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Analyzing a North Croatian fairy tale "Stekljena gora" (Glass Mountain) and its variants, the paper explores narrative structures symbolically tied to nature. This foundation is both universal and more closely connected to the locality where it was recorded.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines a Kajkavian variant of an oral fairy tale structured around the central motif of the glass mountain, recorded in the early 1980s in northern Croatia. The motif, attested in diverse dialectal and lexical forms, is also present in numerous related versions within the broader corpus of South Slavic oral literature. In addition, the narrative features anthropomorphic (the old woman and the fairy) and anthropomorphized (the four winds, the horse) appearances, all of which are conceptually tied to the natural world.

The mystery of the relationship between external and internal nature is conceptualized, represented, and mediated through human consciousness-transcending the ethical “sum of all appearances” (Kant), the idealistic “Spirit estranged from itself” (Hegel), the cosmocentric “pure will” (Schopenhauer), the dialectical “nature’s universal metabolism” (Engels), the anthroposophical “source of wonder” (Steiner), the biocentric “awe of life” (Jahr, Schweitzer), the existentialist “split between subject and object” (Jaspers), the anthropocentric view of “nature as a resource” (Catton), the antianthropocentric notion of “dark ecology” (Morton) etc. Modern man, unlike his traditional counterpart, often loses direct interaction with nature and tends to compensate through reinterpreted neo-traditional practices.

Through the analysis of the reference version of the fairy tale, compared with its other variants, this paper – using ethnological, anthropological, symbolic, philological, and mythological theoretical discourse – explores the multilayered structure of the oral narrative, which draws its conceptual and symbolic foundation from nature. This foundation is both universal and more closely connected to the locality where it was recorded.

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I explore elemental worldings in Latvian folklore in the context of ecophenomenology and critical genealogy. In the article I demonstrate situated knowledges as part of the lived, experiential genealogies that co-constitute us today and consider their significance for reconnecting with the Earth.

Paper long abstract

In this article, I explore some of the elemental worldings in Latvian folklore, particularly the element of water and its connection with other principal elements in pre-Christian Latvian cosmologies. I am specifically interested in the elemental as an ecophenomenological vehicle for reconnection with the Earth—a reconnection that scholars of environmental humanities demonstrate as necessary in the current dire ecological conditions. The elemental, in contrast to such abstracted concepts as "nature" or "the environment", provides the means for "thinking with" past genealogies and mobilizing sensed knowing. Methodologically, I am, thus, interested in the genealogical and phenomenological exploration of folklore as situated knowledge that allows revisiting animist human-environment relations for developing future ethicalities.

In the first part of the article I explore the theoretical framework of situated knowledges and represent pre-Christian knowing in the context of process ontologies. In the second part of the article I then describe elemental knowing in Latvian folklore and explore it as a vehicle for the transformation of human-environment relationships. My argument is further strenghtened by uniting the approaches of embodied critical thinking and critical genealogy and demonstrating the present significance of past genealogies that constitute us.

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This paper explores how Adivasi religion, Sarna Dharam, integrates spirituality, ecology, and sustainability. Through rituals, festivals, and cosmology, it fosters ecological balance, offering an indigenous paradigm of sustainable living and insights for global environmental stewardship.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the dynamic intersection of religion, ecology, and sustainability in Adivasi (Indigenous/Tribal) communities in India. The Adivasi religious tradition, known as Sarna Dharam or Adi-dharam, centers on nature, fostering a worldview that integrates spiritual, social, and environmental life. Rooted in indigenous cosmology, Sarna Dharam emphasizes egalitarianism, direct communion with the divine, and a symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world. These principles manifest in daily life and communal rituals, promoting sustainable coexistence with the environment. Festivals such as Sarhul and Karam, which venerate trees like Saal (Shorea robusta) and Karam (Nauclea parvifolia), illustrate a ritual ecology that reinforces environmental stewardship through spiritual practice. In Adivasi society, religion and culture are inseparable, with beliefs shaping attitudes toward ecological conservation. Through an ethnographic lens, examining religious performances, festivals, rituals, and textual sources, this study argues that Sarnaism offers an alternative paradigm of sustainable living, grounded in reverence, reciprocity, and ecological balance. By highlighting how religious practices transmit ecological knowledge, the paper contributes to broader debates on indigenous roles in addressing contemporary environmental crises. Furthermore, it challenges anthropocentric conservation models, positioning indigenous epistemologies as vital to reimagining sustainability in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, Adivasi religious practices exemplify how spirituality and ecological consciousness can coexist, offering lessons for global environmental stewardship.

