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- Convenors:
-
Stephane Dartiailh
Rachel Innes (University of Canterbury)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Ligertwood 113
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 13 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore the possibilities of using the concept of intimate state to understand the role of politics of sentiments in the development of states ecological governance following the Paris climate agreement.
Long Abstract:
The Anthropocene is the scientific label given by earth scientists to the current epoch of unprecedented anthropogenic planetary change. The Anthropocene is also a political label designed to call attention to this change and evolving notions of agency and responsibility in contemporary life. This panel would like to explore the relationships between subjectivity and government in this boundary event, and the possibility of 'topologies of power' (Collier, 2009) in this spatio-temporal architecture in movement. We would like to consider the specific modes of action and the epistemic politics of an intimate government (Agarwal, 2005). The propositions can explore the differential inclusions (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2012) and the tangles at different levels (body, state, etc.) of the subjects' sensitivities, the different imaginaries on these changes and their relations with ecological policies. We propose to take the plural spherology of the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk as a starting point for a socio-topological approach to these issues. Rather than advocating for the creation of a new subfield of research, these modes of description offer a topological framework for the critical examination of social anthropology's engagement and ideologies that influence the future plans and actions at different scales.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 13 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
As the global oceans become louder, this paper explores how underwater noise pollution is constructed by the state, the scientific body, and the public through new relationships with technology, marine animals, and analogous beings. How well can humans related to the sonic lives of other beings?
Paper long abstract:
As human activity continues to intensify, the underwater world is becoming louder. Globally, the sounds from international shipping, energy exploration, and coastal development are stressing the marine environment (Solan and Whitely 2016). To combat this, state regulation agencies and international treaties have constructed the phenomenon of "underwater noise pollution." This paper outlines the historically shifting definitions and regulations of underwater noise through our changing relationships with technology, sea creatures, and the marine environment. Drawing from STS, multispecies ethnography, and maritime anthropology, this paper focuses on key points in the construction of underwater noise by the state, the scientific body, and the public. Using athwart theory (Helmreich 2009, 2016) and ANT (Latour 2005), this paper explores how new technologies have allowed humans increased access to the marine soundscape and have allowed for more complex relationships with underwater noise and other listeners. Using new technologies, the scientific and governmental bodies have begun to recognise the sonic lives sea creatures through empathy, sympathy, charisma, and analogy. Often unruly, marine animals are replaced by increasingly sophisticated models in the scientific literature and it is through relationships with these analogous beings that policy is formed. The intersection of humans, marine biota, and analogous beings raise deep anthropological questions multispecies relatedness and responsibility.
Paper short abstract:
In the era of the Anthropocene, the impacts of anthropogenic climate change have become inseparable from many narratives, understandings and experiences of the Antarctic.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most significant issues facing our planet and therefore the many ways in which climate change knowledges are produced play an increasingly important role in generating understandings and preparing for possible futures. Antarctic research is filled with multifarious uncertainties operating across place, time and scale. In Antarctica, an ideal of science-based policy operates within the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) that O'Reilly (2017) refers to as an 'epistemic technocracy' where specialised and expert knowledges are fed into governance decisions. Antarctica is shaped and situated through numerous knowledge practices, epistemologies and ontologies. The rhetoric of Antarctica as set aside for 'peace and science' justifies human presence on the ice and continues to influence research directions today where science is used as 'symbolic capital' (Elzinga, 2017). Historical and geopolitical contexts of the Antarctic further enable and disable knowledge production. This paper explores the materialities of Antarctic research both in- and ex-situ from the continent through the narratives, perceptions and experiences of numerous Antarctic researchers in a changing climate.
Paper short abstract:
A practise-led enquiry of Penan youth's engagement with deforestation in Malaysia. Foreshadowed by the state and corporate exploitation of commodified resources, this (re)search explicitly explores socio-ecological frameworks of methodological practises, pivoting embodied sensorial knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
In 1991, a prominent voice in Malaysian environmental politics called on the 'North' to recognise its consumption responsibilities on the tropical forest products, employing the notion of Eco-Imperialism. Furthermore, the tiers of government shifted the discursive contours of the debate from a political to a technologic and bureaucratic rhetoric, with a contemporary result of over 90% of the primary forest of Sarawak being logged. In examining Enrique Dussell's (2006) notions of the 'South', the complexities of the global interplay of investment of the (commodified) forests of Sarawak foreshadow the interplay of state and corporate exploitation of resources, with tangible effects on the inhabiting communities. This practise-led (re)search exploring Karl Marx's 'Alienation of Nature' and Nicholas Mirzoeff's (2014) notions of 'Visualisation of the Anthropocene', examines the field site of Penan villages in the post-logged forests of Sarawak, Malaysia. The historical analysis of the global debate and representation is the catalyst for the enquiry's employment of Countervisuality as the methodological framework. The dissemination of knowledge within the Anthropocene poses questions to the textual dominance, and in acknowledging 'visualising' as material power, explores the potentials of embodied sensorial knowledge for its material quality. Sight. Sound. Watching. Listening. Exploring the interplay of governance on the first generation of Penan individuals born after the primary forest was logged, this enquiry reflexively questions Anthropocentric enquiries and in returning to the site of the 'modern environmental movement', questions the de-materialised commodification of knowledge, as an example of alienation. A response.