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- Convenor:
-
Timothy Stacey
(Utrecht University)
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- Chair:
-
Simone Kotva
(University of Oslo)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
After years of stasis and amid environmental backsliding, we need new ways of deconstructing problematic practices and collectively constructing alternatives. This panel explores the role of “religious repertoires” in inhibiting and enabling transformation: magic, myths, rituals, and traditions.
Long Abstract:
After years of stasis, we find ourselves witnessing environmental backsliding. The problem, this panel proposes, is twofold: First, the facts alone are not enough. We need deeper, more-than-rational means of mobilizing transformation. But second, claims to “stick to the facts” conceal hidden agendas. We need new ways of deconstructing our own and others’ agendas, and collectively constructing alternatives. Enter religious repertoires: the magic, myths, rituals, and traditions that shape the futures we yearn for, the pathways we carve, and the tools we employ.
Since Sheila Jasanoff's seminal work, words with a rich history in the study of religion such as imaginaries and worldviews have enjoyed increasing use in environmental studies. But both the depth of meaning and the appreciation of performativity have been diluted. Inspired by Bron Taylor and Mike Hulme among others, the religious repertoires approach addresses both shortcomings by 1) highlighting cosmic and ontological ideas, existential feelings, and moral ideals; 2) moving focus away from propositional beliefs and arguments and towards performances.
Emphasizing objectivity, academics and policymakers can have a hard time imagining that there are religion-like forces shaping their practice. This attitude not only forecloses reflexivity and marginalizes unorthodox ideas, but also limits the tools available for mobilizing action. Scientists and policymakers feel increasingly compelled to state their position on our socio-ecological direction. Meanwhile, climate deniers and populists are able to claim that science is nothing more than religion, while masterfully crafting religious repertoires that serve their ends.
This Combined Open Format Panel unfolds in three sessions: First, an academic paper session exploring the magic, myths, rituals, and traditions inhibiting and enabling transformations. Second, a dialogue session exploring the repertoires shaping our practices. Third, a creative session involving the co-construction of alternative repertoires. Alongside papers, we welcome creative interventions designed to deconstruct or develop repertoires for transformation.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Kevin Grecksch (University of Oxford)
Short abstract:
A historic perspective to existing discussions about climate change, places and identity can help us understand why and how these self-perceptions and collective identities have developed and how this could be a barrier or enabler of adaptation measures for climate change.
Long abstract:
Decision-making about climate change is not only shaped by rational considerations, but also influenced by how communities define themselves, by historic or fictional narratives and collective memories. We add a historical perspective to this discussion and ask how regional collective identities and knowledge shape the perception of climate change. We look at coastal communities in northern Europe, which have lived with the threat from the sea for generations. “Deus mare, Frisia litora fecit.”—God created the sea, the Frisians created the coast, a famous quote in Eastern Frisia, shows how important the landscape and the battle against the sea are for a collective identity. We argue that these perceptions can influence the adaptive capacity to climate change positively, if values and collective identities of people are taken into account, or negatively, if people see their values and collective identities not taken into consideration or even threatened.
Monica Velazquez (UAM-C (Autonomus Metropolitan University, Cuajimalpa))
Short abstract:
The resocialization of ancient religions in various circuits indicates that to articulate profound socio-ecological transformations we must reconnect; this is the role of the cosmogonic visions and religious practices of the Mayan world that, from the present, speak to us about the ancient future.
Long abstract:
The Western world seems to have pushed religious practices aside, no further than the separation of state and church and relegated to the realm of individual belief. Especially in Latin America, as a region of colonial history, the religious practices of indigenous peoples were conceived as “superstitious”. However it is urgent to recognize in a very practical way that we are part of a living, multiconnected system. The ancient religions of ancestral peoples were very clear about the role that various elements played in the cosmos. The resocialization of ancient religions indicates a need for profound socio-ecological transformations: reconnect; this is the role of the cosmogonic visions and religious practices of the Mayan world that, from the present, speak to us about the ancient future.
Unlike the sense of time of modernity, the Mayan tradition conceives a spiral temporality highly connected with biorhythms, among which, humanity is part of the system of cosmic and terrestrial life-death cycles, Humanity is neither superior nor inferior, but only part of other non-humans that cohabit the world. The Mayan calendars, the Chol Ab and the Cholq'ij, mark the terrestrial rhythms conducive to crops and the energies that will cross the days of humanity, respectively. Encouraging other visions of time and the place that humanity occupies on the planet together with the other elements ( abuelos) is part of a task to build sensitivities focused on socio-ecological transformations that have as their core values and world visions in which humans and non-humans are involved.
carien moossdorff (Utrecht University) Joost Vervoort (Utrecht University)
Short abstract:
We create patterns of behavior (institutions) in rituals, and our study shows this can be enjoyable. It also shows institutionalization can be practiced. This gives hope that building sustainable institutions can be emotionally rewarding, and learned.
Long abstract:
Much of human life is guided by institutions: routinized behavior, understandings, expectations, and rules. Understanding the generation and consolidation of institutions is therefore critical in order to establish patterns of behavior that are more sustainable.
Our ethnographic study of live action role playing (larp) in The Netherlands shows that institution-building can be an emotionally rewarding process and that this happens through ritual. The data shows how micro-sociological processes generate a moment of elated enthusiasm (effervescence), which produces feelings of group membership, a shared morality, shared symbols, and the experience of emotional energy, even when participants are fully aware they are in a fictitious world. We argue that this process is at the heart of sociological institutionalization and that it is intrinsically rewarding to people. This is a hopeful finding, because it means that: (Un)making institutions can be fun, and it can be practiced.
