Contribution short abstract:

Plastics have become naturalised in ways that obscure their histories, present influences, and future trajectories. For this workshop I will explore the spectral aspects of marine debris: the necessities of creating waste in capitalism, plastics and global warming, and ecological ramifications.

Contribution long abstract:

Whilst many people in wealthy nations have heard of the problems with plastics polluting the oceans, plastics and the pollution they produce, often go unnoticed. Plastics have become naturalised or made necessary, in ways that obscure their life histories, present influences, and future trajectories. Plastics, both single use and those designed to last for longer, are implicated in global warming. Pollution occurs at the site of their extraction, during their transportation, and when they are being moulded. They can off-gas or leach during their storage and usage. They pollute again in the process of recycling (if this happens), and off-gas and proliferate after they have been discarded (Bauman 2019). In 2019 it is estimated that plastics were responsible for 860 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (CIEL, 2019).

For this workshop I will bring in two plastic items I found on beaches on Christmas Island, an Australian overseas external territory. One is a plastic mirror and the other is a piece of fishing rope, washed up from a ghost net in the Indian Ocean. Whilst the plastics industry promote the idea that the problems with marine debris are due to individual consumption choices and that plastic pollution is a waste management issue, I want to explore the spectral aspects of marine debris: the necessities of creating waste within current forms of global capitalism, how plastics impact global warming, and their ramifications for the health of both marine life and humans.

Contribution long abstract:

This year, I teach a class in Anthropology of climate change. I am always in search for new angles from which I could make my students engage in the topic. I believe sensing and materializing climate change would add another dimension to what I myself came up with. Critical thinking about the complicated connections linking human beings with various manifestations of the planetary life is fascinating and allows for so many possible explorations. I would love to take part in your workshop because I am keen on hands-on methods of learning and teaching, plus, I believe the senses and materiality are crucial dimensions of the Anthropocene. I am curious.

Contribution short abstract:

The silicate standing stones at Avebury in Wiltshire were brought by glacial flows during the Eocene, a period of climate change. In this workshop, I will consider what it means to sense their materiality and how they might be actively engaged to stimulate action on climate change in the present.

Contribution long abstract:

I am an academic and artist with a long-standing interest in how material provocations might stimulate people’s active engagement with contemporary issues, initiated by research on the work of German 20th Century artist Joseph Beuys. Last year, I joined a group of artists from Bath Artists’ Studios on a project led by Archaeologist and Artist Fay Stevens, encouraging us to create artworks in response to Avebury in Wiltshire, the site of a Neolithic henge monument. I was immediately impressed by the numinous power of the silicate standing stones at the site and was interested to discover that they had been brought there by glacial flows during the Eocene, a period of major climate change. In this workshop, I am interested in considering what it means to sense these erratics as materials that have been affected by a previous instance of climate change and how they might be actively engaged to stimulate action on climate change in the present. Further, how would such a practice sit alongside, or in a continuum with, the many and varied spiritual practices that continue to play out in relation to and in response to the stones, some of which themselves relate to ecological imperatives? I will bring photographs of the stones at Avebury with me, but will also seek to bring a small fragment of errant sarsen sandstone with me, if possible.

Contribution short abstract:

I am fascinated by how sensory ethnography switches the focus of the observer from seeing to other senses. I personally heavily rely on seeing in my professional and private life. I am curious to explore these other ways, and expand the way I perceive and make sense of the world around me.

Contribution long abstract:

I am fascinated by how sensory ethnography switches the focus of the observer from seeing to other senses. I personally heavily rely on seeing in my professional and private life. I am curious to explore these other ways, and expand the way I perceive and make sense of the world around me. I have 11-years of experience working as a folklore archivist. My research interest focus around unorthodox memory keeping traditions, traditional knowledge in archives, and diaspora cultures and identities. I consider myself someone who cares deeply about this place we live in, and tries to live responsibly and gently with my environment. I’ve been thinking for a while now how I could combine my personal and professional interests. I hope I can join the workshop and learn from and with you.

I'd like to be transparent - I will be presenting a paper at SIEF. I know the organizers discourage submitting more than one proposal. However, since this workshop offers such a different format, I hope it won't be a problem.

Contribution short abstract:

Taking the imagination as a key political participant in the struggle for more just and sustainable worlds, this paper aims to 'story' the sensuous atmospheres of everyday life in agriculture, making them visible as the very substance that socio-ecological, political, and economic formations take.

Contribution long abstract:

Taking the imagination as a key political participant in the struggle for a more just and sustainable world, this paper aims to 'story' the sensuous atmospheres of everyday life in agricultural practice, rendering them visible as the very substance that socio-ecological, political, and economic formations take. Drawing from sensuous (auto)ethnographic encounters on a farm in northern Italy, the paper asks: what kinds of stories are the ‘sensuous atmospheres’ of techno-industrial and alternative agricultural practices made of, what kinds of stories do they tell, and how might they help to imagine new horizons of possibility in the making of more sustainable food systems? Sensory ethnographic material is presented in the style of ‘sensuous scholarship’, where the fieldwork is simultaneously analysed and evocatively storied as a strategy of making visible the sensuous atmospheres of contrasting agricultural foodways formations, through examples of encounters in peach orchards and wheat fields. The paper concludes by suggesting that the storying of sensuous atmospheres is a strategy to precipitate new horizons of imagining—in food systems and beyond—how the world can be made otherwise.

