Paper Short Abstract:

My contribution focuses on a methodological reflection to discuss the potentials and challenges of interweaving anthropology and interventions. Local negotiations about forest futures in two case studies in Germany constitute the ethnographic background.

Paper Abstract:

Forests are currently undergoing unprecedented change. Against the backdrop of climate change and its manifold negative impacts on forests, conflicts on how to manage and conserve these ecologically, economically, socially and culturally significant landscapes in the future are intensifying. A deeper understanding of how different actors envision the future of forests could contribute to addressing this issue.

In my contribution I show ethnographic insights from an inter- and transdisciplinary project on cooperative processing of forest-related negotiation processes in the context of climate change in Germany. In particular, I investigate the relation between future imaginaries and (un)certainties in negotiation processes about forest futures. By means of ethnographic fieldwork in two local case studies in Germany, I elaborate on how different actors imagine forest futures, which forest-related (un)certainties they perceive, which practices they use to counter them and to what extent these aspects have an impact on the negotiation processes.

In order to explore these questions, I examine the application of roundtables and conflict mediation in our project from an anthropological perspective. I complement these intervention methods with participant observation and go-alongs.

My contribution will focus on a methodological reflection to discuss the potentials and challenges of interweaving anthropology and intervention methods in the context of conflicts. This reflection is important in order to show to what extent interventional anthropological approaches can be fruitful in the context of negotiations over futures and to provide inspiration for upcoming research projects that address contested futures and at the same time claim to shape these.