Paper short abstract:

Making wild nature legible is a contentious process. The paper investigates the role of remote sensing and scientific expertise in the process of mapping and assessing virgin forests in the Carpathian Mountains. As knowledges entangle and disentangle virgin forests turn to political techno-natures.

Paper long abstract:

On the brink of extinction, virgin forests have been regarded both as windows to the past and a laboratory for finding solutions for future environmental challenges. Appropriate mapping becomes essential for effective conservation. This paper investigates how different regimes of knowledge have shaped the understanding of virgin forests and their functioning as they turn from data sets tot UNESCO world heritage.

Remote sensing technologies and high-resolution satellite imagery are techniques currently used to map virgin forest across the Carpathian Mountains. Within the EU their protection is considered an efficient strategy in mitigating climate change. Significant efforts have been made to identify and assess the conservation status of virgin forests, while politicians and activists alike started to use maps as political ammunition. Scientific research has been accompanied by a strong civil society mobilization for the protection of virgin forests as charismatic nature. Outside of the scientists' realm, they have been produced as a digital object of desire through VR technologies, artistic interventions and participatory mapping.

While this charismatic nature is slowly becoming a socio-political techno-nature, some serious questions regarding the role of different methodologies in making virgin forests legible have to be addressed. The paper argues that maps and data sets are a result of a whole assemblage of corrections informed by the scientists’ expertise. This narrowing of vision can potentially produce not only environmental injustice but also obliterates a rich environmental history as a new dichotomous system (wild-not wild) of classifying nature becomes the norm of the scientific gaze.

Paper short abstract:

Departing from a cross-disciplinary method that combines remote and near sensing this paper questions how the social practices and ways of being in the world are in close interplay with the geophysical characteristics and other physical-environmental features in southern Albania.

Paper long abstract:

In the contemporary world of digitalisation and developing technology, the big data are becoming an important asset and often a tool for various purposes. But what do these big data mean if they lack the social and cultural context? How are they interpreted when they are coupled and entangled with thick data of ethnographic research? Departing from a cross-disciplinary method that combines remote (based on big, remote sensing data) and near (based on thick, ethnographic data) sensing this paper questions how the social practices and ways of being in the world are in close interplay with the geophysical characteristics and other physical-environmental features in southern Albania. Here we depart from our long-standing research on the river Vjosa in southern Albania where we try to understand the multitude of entaglements between the social, cultural and geophisical riverine environment through the period of forty years. We question how the physical (e.g. erosion, deforestation), social and cultural characteristics and infrastructural interventions (e.g. hydropower plants, irrigation channels) are embedded in peoples' lives, and in turn how peoples' practices are spatialised in the landscape. This paper questions the delicate entanglement between social, geophysical, infrastructural and ecological dimensions. It delves into ways where remote and near sensing evolve and expand the methodology of research. Where and in what ways do remote and near, deep and shallow, visible and invisible, permeable and bounded mould and generate new horizons and potentialities?

Paper short abstract:

I will discuss the possibility of researching entanglements of digital maps through the act of inversion. My research is focused on multiple enactments of maps during Search and Rescue operations in Northern Norway, thus I will mostly dwell on exploring navigation practices using maps and mapping.

Paper long abstract:

Idea for this presentation is based on my recent interaction with a magpie and a lightbulb, where I inadvertently became the bird's tool in crack-opening the bulb. In accordance, I want to discuss possibility of act of inversion (inverting one's gaze into "other-worldings") as methodological strategy when opening up the worlds of digital maps within Search and Rescue (SAR) operations.

My research is an exploration of multiple enactments of maps during SAR operations. My approach derives from posthuman thought, hence methodological perspective is based on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) which urges paying attention to more-than-human actors without focusing on intentionality of actions.

I argue that digital maps, especially in SAR operations are not static, rather, they are processual assemblages depending on actors they interact with. It is important to attend to maps as both - actors and networks in their entangled being. Following maps in various "construction sites" - places, where they are enacted through assemblages - means shifting between digital and material landscapes, attending to different spatio-temporalities. It is withing these sites that maps have different roles, where they reveal differences on interactions while also participating in decision making. Inverting one's gaze provides the possibility to follow maps without conscripting networks to one dimension. After all, when participating in the feedback loop, SAR responders, as well as myself, can become tools for maps by carrying trackers. To attend to the messiness of worlding, the (im)possible entanglements is to think through acts of inversion.