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- Convenors:
-
Katrine Callander
(University of Kent)
Arvid van Dam (University of Bonn)
Alexandra Cotofana (Zayed University)
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- Chairs:
-
Franz Krause
(University of Cologne)
Aet Annist (University of Tartu and Tallinn University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel discusses tensions between different hopes, including for conservation, and processes of ruination, which may also be driven by conservation, in contested landscapes.
Long Abstract:
Increasing environmental degradation has become a key concern for anthropologists and scholars in related disciplines. Yet, they look to conservation with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they have documented the problems for people inhabiting the ruins of past and present economic dreams and ecological indifference. On the other hand, they have noticed the ubiquitous tensions between different people’s hopes for more sustainable futures, amongst which are various models of conservation. Taking contested landscapes as its starting point and material anchor, this panel explores stories of environmental destruction, but invites the presenters to also attend to the related hopes for ecological transitions and justice. How do humans inhabit ruined temporalities and spatialities of Anthropocene landscapes? How do the undercurrents of hope and ruination present themselves in various and conflicting social practices, creating future landscapes? What role does conservation play in the tension between ruination and hope? This panel is convened by EASA’s EnviroAnt Network and explores links between the RAI conference and the 2021 EnviroAnt workshop.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
In the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico, forests have been historically used as refuge spaces and engines for regional development. This paper explores new conditions framing these woodlands' transformation and their possible significance for community life projects of indigenous and mestizo people.
Paper long abstract:
In the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico, the increasing flow of international trade, the influence of non-state actors in environmental governance, and global environmental threats like climate change are the new conditions framing the dispute over forest use. Since the 17th century, a historical dialectic emerged from the forests embedded in the mountain and canyons of this region. On the one hand, forests served as the engine for development through the mining and logging industry. On the other, the difficult access to Sierra Tarahumara landscapes created refuge spaces for the indigenous people escaping the subsequent hegemonic projects. During the 20th century, the extractive features of forests have been emphasized while their condition as potential refuge spaces has been severely eroded. In this context, as non-state actors like multilateral organizations, private corporations, non-government organizations, and drug cartels gain influence over the future of these woodlands, community life projects fade with the loss of refuge spaces. Although the discourse of environmental governance in Mexico has turned towards the sustainable use of forests in recent years, the significance of novel social arrangements associated with the sustainable framework remains to be explored. This paper delves into forests as a historical condition enabling community life projects and regional development in Sierra Tarahumara. This analysis aims to provide key elements to understand the transformation of this historical dialectic according to the new conditions shaping forests and their relevance for future community life projects.
Paper short abstract:
Baltic Street Aventure Playground is located in the top 5% on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD, 2020). The space itself explicitly challenges the wider context in situ: food insecurity, precarity, and failed attempts at 'regeneration' through the amplification of local demands.
Paper long abstract:
Baltic Street Adventure Playground (BSAP) emerged out of, and through, a historically contested area. The East End of Glasgow, and Dalmarnock in particular, has been the site of continued efforts of 'regeneration' which have culminated in compulsory purchase orders, demolition of local amenities, derelict and abandoned land and a context of the top 5% deprived most areas in Scotland (SIMD, 2016, 2020).
BSAP came about after the ruthlessly designed and over-promised Commonwealth Games project demolished local services, amenities, housing, and community spaces. Together with Assemble (a Turner-prize winning architecture group) and local residents, BSAP challenged the status quo and classist assumptions put onto Dalmarnock via top-down regeneration attempts and privatised land development.
In response to dereliction and deprivation, BSAP runs via a child and local-led governance system to provide risky play and food for free for all who enter. The food provision grew exponentially over the past three years, to establish a composting area, the capacity to feed over 10,000 people in summer and distribute much-needed food parcels in winter, as well as a twice-weekly food hub stocked by FareShare, Amazon and Personal Collection Points.
Out of a landscape of loss and ruination came a space which contends with a complex set of tensions daily. From scalar questions, to questions around the climate, BSAP grapples with such complexity and resource-constraint through reckoning with what have we lost, what are we willing to lose, and what do we stand to fight for.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the precarious placemaking of the climate migrants in the Anthropocene in the context of South Asia. As the concept of the Anthropocene indicates the geological scale of human impact, this paper seeks to understand precarious dimensions of Anthropogenic placemaking.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the precarious placemaking of the climate migrants in the Anthropocene in the context of South Asia. As the concept of the Anthropocene indicates the geological scale of human impact, this paper seeks to understand precarious dimensions of Anthropogenic placemaking through dynamic understandings of human-nonhuman relations. By addressing Anthropocene mobilities in the context of South Asia, this paper aims to theorize on the precariousness of place in times of climate change. Drawing on preliminary findings from my fieldwork with a Dalit fishing community in coastal Bangladesh, this paper discusses how ‘anticipated’ climate change impacts shape placemaking in the Anthropocene. In this context of climate mobilities, “place” falls under what Tim Ingold (2011:151) described as constellations of encounter and experience. Through various climate change impacts, the Anthropocene reveals the precariousness of being dependent on these assemblages. This paper discusses how the process of placemaking in the experience of the Dalit fishing community in coastal Bangladesh reproduces past 'knots' between mobile agents (human and non-human) as far as possible. However, it also considers the ways that the 'anticipated' uncertainty of the future changes relations in these entanglements. Despite the uncertainty and precarious conditions of their existence, refugees reorient themselves towards particular kinds of futures (Feldman 2015). This paper argues that the optimism of the climate migrants for the possible resettlement can be defined as “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) characterized by an attachment to a nearly unattainable object that becomes a goal that life is organized toward.
Paper short abstract:
For years the Susa Valley has been at the centre of an environmental conflict concerning the construction of a high-speed railway. However, the environmental degradation of the valley is broad and intertwines its industrial past and present. Can hemp represent a remediation for a polluted territory?
Paper long abstract:
For years the Susa Valley (Western Alps, Italy) has been the scene of an environmental conflict concerning the construction of a new high-speed railway line between Turin and Lyon. The movement opposing the project, the No TAV movement, has expressed strong criticism of unnecessary and harmful large-scale works. In decades of activity it has organised several campaigns, sharing claims with other Italian and international social movements.
However, the environmental problems of the Susa Valley are not limited to the construction site of the new Turin-Lyon line. One case in particular of pollution from a steel plant has worried its inhabitants in recent years, particularly livestock farmers.
In order to overcome this pollution, the question was raised whether hemp could be a solution. A conference was organised by the small local hemp association and discussions were held on the possibility of growing hemp on the land to be decontaminated.
Hemp projects, however, are not limited to this specific case. The local hemp association aims to reconstruct local processing chains that relocate production, reusing industrial heritage and giving new meaning to the local economic pasts.
The paper will explore these dynamics, trying to focus on the difficulties and aspirations that, amidst various ambiguities, drive the projects to cultivate hemp to remediate contaminated soil and propose an alternative economy.