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Short abstract:

This proposal challenges Western dualities of Nature and Culture by focusing on the understanding and practice of dreaming in an indigenous family at Lake Icalma in southern Chile. It reveals how dreams are part of a system of communication between humans and other-than-humans.

Long abstract:

The research takes the form of a film, in between ethnographic research and experimental multimodal practice, bringing together content and form. The research inhabits the agential continuities and communication between beings in the territory: through specific knowledge of dreams interpretation, Belisario, the protagonist, accesses a system of communication between his spirit and the spirits that co-inhabit the territory: the spirit of the lake, of the deceased, the spirit of the sacred tree 'Pehuen' among others. While sleeping, his spirit can travel around meeting the other spirits, whilst his body stays in bed. In a world where every material entity has a spiritual 'double', dreaming serves as a technology of communication and relation, of reciprocity and cohabitation, that challenges the anthropocentric Western way of being in the world and the prevalent nature/culture divides.

https://vimeo.com/705107766?share=copy

password: icalma2

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Short abstract:

This paper employed ethnographic techniques' to explore how fishers’ Local Knowledge Systems of weather forecasting empower decision- making in the diverse and complex fishing livelihoods of Mafia Island amidst dwindling uptake and reliability of conventional state provided weather forecasts

Long abstract:

Weather and climate forecasting is an essential feature of our quest to become a resilient society against extreme weather events that threaten the lives and livelihoods of marginalized peoples. Despite advances in weather forecasting technology, the uptake and reliability of weather forecasts is still low in Tanzania. However, there is a growing recognition of the role of local knowledge systems (LKS) of weather forecasting in managing weather and climate-related risks and in strengthening rural livelihoods in developing countries. This paper employed ethnography as a methodological and theoretical framework to explore how fishers’ LKS of weather forecasting empower decision- making in the diverse and complex fishing livelihoods of Mafia Island Tanzania.

Knowledge of weather prediction appeared to exist in a hierarchy among fishers and is intertwined with the

Islamic lunar calendar, Indian ocean monsoon seasonality, and the social-cultural and geographical contexts of the island. Recently, climate change has made weather more unpredictable for fishers, creating a greater need for reliable weather information, but the state provided forecast does not meet this need.

The paper address some theoretical issues in the anthropology of weather and LKS and the tensions between traditional and conventional weather forecasting, and its implication on fishing livelihoods. Whilst the mismatch between LKS and conventional systems suggests that they should coexist complementarily, the increasing dominance of state of sponsored conventional weather forecasts is devaluing LKS and threatening its inter-generational transmission as well as its incorporation into the value chain of weather and climate services in Tanzania.

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Short abstract:

Drawing from neo-animistic and perspectivist approaches in anthropology and STS, we explore the potential of new ecologies of knowledge based on rhizomatic entanglements between humans and a world transcending the boundaries between species and material spheres.

Long abstract:

Machines equipped with artificial intelligence pose a huge challenge to traditional ontological differentiations between the spheres of the human and the non-human. Drawing mainly from neo-animistic and perspectivist approaches in anthropology and STS, we explore the potential of new ecologies of knowledge based on rhizomatic entanglements between humans and a world transcending the boundaries between species and material spheres.

We argue that intelligent robots meet virtually all criteria Western biology came up with to define ‘life’ and that it ultimately makes sense to recognize them as a new species that forms part of our social "Umwelt" (Uexküll) and with which meaningful relations and co-evolutionary developments are possible. Contrasting dualistic concepts of man and nature with a co-evolutionary, monistic approach that privileges assemblage over essence and ecology over taxonomy, we show that the seemingly strict boundaries between species and material spheres can no longer be sustained. Instead, we propose to include ‘matter’ and ideas into the sphere of the social as agents in their own right to form a relational ontology of multi-species assemblages (ROMA).

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Short abstract:

Anthropogenic effects impact both humans and African great apes that share territories. Paper focuses on anthropological and primatological narratives and potential combination of local and scientific knowledges in gorilla conservation considering their distinct epistemologies and ontologies.

Long abstract:

A deep history links human peoples and African great apes which includes modern colonialism and its ecosocial consequences. Anthropogenic effects impact territories they share. In the 19th century, Western first contacts with gorillas only occurred with the help of African people.

Paper focuses on anthropological and primatological narratives and the potential combination of these knowledges in gorilla conservation considering their distinct epistemologies and ontologies.

African great apes are among threatened species and a portion of them live in sanctuaries that are often guided only by primatological knowledge. Thus, frequently local and traditional knowledge and also medical and hunting techniques, taboos about eating gorilla meat, beliefs about human soul transition to gorilla’s body and myths related to kinship between humans and other primates are ignored in conservation. The consequence is that local communities do not trust these actions because they perceive that protecting gorillas is subject to an international agenda that denotes epistemological injustice. However, there are exceptions, for example Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary in Cameroon.

