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Accepted Paper:
Radicalizing regeneration: On engaged scholarship amidst environmental justice crises
Arne Harms
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
This paper considers anthropology’s role for regenerative approaches to securing less bad futures. I argue that expanding on key notions, fostering overlaps between disparate agents and rethinking the nature of politics helps aligning engaged scholarship as a variously grounded practice.
Paper long abstract:
Practitioners, activists or scholars attempting to secure less bad futures now frequently pursue regenerative approaches. They seek ways “to work toward world making that enhances the lives of others” (Deborah Bird Rose). This paper probes the role anthropology might play within such attempts. Reflecting on my working with, and alongside, climate justice activists, I outline three partly intersecting modalities thereof. One refers to expanding on key notions informing debates on regeneration that have received sustained interest in anthropology (such as indigenous ways of knowing, mutuality, or vitality) and thus to the politics of knowledge. The second refers to fostering overlaps and interconnections between struggles, aspirations and life forms, and thus to ontological politics. The third involves joining efforts in rethinking the means and ends of activism, and the scope of politics, and thus to the practice of reflexivity. In pursuing these aims, anthropology may not only become regenerative itself, but also help redoing engaged scholarship as a variously grounded practice.