Paper short abstract:

Phasing out of lignite mining within the next years, the Lusatia in eastern Germany is undergoing significant transformation. This paper will explore how the perception of energy transition as a political process is interconnected and interacts with the region and its landscape.

Paper long abstract:

The Eastern German region Lusatia has been a coal region for centuries. The coal industry did not only affect people and mindsets but also shaped the landscape significantly. The end of Germany's brown coal mining by 2038 therefore set the starting point for a huge transformation process, which is accompanied by uncertainties for individuals as well as other entities.

The regions long standing self-image is basically dominated by the coal industry and its impact on the appearance of the landscape. The exit of coal extraction will result anew in a change of the landscape and thus also ties in with concepts of remembrance landscapes. The history and presence of lignite overlap in the present, highly influenced by experiences over the past 30 years. With the line between the past and the present repeatedly being redrawn, locals experience insecurity at the intersection of time and identities.

Structural change, however, is forcing a new landscape image relying on visions and integrating the idea of sustainability. Necessarily, already negotiating between the remembrance as a coal region and finding a new identity, this adds to the uncertainties for those, who have to reorient themselves in the midst of the transformation process. I will trace this conglomerate of structural change, landscape change and uncertainties in my talk.

Paper short abstract:

Empirical perspectives on the transition of the Rhenish Mining Area will explore the relationship between humans and landscapes. People, in a material sense as well as in an imaginary sense, produce landscapes. Therefore, the connection with the present, past and ambivalent futures will be examined.

Paper long abstract:

With the decision to antedate the end of opencast coal mining in the Rhenish Mining Area to the year of 2030, people who were part of the last resettlement process in favour of the lignite mining are facing the end of an intergenerational struggle for belonging, heritage and parting processes. Lignite Mining has changed the appearance of the region tremendously: large holes where dug in the region, migrating from south to north, forcing residents to change their location of settlement. Despite the new decision, the landscape is still subject to many changes: the future of the last villages that the mining company will no longer use has to be planned. People have to cope with changing images of their surroundings.

The perspective on the landscape is twofold: not only the real space changes, but also the cognitive space, the imaginary space of the landscape. With Kühne and Schönwald (2017:192), I understand landscapes not only as a material space. Landscapes are based on social and cultural constructions and are thus created by people. I therefore understand landscape as a conglomerate of perspectives and in relation between humans and nature. Living in a special surrounding influences everyday life. Looking back at the past enables to find examples of how to cope with the present.

The planning of the future can convey the individual relationship between humans and nature. It can help to understand the current situation and to produce or reproduce new markers of ambivalent (un)certainties.

Paper short abstract:

On the example lignite mining and the Sorbian minority in Lusatia (Germany), we will provide and discuss a concept of post-mining landscapes as practices of past presencing and therefore coping mechanisms to face new uncertainties within transformation processes.

Paper long abstract:

The region of Lusatia is characterised by a permanent state of uncertainty – from decades of mining-related resettlements, transformation processes due to the German Reunification, up to the planned end of lignite mining in 2030. Taking into account, that here, mining took place in the settlement area of the autochthonous minority of the Sorbs/Wends, we would like to discuss a minority-sensitive concept of post-mining landscapes and the presencing of their pasts, which sensitises for:

(1) the challenges of recultivation (e.g. post-mining lakes). This aspect is highly linked to the discursive understanding of the landscape as a place of technological innovation but also uncertainties (e.g. resilient water management);

(2) the transition of people, networks, cultural practices and architecture due to resettlement and working migration. In Lusatia, this aspect is highly linked to the negotiation of minority rights, the construction of ethnicity and protest movements;

(3) the entanglements of pre- and post-industrial land uses, which are still mostly negotiated as opposites (e.g. “industrial culture” and “Sorbian cultural heritage”);

(4) practices of memory – especially memorial sites, place naming (e.g. street names of devastated villages) and commemorative activities.