Still, global primatological research indicates that endangered primates are best protected in areas where knowledge systems and indigenous peoples' rights over lands and resources are secure. This indicates the effectiveness of community participation in conservation.

However, this participation also includes the recognition of the value of epistemologies and ontologies that consider, for example, the legitimacy of the transition of souls and kinship between humans and gorillas. The challenge here is to combine ways of thinking and living radically distinct from western rationalism with primatological scientific thought.

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Short abstract:

There is a need to explore how relational thinking and being can inform and support deliberate transformations toward sustainability. Based on learning experiences across geographies, we advance a handful of qualities that can act as central pillars for nurturing liveable relationalities.

Long abstract:

Relations and relationalities have become central theoretical framings for much transformations research due to their ability to inquire into non-deterministic and non-linear change processes and to open up hegemonic accounts of transformation. Much of this work draws on systems thinking, feminist theory and indigenous onto-epistemologies. While most research is focusing on understanding and characterizing transformations relationally, there is a need to explore how relational thinking and being can inform and support deliberate transformations toward sustainability. In this article, we define deliberate transformations toward sustainability as radical changes in societal structures, relations and logics that uproot exploitative and discriminatory modes of world-making and replace them with liveable and regenerative worlds grounded in equity, dignity and compassion. When perceived of as merely a mechanism of being in relation, relationality says little about the outcomes for sustainability. Only when we ground relationality in an ethos of care can we use relationality as a lens and compass for supporting transformative change. We intertwine our reflections with experiences from collaborations in Mexico, Alaska and Ghana, drawing on insights from feminist and Indigenous thinking and being. Learning from these collaborations, we advance a handful of qualities that can act as central pillars for qualifying liveable relationalities.

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Short abstract:

The paper suggests revisiting the notion of knowledge of ecologies and natural logics from a temporal perspective: the very choice of a physical space to build a base/hut lays the foundation for the gradual loss of actual knowledge and can make the fisherman or hunter appear ignorant over time.

Long abstract:

When a fisherman or hunter decides to build a 'zaimka' (wooden hut), he chooses the best place rich in fish and animal migration routes, i.e. he relies on the knowledge of interrelationships in the ecosystem that surrounds him. However, after a while, the river bed changes, a hurricane wipes out the routes where deer or elk migrated in a certain season, and the season itself shifts and autumn comes later than usual. Thus, having chosen a point in "space", man turns out to be an "ignoramus" thanks to the action of time and ecological logics that turn his experience and knowledge into ignorance. Based on ethnographic material collected over 7 years in the middle reaches of the Ob River, I propose to reflect together on what practices of contemporary fishermen and hunters might be a "response" to the challenge of ecological shifts and transformations in a complex temporal logic. Is it possible to build a hut in advance on the place where there will be a " fishing spot" someday? Do rapid ecosystem changes imply the "nomadism" of modern villagers, when one carries the hut with him every time, or does this situation force the creation of a wide network of huts, at least one of which will be a successful outpost at a certain moment and embody the "proper" knowledge of ecological logics? The presentation will set ethnographic context after which I suggest discussing cases and possible scenarios and answer to the challenge of temporal ecological shifts and 'traps'.

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Short abstract:

Permafrost thaw, in the context of decades of Indigenous activism, causes tremors in geoscience. Rather than an arbiter of knowledge about the nature of 'Earth', geoscience is becoming a resource for local knowledge holders, transforming conceptions of the 'Earth' in all directions.

Long abstract:

Throughout the Arctic, permafrost is thawing faster than ever, highlighting fissures in the hegemony geoscience. Geologists define permafrost as ground that has remained below freezing for at least two consecutive years, projecting assumptions about its permanence and frozenness even as it thaws at unprecedented rates. Focusing on the Canadian Arctic, a stable conception of permafrost justified infrastructure development and concomitant colonisation across the region, demonstrating geoscience and colonialism’s entwined relationship. Today, those who live in the Canadian Arctic, three-quarters of whom are Indigenous, face adaptation challenges as the permafrost underlying their communities thaws. Following decades of Indigenous activism, adaptation efforts in Indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic are often community-driven. Therefore, rather than an unquestionable authority governing climate monitoring and adaptation, geoscience is increasingly a resource Indigenous communities draw on, complementing local knowledge. Meanwhile, throughout the Arctic, geologists prospect for mineral resources that permafrost thaw renders more accessible, threatening socially vital ecosystems. Considering the different ecologies created depending on the positionality of geoscience, How are permafrost thaw dynamics and geoscience’s positionality related, and how does one affect the other? In collaboration with the Vuntut Gwich’in First Nation, I look into how anthropogenic climate change and geoscience appear from the perspective of local knowledge holders in Old Crow, Yukon, calling attention to the possibility and impossibility of onto-epistemological with non-local-geologists. Permafrost thaw challenges geoscience’s assumptions of inertia but opens new frontiers of colonial extraction, requiring ethnographic attention aligned with calls from Indigenous activists to contribute to repositioning geoscience towards ecological justice.