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Cork production sits amid forestry and industrial practices, global trade and local heritage. Using Tsing’s concept of friction, this research explores a few assemblages formed at the intersections of transnational capitalism and vernacular techniques, historical milestones and imagined futures.

Paper long abstract

This communication is based on my ongoing doctoral research, which is a multi-sited ethnography of cork cultures in Portugal. The final thesis aims to reflect, from an anthropological perspective, on the meanings of socio-environmental sustainability and world heritage in contemporary society.

Situated between forestry practices, industrial manufacturing, global commodity trading and local heritage-making processes, cork landscapes reveal complex relations and meanings. What do stakeholders consider to be sustainable practices? Which historical events shaped current scenarios? How do modernity frameworks and climate change´s overflows coexist?

Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of friction, this research explores ´polyphonic assemblages´ formed at the intersections of transnational capitalism and local practices, historical milestones and imagined futures. Besides observing cork extraction sites, fieldwork included extensive observation of technical congresses and sectoral meetings, where cork becomes a platform for advocating future-oriented ideas and projects. It also comprised visits to museological spaces, tourist attractions and local festivals where cork is undergoing processes of heritagization. Through engagement with diverse actors entangled in cork production Portuguese landscapes, this study describes how multiple temporalities and scales intertwine to shape more-than-human ecological-cultural landscapes.

This panel's focus on imaginaries of rural/urban divides, capitalist expansion, and the simultaneity of progress and preservation resonates with my investigation, which questions where nature begins and ends amid socio-economic dynamics and heritage mobilization. I intend to present my original research design and some key field insights at this conference, seeking critical feedback during my thesis development.

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The paper analyses ecological tropes in 21st-century vampire narratives and Disney fairy tales from Disney Princess franchise. While both started as modern narratives of man’s conquest of the “nature”, they evolved to produce stories of Hero-Monsters and Eco-Warrior Princesses.

Paper long abstract

Modern, and specifically post-enlightenment Western civilisation, relied on the division: body—mind, nature—culture(civilisation), definitely valuing the latter over the first. The so called civilisation was assigned to the white middle-upper-class Western men, and the “nature” as wilderness was assigned — to a different degree and in different ways — to the non-white, the non-Western, the low-class, the women. This worldview found its embodiment in the emerging popular culture, including the seemingly diametrically different narratives: horror stories and fairy tales. They all represented a brave hero’s conquest and/or submission of the wild “nature” embodied by a Monster that usually “threatened” a woman.

This paper analyses vampire narratives and best-known modern fairy tales, i.e. Disney animated movies, specifically the Disney Princess franchise. While both started as modern narratives of conquest, they both evolved in line with the changes occurring in the Western (global) culture: feminist, decolonial, ecological movements. The paper specifically focuses on the 21st-century narratives that seem to embrace ecological stances and construct new types of protagonists: posthuman(ist) Hero-Monsters, eco-vampires, and eco-feminist Princesses. The analysis points out at the problematic white male ecology [Sandilands 2005] of Good Eco-Vampires, but also examines the eco-decolonial and posthumanist potentials of the narratives such as Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Night Wanderer: A Gothic Native Novel (2007) and Netflix Hemlock Grove series (2013-15), comparing them with Decolonial Eco-Warrior Disney Princesses in the John Musker and Roy Clements’ Moana (2016), and Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada’s Raya and the Last Dragon (2021).