Contribution short abstract:

My current research interest deals with how we care for and practice more viable futures in everyday life within the mundane routines of shopping, eating, sorting waste etc. Material objects may serve as temporary “tasters of the future”, reinforcing worries as well as hope for change.

Contribution long abstract:

7 sentences describing my research interests and motivation to participate in the workshop:

My current research interest deals with why, when, and how we care for and practice more viable futures in everyday life within the mundane routines of shopping, eating, sorting waste etcetera. In everyday life climate change and other environmental issues are often materialized and sensed in the choice of organic groceries, in attempts of avoiding microplastic, or in recycling organic waste. These materialities unfold affective agency within the temporal scale of the here-and-now as well as a near or remote future. In the workshop I would like to discuss whether and how the sensory and material objects allow imaginaries of a better future to tangibly be practiced in the present. As an affective temporality, viable future may not only be a far-off time, separate to the present, but through material objects also something to be experienced and felt ‘in’ and as the present (cf. Rebecca Coleman 2017:3) Thus, material objects may serve as temporary “tasters of the future”, reinforcing worries as well as hope for change. My concrete examples will be drawn from everyday diaries written by students (an myself) on mundane future practicing.

Contribution long abstract:

I am interested in this workshop because I have an unstoppable interest in sensory perceptions, memories and the relationship between people and things. I am interested in how things have a life of their own and carry their history of trauma on their surface and are totally ignorant about their imminent destruction. Our connection with things is often very short, temporary, or connected to traditions. That is why I have chosen to bring a branch from my Christmas tree. Its smell is traditional and connects me with my past but will people in the future enjoy this smell? When will a traditional smell be endangered? In Iceland we traditionally burn the spruce needles to get the correct homely smell during Christmas. A Christmas smell that everybody recognizes can be endangered when the global warming goes out of control. What happens when we will only have man made replicas of old smells after certain things have disappeared? Climate change will change traditions, for example Christmas traditions, that will also change if the material things that they are based on undergo transformations or disappear altogether.

Contribution short abstract:

As snow as a tangible phenomena is disappearing and/or changing it is important to collect memories of snow and to understand cultural meanings of snow, be it both the "real" snow and the symbolic snow materialized with for example plastic and cotton.

Contribution long abstract:

My research interests usually have embodiment, performance and staging in focus. Given the acute state of climate change I have started to think about staging, symbolic objects and how meanings of said objects change as the climate change. The focus of my current research interest is meanings and memories of snow. I would like to go deeper into everyday cultural meanings and memories of snow in the light of snow as vanishing and/or changing due to global warming.

This workshop would bring the possibility to discuss and learn with other scholars and in collaboration think with sensory ethnography, an approach that seems very fitting when it comes to snow and its aspect of being both tangible and vanishing.

A more concrete aspect that I would like to bring to this workshop and discuss is how “snow that is not snow” is visible in everyday surroundings. I am thinking of things visible during especially Christmas time; cotton that is supposed to look like snow, or snow men made of plastic. As speaking/thinking from a geographical position in the world where snow used to be prevalent during winter months the symbolic objects of snow raises questions about how this staged snow can be understood. As snow is not as prevalent as it used to be, how can the prevalence of the “snow that is not snow” be understood?

Contribution long abstract:

I am a cultural anthropologist with a strong interest in STS working at a department for media studies. For my Ph.D. I did fieldwork about sustainability transformations in and of three post-industrial cities. My focus lay on so-called soft policy instruments which I followed across city borders. Cable clutters on house walls, eating insects, polluted rivers, listed buildings, colorful cardboard cubes representing the SDG and many other ‘things’ played an essential role in my research. I would like to share my experiences of how climate governance in and of cities is un/done by various materialities and what role senses play in the process (or not). I would love to expand my methodological toolkit with new sensory and material approaches and am highly interested to explore how these may be applied in inter- and transdisciplinary transformative research.

Contribution long abstract:

During my academic anthropology adventure, I had the opportunity to work with the topic of freeganism during the preparation of my undergraduate thesis. Somewhat unexpectedly for myself, my research partners constantly referred to the issue of the climate crisis and conscious ecology. I decided to explore issues of ecological anthropology, and the master's thesis I am working on now is about human-nonhuman relations in the context of guerrilla gardening. Thus, it connects the urban landscape with interspecies cooperation. I would be delighted to participate in the workshop, not only contributing my knowledge and insights, but learning much from others and the environment in the city of Brno.