Since the planned end of lignite mining, historicising perspectives – such as a World Heritage initiative – are gaining in importance, leading to a new conceptualisation of the post-mining landscape mainly as a practice of past presencing itself, functioning as a coping mechanism to face new uncertainties and therefore, becoming a new action arena for the negotiation of regional identity, belonging and power structures.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the transformations of industrial landscapes identified visually, and within the materiality of built environment. It raises the question of how, and what the industrial landscapes speak about social challenges in economy, and livelihood in contemporary Lithuania.

Paper long abstract:

Soviet industrial areas in Lithuania, which visually and functionally were homogenous and enduring, have experienced abrupt transformations with regards to post-Soviet deindustrialization after the restoration of Lithuania's Independence in 1990. Today people see the industrial landscapes as neglected places, in which industrial activity has declined, factories have closed, and people have lost their jobs. They say “it is an empty place” although new objects or parts of objects are emerging in the industrial areas. Walking and seeing approach is an ethnographic way to get to know the place, the materiality of built environment, which embodies activities and practices of people, and the story of postindustrial transformations. Material elements of the past weave into the present and continue as traces of people’s lived experiences (Ingold 1993; Tilley, Cameron-Daum 2017). The paper takes into account the capacity of visual forms to narrate not only the specificity of the place, but also its dynamics and social change. The paper discusses how industrial landscapes, which encompass the old structures, as well as new elements, speak about the process of post-Soviet deindustrialization; what kind of aspects of making certainty of living during social challenges they represent; how emerging new means of livelihood are remaking and reconceptualizing industrial landscapes today. The paper is based on the fieldwork in two Lithuanian cities Alytus and Marijampole, which experienced intensive industrialization during the Soviet era.

Paper short abstract:

The paper is based on the ethnographic field research of water-related heritage and discusses transformation and transition of landscapes as the result of depopulation, changes of traditional agriculture and local ecological knowledge

Paper long abstract:

The paper is based on the ethnographic field research of water-related heritage conducted in the Central Croatia (EU), on the area of one small historic town and several surrounding villages. It brings ethnography of water as cultural and natural heritage pointing to various material, intangible/spiritual, social and political aspects of water, and thus of the landscape.

By presenting historical and ethnographic data paper shows the creation and importance of water-related heritage to people and the development of society during the 19th and 20th century and the changes that have taken place over the last thirty years. In particular, this includes the condition of buildings and objects (mills, wells, pumps, etc.), knowledge about the local resources (water springs, livestock feeding places, etc.), as well as social and spiritual practices (traditions, community memory, ways of socializing, local names for water places, etc.).

Based on described examples, paper discusses transformation and transition of landscapes as the result of depopulation, abandonment of traditional agriculture and local ecological knowledge. It shows what new knowledge and practices are needed in order for residents to cope with the changes that occur due to the non-use or different use of water as well as due to the other natural and social processes (floods, droughts, disappearance of streams, new climate patterns, increase in the number of wild animals, overgrowth of arable land, appearance of migrant routes, etc.). The question is whether the historical landscape can be a source of knowledge for contemporary and future water challenges.

Paper short abstract:

The paper attempts to trace the transformation of vineyard landscapes nearby the so called Hungarian Sea, Lake Balaton. In recent decades their role changed dramatically, because they were transformed to recreational areas or they became „shelters” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper long abstract:

The paper attempts to trace the transformation of vineyard landscapes nearby the so called Hungarian Sea, Lake Balaton. In the first half of the 20th century tourism only concerned the waterfront areas and had little effect on the vineyard hills that were regarded as economically more valuable. From the 1960’s the hillsides that had been planted with vines were intensely transformed to recreational areas. The views over the lake attracted many urban families to buy vineyard plots and wine cellars or build summer cottages. The second home owners no longer look on the landscape as a place for agricultural production but as a place where they could hide from mass tourism. The proportion of urban newcomers gradually rose to such a high level that they now represent the majority and only a very small percentage of local people possess wine cellars. Agricultural production was of little significance to them as they had no experience of vine-growing or could not find locals to cultivate the vine-stocks. Due to the impact of the pandemic new property owners are already using the vineyards as permanent residences. The purpose of the presentation is to analyze this special coexistence of people who often have totally different views and ideas about the use of the landscape.

