Short Abstract

This panel explores methodological and epistemological challenges in human-environment research within the fractured disciplinary fields and political polarisation. We welcome discussions of multi- or interdisciplinary, activist and co-creative approaches to research in contested study contexts.

Long Abstract

In a world of what has been termed a “permacrisis” or “polycrisis”, anthropologists studying human-environment relations are confronted not only with political polarisation, increasing global inequalities, and climate denialism, but also with increasingly fractured fields of study and methodological and ethical tensions. The “field” is marked by contested knowledges and conflicting values; the narratives of “hard” and “soft” sciences remain ontologically, epistemologically, and methodologically divided. This panel invites critical reflection on how anthropologists (and researchers from related fields) navigate these increasingly fragmented terrains. We ask: what kinds of anthropologies become possible when we take seriously the entangled realities of human and more-than-human worlds in the context of the polarising logics that threaten them? What forms of fieldwork and knowledge (co)creation practices emerge when researchers are situated between different discourses (academic, scientific, bureaucratic, activist, etc.) that sometimes are in tension? What new tools and forms of mediation, translation, and co-production of knowledge become possible in these interstitial spaces of human-environment research? We welcome papers that explicitly address the methodological challenges of studying human-environment relations in polarised and (politically) charged contexts. We are particularly interested in ethnographic work that engages in multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary collaborations, activist scholarship or creative data co-creation methods to tackle the pressing issues, including but not limited to climate crisis, resource conflicts, and environmental justice.

This Panel has 3 pending paper proposals.
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