Lisa Sideris (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Short abstract:
My presentation explores two distinct religious repertoires, forms of meaning-making, and attendant values, of scientists engaged in genetic technologies in the conservation arena: those working to rescue coral reefs from extinction and scientists engaged in de-extinction as a conservation strategy
Long abstract:
This presentation focuses on the emotional landscapes and relational investments of scientists and others
engaged in and supportive of genetic technologies used in conservation efforts, with particular attention
to the different moral and religious imaginaries that fuel endeavors to save species threatened by
climate change and extinction. I argue that two distinct visions and competing religious repertoires
can be discerned in the secular landscape of genetic technologies deployed in coral restoration and
de-extinction, respectively. Each endeavor brings forth its own forms of magic, myth- and meaning-making. At
the heart of coral protection is the sacred symbol of the holobiont, suggestive of cooperative endeavors,
collective labor, networking, and distributed and embodied knowledge. De-extinction
imaginaries. by contrast, enshrine motifs of individual competition and machine metaphors, “selfish” genetic
components, and a spirit of entrepreneurial excitement and profiteering. The essay contrasts these two visions
as competing accounts of relationality—or the lack thereof—and asks which religious repertoires
we should embrace as we move into an era marked by intensified technological intervention
and high-risk efforts to address the effects of climate change. Which of these socio-ecological
imaginaries do we wish to inhabit, for our own sake and that of other living creatures?
I suggest that the values that drive de-extinction technologies are largely at odds with
environmental and social goals of living well together, as humans and more-than-humans,
in a present and future world transformed by climate change and species death.
Aurora Del Rio (Aalto University)
Short abstract:
This paper delves into the concept of “belief” in relation to the construction of deep repositories for the storage of radioactive waste. The artistic research presents a re-interpretation of rituals as a method to reach an “affective” understanding of radioactive contamination.
Long abstract:
This paper delves into the concept of “belief” in relation to the construction of deep repositories for the storage of radioactive waste, such as the Onkalo repository in Finland.
The paper provides historical examples of how the scientific discourse has developed entangled with religion in specific and belief in general, and how “myth” and “belief” have influenced plans for the transmission of long-term messages about the danger of encountering buried radioactive contaminants in deep repository sites.
Following Weber’s famous claim that Western modernity has been disenchanted, the paper looks at theories of re-enchantment as a way to reach an “affective” understanding of radioactive contamination.
My artistic research “Archetypes of Contamination” uses a re-interpretation of rituals to look at how myth and belief may interfere with the creation of personal and collective realities, with a focus on radioactive contamination.
It unfolds at the intersection between new materialist theories and artistic research, by producing systematic attempts at challenging what is deemed as “true” or considered “possible” through artistic practice.
The explored questions are: What role does “belief” play in shaping personal and collective realities? What possible myth or archetype can relate to the transmission of long-term messages about the radioactive danger?
Kristina Bogner (Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development)
Short abstract:
In this paper, we build on concepts from postmodernist literature, sociology of emotions, and transitions studies to engage with emotions around climate change and societal transformation. We argue that we must engage with our emotions to understand, live with and act in transformative change.
Long abstract:
In this paper, we argue that the only way of understanding and acting transformations is by acknowledging our deep entanglements with transformations, which is what Blanche Verlie (2022) calls ´living-with´. This means paying attention to the intimate ways we are enmeshed with transformations (Verlie 2022) and cultivating the emotional capacities and affordances required for ‘living-with’ transformations. Living-with involves "the cultivation of appropriate ways of relating to and engaging that world" (p. 114) - and "continuing to act for a future which is desirable despite being different, or perhaps acting for a future that is less bad than it would have been if we did not act. It is an informed practice that yearns for and creates more livable climate futures" (p. 114). Describing transformations as ‘living-with’ allows us to see and experience them as “patterns of affect; as flows of feeling; as repertoires of relating; as a sensational phenomenon; as multispecies enmeshment” (Verlie 2022, p. 6). To cultivate collective action, we need to understand how we as humans are ‘living-with’ transformations. And for this, we need to afford emotions.
That´s why we engage in a collective auto-ethnographic process (Chang et al. 2016, Davies and Gannon 2006, Lapadat 2017), using cultural probes to address:
How do we, as transition and transformation scholars, experience emotions in and navigate transformations as ‘living with’? How do these emotions move us to act more livable futures?
Jonathan Schorsch (Universität Potsdam)
Short abstract:
I propose adapting and adopting sabbath, a weekly Earth Day, as an ecological ritual practice for our era of ecological catastrophe. A weekly day of rest will help reinforce political, economic, or technological environmental solutions, unify them in a meaningful armature of culture and intention.
Long abstract:
The Green Sabbath Project that I founded in 2019 and direct seeks to adapt and adopt the ancient practice of shabbat (a weekly sabbath) as an ecological ritualized practice for our era of ecological catastrophe. Along with many others, I have come to see a weekly day of rest, a green sabbath, as an environmental remedy with unique potential. I am drawn to its imperative—counter-intuitive, provocative, never timelier yet still often suppressed even in environmental discourse—to “do nothing.” “Doing nothing” one day weekly is not meant to replace political, economic, or technological environmental solutions, but to help reinforce them, to unify them in a meaningful armature of culture and intention. We see more and more calls for “sabbaths” from our modern way of life and technologies, such as filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s Technology Shabbats, cities implementing car-free days, or The Center for Emancipatory Technology’s Freeday for the Future.
A weekly green sabbath properly practiced – as radical intervention and not mere lip-service – offers a weekly interruption of the suicidal economic fantasy of infinite growth, a weekly divestment from fossil fuels, a weekly investment in family and local community, a weekly bit of rewilding, a respite for both humans and other-than-humans, and a ritualized forum for meditating on how we want to live. Green sabbaths could provide a recurring greenhouse for incubating the required collective consciousness and willpower – the ultimate renewable energies – to make the solutions reality.