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Paper short abstract

The work shows human and non-human intertwining of life in Białowieża Forest after the conflict over the logging escalation. It follows post-socialist strategies for socio-ecological reproduction and multispecies alliances as a response for disruption and change in the times of multi-crises.

Paper long abstract

I propose a presentation on bottom-up strategies for human and nonhuman survival in the Białowieża Forest on the Polish-Belarusian border, in the context of meta-crisis. The paper draws on years (2017-2023) of ethnographic research conducted after the escalation of the conflict over the expansion of Białowieża National Park and severe logging in 2017, and subsequently during the emergence of a new migration route in the area. Using embodied methodologies, feminist and posthumanist theories, I follow multispecies assemblages that enable alliances for eco-social regeneration.

My work explores entanglements of life in the Forest, focusing on anti-capitalist strategies of practising common life, everyday resistance and socio-ecological reproduction in times of multiple crises. I examine how discourses and practices of different ‘ecologies’ materialise in the forest: the local ‘peasant’ ecology of people living in the forest, forestry ecology, and the ecology of biologists and activists and show how ideologies of nature and care might operate as colonial practices or extend post-transformation state strategies that undermine reproduction.

One of the key points becomes collective mourning as a situated strategy for living through social change and ecological transformation. I suggest practices of grief not only as responses to loss, but as ways of making sense of ruptures and projecting futures, carrying a potential for building alliances across polarized communities and species. I also propose the figure of wykrot (uprooted tree) as crucial for understanding multilayered identities and fears of uprooting: both the material, ecological dynamics of disturbance and regeneration, and the social memory of displacement.