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- Convenors:
-
Charlotte Johnson
(University College London)
Sarah Bell (University College London)
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- Chair:
-
Charlotte Johnson
(University College London)
- Stream:
- Anthropocene
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 15 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores trauma and renewal in the reconfiguration of ecological relationships that characterise the anthropocene. Papers address environmental disasters, conservation conflict, urban innovation, resource management and productive relationships between people and non-human nature.
Long Abstract:
The anthropocene signifies consciousness of the geological scale of human impact on planetary systems. It also has profound implications for imminent, local relationships between people and non-human nature, and for social, political and technological arrangements. This panel explores trauma and renewal in the reconfiguration of ecological relationships that characterise the anthropocene. Addressing environmental disasters, conservation conflict, urban innovation, resource management and production, the papers explore how ecological disruption reinscribes and disrupts structures and practices of power and knowledge.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 15 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
In September 2017, an unprecedented deluge extensively flooded a remote island in Northern Greece. This presentation will discuss the experience of this event in relation to the residents' perception of their surrounding environment and raise the issue of individual liability for its protection.
Paper long abstract:
In the morning hours of 26 September 2017, the village of Chóra on the island of Samothraki filled with rushing torrents carrying mud, rocks detached from the mountain and detritus. Extensive floods were also recorded elsewhere across the island and caused roads to collapse, destroyed individual properties and immobilised local administration for weeks to come. According to the locals, it was unprecedented for the mountainous village of Chóra to flood - as 'the water used to always flow downwards'. The island of Samothraki was declared in a 'state of emergency' from 26 September 2017 to 26 September 2018.
Narratives subsequently created about this event mostly related it to an 'act of god', a 'disaster' or a 'deluge'. But what are the connotations of each of these terms? How are individual responsibilities for environmental sustainability framed in each case? What is the relation of the pre-existing soil erosion and overgrazing to this destructive event? Is there a perception of climate change among the residents and how can a remote and scarcely populated island play a central role in our understanding of the emerging environmental 'states of emergency'?
During the 15 months of the fieldwork conducted for my doctoral research, and following my own experience of the same event, I combined semi-structured interviews with a large-scale online survey to find answers. This presentation will discuss some of these answers and provide few relevant suggestions regarding the potential and the challenges of conceptualising and understanding 'place' through the embodied experience of others.
Paper short abstract:
Small scale urbanism can be hard to recognise in some disciplinary perspectives and governance regimes. The co-design of a community garden offers a way to re-scale sustainability interventions that incorporates different forms of knowledge and legitimates community action on the built environment.
Paper long abstract:
The relationship between a city and its water system has provided anthropologists and geographers with material to reflect on urgent issues of the anthropocene from the nature of modernity (Gandy 2006, 2008) to the constitution of politics and its subjects (Anand 2011, 2012). Scale is key in these analyses enabling broad systemic change to be read from the minutia of pumps and pipes. This paper contributes to the debate by using scale not only as an interpretative tool to move from the local to the systemic, but as a methodological tool that supports local communities to produce systemic change.
We present the Kipling Garden project in central London, a collaboration between a residents' group and researchers designed to have a positive impact on London's water system. The residents wanted to turn a disused playground into a green space. The researchers were interested in the water impacts of this small-scale intervention, both positive impacts from reducing surface run off and local flooding, as well as negative impacts from increasing demand on potable water to irrigate the garden. The paper discusses the processes used, tools developed and outcomes from this bottom up approach to green infrastructure.
Small scale urbanism where local community groups work to make positive environmental changes can be hard to recognise from certain disciplinary perspectives and governance regimes. This paper explores how re-scaling sustainability interventions can be a way to incorporate different forms of knowledge and to legitimate community action on the built environment.
Paper short abstract:
As vulnerable nonhumans, bee pollinator populations are declining worldwide. Danilo, the natural beekeeper with whom I developed my multispecies ethnography, acknowledges the vulnerability of these nonhumans and developed a bee-centric approach to Apis mellifera in his natural apiary.
Paper long abstract:
In the natural apiary", filmed together with natural beekeeper Danilo Colomela in the island of Sicily (Italy), is an immersive cinematic experience into the practice of natural beekeeping. Through experimental aesthetics, the film aims to sensorially explore the landscape of the natural apiary and the human engagement with the more-than-human world of Apis Mellifera. The Anthropocene is the new geological epoch that situates humans as the main force determining the future of the earth. As vulnerable nonhumans, bee pollinator populations are declining worldwide. Danilo, the natural beekeeper with whom I developed my multispecies ethnography, acknowledges the vulnerability of these nonhumans and developed a bee-centric approach to Apis mellifera in his natural apiary. Cinema has a unique affinity with the Anthropocene, given its origins in the materials and technologies produced by the Industrial Revolution. Such affinity runs even deeper as cinematic production involved artificial world-making, unnatural weather and multiple eco-cataclysms, allowing the viewers to immerse within anthropogenic environments. And yet, as I argue, moving images can revivify our multispecies relationship to the world by enabling us to imagine better attentive practices for a multispecies future.