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Paper short abstract

This presentation explores alternative farming practices as forms of resistance to modernity. It focuses on interspecies negotiations at the heart of the water cycle and on ways of worlding in which non-humans are social and political partners.

Paper long abstract

Through a comparison between the Peruvian Andes and the Breton bocage, this presentation explores alternative farming practices as active forms of resistance to conventional agriculture and the processes of reification of the environment that it proposes. It focuses in particular on interspecies negotiations at the heart of the water cycle. In the Andes, access to water resources is the result of close cooperation between indigenous peasants and the mountains, whose temporary support is only gained through extensive offerings. In Brittany, the restoration of the bocage, largely destroyed under the impetus of agricultural modernisation policies, reflects farmers’ efforts to encourage both water to flow and wildlife to repopulate farms. The aim is to present ways of worlding by alternative farming communities in which non-humans are social, political, working and trading partners. The ongoing recreation of interspecies interactions is seen as a form of resistance to modernity and a response to its environmental, economic, social and political crises. Far from being closed systems, alternative farming communities are grappling with modernity, which directly affects the ways in which they relate to the world. We will therefore explore ontologies in motion.