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Short abstract:

Within the intertwined projects of preservation and accumulation which (re)produce the natural history museum’s collection, an ecology emerges. This paper proposes thinking with multiple forms of decay as actors that challenge normative ideas of ecology and knowledge within the collections.

Long abstract:

Within the natural history museum, specimen collections are imagined to embody an economic asset, an ontological representation, and a future knowledge potential. These meanings and materials must be continually re-produced through preservation efforts, or else succumb to decay. Thus, institutional actors’ and infrastructural responses to rot are revealing, not just in ascertaining the stakes of institutional preservation, but in laying bare specimens’ ongoing ontological and relational situatedness. This paper seeks to integrate experience from material care of collections and the poetics of relation-building with dead nonhuman beings, in order to push the bounds of questions asked of “specimens” and those who work with them. By refusing to situate myself within only one way of knowing and relating to specimens, I draw on anti-colonial, feminist STS and queer theory in conjunction with direct experience at the Smithsonian Herbarium, Museum für Naturkunde, and Yale Peabody Museum in order to express felt ecologies of being-with collections that are in uneasy relation to "scientific" knowledge.

This paper considers how preservation research and maintenance projects undergird institutionally situated relationships with nonhuman specimens, while suggesting that their political dimensions might reveal rot as a “life-affirming process” in the context of museums’ deathly nature (Jones and Lyons, 2021). In this context, rot can be seen as a material-ontological process which has the potential to evade and frustrate colonial processes of knowledge accumulation—giving way to new ecologies of relation.

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Short abstract:

Invasive Alien Species are considered one of the biggest threats to biodiversity loss today, yet the foundational definitions, categorizations and underlying concepts of nature and culture are heavily contested. Social-scientific critiques of nature-culture dualisms further complicate them.

Long abstract:

The concept of invasive alien species constitutes an ecological way of problematizing some organisms novel to ecosystems and their interactions with local species. To become intelligible as a problem, species causing harm to ecosystems are dependent on a number of technoscientific categories, like clearly defined ecosystems or species being “native” and “foreign”, but also explicitly normative and aesthetic judgements about “good” and “bad” forms of nature. The production of knowledge on and the formal and informal management of species constellations enacts those categories and judgements materially, producing natures, cultures, and ecologies as they go along.

Social scientists, especially feminist and post/anti-colonial scholars, have produced valuable insights into and critiques of nature-culture dualisms. The gendered and racialized relations of power, (re)produced and maintained in the enactments of nature and culture, fundamentally question the categories produced in technoscientific ways of knowing and doing nature(s).

Taking this critique seriously poses several question: What are biological invasions beyond dualistic understanding of nature and culture? What kind of relations to ecosystems and biodiversity do we want to foster, when looking at species constellations? How do we best live and die within the entanglements we have? In my talk, I will sketch out possibilities and ideas, based on my fieldwork on invasive species management.

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Short abstract:

This paper critically examines the notion of ‘regime shifts’ in systems ecology by engaging with local ways of understanding, anticipating, and experiencing socioecological collapse. It draws on interviews about threats and thresholds with people living near mining sites in vulnerable ecosystems.

Long abstract:

In the context of research on ecosystem stability, the trickiest components to measure are those that deal with thresholds or ‘regime shifts,’ namely the points at which a particular ecosystem is no longer able to recover from or cope with various types of disturbances or perturbations, what ecologists refer to as latitude and tolerance, respectively. The main reason for this is that in order for ecologists to accurately measure the latitude and tolerance of an ecosystem, that ecosystem would have to have already collapsed (or undergone a regime shift).

This paper examines alternative ways of theorizing, anticipating, and responding to socioecological collapse, drawing on feminist and Indigenous epistemologies to better understand both the hierarchies of knowledge that underlie dominant theories and methods in systems ecology and rendering explicit the inherent entanglements of being, knowing, and doing. Through an analysis of interviews with people living around large-scale mining sites in vulnerable ecosystems, it builds on ecological approaches to thresholds and regime shifts by offering a necessary corrective to these models’ (and modelers’) often blinkered focus on top-down, “objective” data. In doing so, the paper centers new types and sources of data in both academic and policy debates about ecosystemic resilience and stability – folklore, oral history, gossip, etc. Such an approach emphasizes the importance of understanding ecological perturbations – and the knowledge we rely on to make sense of them – as always already political.