feed, and antibiotics) and the search for animals that are attuned to these farming practices, especially though choosing ‘double purpose’ breeds. Knowledge about the environmental effects still is lacking though, and thus farmers and researchers are experimenting with how to take care of the land and the animals. Furthermore, they are experimenting with novel economic models for farming. Next to exploring these experimental practices, this paper also analyzes varying ways in which these actors aim to include ‘nature’ or ‘biodiversity’ in farming practices and how they see the future of cows within these systems, while still operating within the dominant infrastructure of intensive livestock farming.

Paper short abstract:

Examining human-maize narratives, this paper advocates for resistance through new stories, linguistic nuances, and multispecies solidarity in the face of neoliberal threats to Mexican corn biodiversity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the profound connection between narratives, multispecies solidarity, and resistance amid the loss of Mexican corn biodiversity. Recognizing humans as symbol-driven beings, it posits that specific narratives shape our comprehension of the human-maize relationship. The essay examines the role of environmental humanities in addressing the challenges posed by neoliberal policies and monoculture expansion, contextualizing the loss within the US-Mexico economic treaty.

Analyzing the historical trajectory of corn cultivation through texts by Deborah Bird Rose, Sophie Chao, and Anja Byg, the paper scrutinizes the impact of colonization, the Green Revolution, and NAFTA. It underscores the socio-economic dynamics that displaced and dismissed the cultural significance of diverse corn varieties.

The essay proposes that new narratives, derived from the stories and metaphors of farmers and indigenous communities, can resist homogenization imposed by neoliberal capitalism. It highlights indigenous linguistic nuances related to corn, emphasizing the direct link between cultural and corn diversity. Multispecies solidarity emerges as a form of resistance in the narratives of indigenous communities preserving diverse maize varieties.

The paper concludes by underscoring the importance of resistance, advocating for policy changes, acknowledgment of indigenous knowledge, and the promotion of ethical agricultural practices. Through narratives and multispecies solidarity, environmental humanities offer a pathway to sustainability and cultural preservation amidst systemic challenges.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is about wildlife study and management as a form of interaction with the future. Based on ethnographic research at the “Tortoise Reproduction Center” (Albera Massif), the paper aims to explore how herpetologists experience solastalgia, according to the formulation of Glenn Albrecht.

Paper long abstract:

The Albera Massif is located on the Franco-Spanish border that divides Catalonia, where the Pyrenees descend towards the Mediterranean Sea. This mountainous area, until recently covered in vineyards and olive groves, is home to the last population of the Hermann's tortoise (Testudo hermanni), which lived on the Iberian Peninsula for almost a million years. The expansion project of an Army training camp in this area and, subsequently, a large forest fire in the mid-1980s that consumed 30,000 hectares and ended with more than a third of the Hermann's tortoise population in Albera, led to the creation of an animal sanctuary with the aim of promoting the reproduction of the tortoises and repopulating the massif. This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Albera Massif, following herpetologists in their daily activities, and observing human-turtle interactions. It also happens that the wildlife sanctuary is located on the site of an old religious sanctuary, originally dating from the 12th century, where the local people still go there to pray to the Virgin Mary, showing the link between the wild and the sacred, as William Cronon noted. By observing the relationship between people and tortoises, I will analyse how herpetologists experience solastalgia, as formulated by Glenn Albrecht. The care of Hermann's tortoise, in a both faunal and religious sanctuary, surrounded by vineyards, allows us to explore new forms of contemporary temporalities, marked by a context of climate emergency and wildlife extinction.