Paper short abstract:

Farmers in the Eastern Alps face fierce debates about care and exploitation of their land, groping along the uncertainty of increasingly monotonous agricultural landscapes that can be understood as formative sites of encounter and intersecting networks that thoroughly make and change us.

Paper long abstract:

The data for this talk comes from a recently concluded research project on issues to do with alpine pastures and high-altitude single farmsteads in the Eastern Alps. We will talk about mountain farmers and herders, people who work in different ways on steep, often inaccessible mountain terrain in close collaboration with animals, plants, and land. In our research the focus was on current developments, which, however, also included a comparative consideration of the last six decades. During this period, considerable agricultural transformations took place, resulting in changes of the Alpine landscape beyond agriculture. Since then, people are struggling with painful contradictions between local ideals of intact landscapes and realities of conventional agricultural practices. Species loss, loss of soil stability and effects of extreme weather conditions rumor below and above monocultural landscapes causing anxiety and a sense of uncertainty among local people. In this scenario, mountain farmers and alpine herders are considered the most important keepers of the cultural landscape. Though its drastic transformation is, paradoxically, considered to be also their own responsibility. The local population sees them as being accountable for the overgrowth of high alpine pastures and over-fertilisation of meadows by industrial dairy farming. In our ethnographic research we come across fierce debates on the need of care for and practices of exploitation of land. Though in our analysis we understand the transformation of landscapes of agricultural worlds as formative places of encounters and overlapping networks and relationships from which they emerge; that thoroughly make and change us.

Paper short abstract:

The research explores the evolution of Southern Transylvanian grasslands as a social-ecological system, focusing on the tensions between the competing visions regarding environmental protection as well as on the practices which extract economic value from the use of the ecological resource.

Paper long abstract:

A decades-long history of state disinvestment in rural Southern Transylvania, paired with other related factors such as depopulation (e.g. the mass emigration of the local German population) contributed to the shaping of a local mosaic cultural landscape defined by semi-subsistence, non-intensive farming, which conservationists enthusiastically index as “medieval” and value for its high environmental value (Akeroyd and Page 2006; 2011; Rozylowicz et al 2019, Page 2010; Sutcliffe et al 2015 etc.). This grassland landscape, protected as a Natura 2000 site, offers a remarkable example of reframing and legitimation of traditional ecological knowledge associated with small-scale farming in a post-productive logic focused on environmental outputs and ecosystem services.

The research seeks to explore the dynamic evolution of Southern Transylvanian grasslands as a social-ecological system, focusing on the tensions between the competing visions regarding environmental protection and biodiversity conservation, as well as on the practices which extract economic value from the use of the ecological resource. I explore how a network of social actors (policy-makers, NGOs, small-scale farmers, neo-rurals, local authorities) build strategies and discourses of resistance, audit, entrepreneurship in relation to the local grasslands and how they attribute socio-cultural and ecological meanings to this environmental presence. My analysis focuses on the examination of the boundaries and misalignments between the cultivated and the wild, between subsistence and market economies (Tsing 2005), regarded not only as a set of environmental phenomena, but also as a moral and political arena.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents some examples of the ambiguous knowledge-sharing events, in which the Guatemalan Maya meet Czech adherents of alternative spirituality to look for a common ground for building a better environmental future, life and well-being.

Paper long abstract:

The contemporary Maya are witnessing radical changes in their livelihoods and landscapes, as they abandon traditional agriculture and local environmental knowledge to face the challenges of today's globalising world. These transformations find their expression in religion, with Maya traditionalism (centred on living with specific landscapes and particular mountains) being replaced by Maya spirituality (centred on intensifying the relationship with a generalised and universalised Mother Earth).

In recent years, Maya spiritual guides have begun to visit European countries to share their knowledge, in which environmental issues play a substantial role. Such knowledge usually involves selected and reinterpreted indigenous Amerindian as well as Western new age ideas. This hybrid and globalised religiosity, easily recognisable for its vocabulary of Mother Earth, harmony, energy, etc., is frequently described by academics as trapped between worldwide capitalism and local cultural resistance. In what ways, however, does such religiosity understand the changing landscapes and respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene?

In this paper, I will present some examples of the events, held in the Czech Republic, in which the Guatemalan Maya meet the Czech adherents of alternative spirituality and discuss their values of mutualism, respect and commitment. My focus will be on the process of emerging a global spiritual discourse, perhaps "anthropocenic spirituality", and the inherent uncertainties that arise within it.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores past, present and future landscapes on Svalbard archipelago, where a socio-economic transformation to post-mining industries is taking place. This transformation is understood as a process of shifting relations with the landscape and its constituents.

Paper long abstract:

The landscape of the Svalbard archipelago is currently facing a significant transformation. What was in the past century predominantly a place of coal mining is shifting into a place of tourism and research. This paper aims to understand this socio-economic transformation as a transformation of relations with the landscape and its constituents. The entry point for understanding this transformation is coal mining remnants, classified as cultural heritage – a protected part of the landscape. These can be seemingly marginal, insignificant or even out-of-place objects, such as rusty barrels, wires or collapsing transportation systems. Cultural heritage are then not just remnants of the past but part of entangled relations between various constituents of the landscape, including both humans and non-humans. In such relations, the past as well as present landscapes are encountered and re-configured.

Paper short abstract:

The case study of tourism in the Bohemian Forest between 1870 and 1914 will explore nature-based tourism as one of the possible ways of human adaptation to the partially unreckonable changes of landscapes and uncertainties of living in a more-than-human world.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of the paper is to explore an expansion of “nature-based tourism” (Coghlan and Buckley 2013) as means of facing economic and social uncertainties brought by the transformation of the landscape. The case study will focus on the development of both organized and individual tourism in the Bohemian Forest between 1870 and 1914, following a series of storms, bark beetle outbreaks, and subsequent short-term forestry expansion in the 1860s and 1870s.

While other studies on Central European mountain tourism of that period (Holubec 2021, Pelc 2009, Judson 2006, Haller 1995) deal predominantly with the nationalist aspects of tourism as a social movement, the paper should focus on entanglements between the human (tourists, their clubs, local entrepreneurs and inhabitants) and more-than-human (mountains, bark beetles, forest) actors. Nature-based tourism will be therefore perceived as one of the possible ways of human adaptation to the partially unreckonable transformations of landscapes and uncertainties of living in a more-than-human world. This, however, brings political, social, and economic implications as well.

The paper will use textual (guidebooks, tourist clubs’ records…) as well as non-textual (postcards, maps) archival sources. The usual approaches of historical research should be broadened by a more-than-human perspective (O’Gorman and Gaynor 2021, LeCain 2015), as well as reflections on contemporary ethnographic research (Blavascunas 2020).

Paper short abstract:

How to analyze a space which is not one, but many? What are the the advantages of the analytical perspective of assemblage? The presentation puts this questions on debate reflecting on research on a space in transition in the periphery of a southern German city.

Paper long abstract:

How can a landscape in transition be made to speak? To what extent do ethnographed 'biographies of a landscape' offer added value beyond a historical perspective? These are questions emerging in the context of my dissertation project, in which I am investigating a 'rurban' space (cf. Schmidt-Lauber, Wolfmayr 2020) in the west of Freiburg. In the panel, I would like to discuss these questions based on my theoretically and empirically grounded perspective on space.

On 107 hectares of fields, meadows and forest, Freiburg's new urban district Dietenbach is to be created by 2040. Transforming agricultural and recreational land into housing is controversial: In view of uncertain futures growth as a paradigm is increasingly being questioned in Freiburg, but also beyond, and from different perspectives. Drawing on the concept of assemblage, I understand Dietenbach as a multi-layered and dynamic space spanning different temporal levels and figures in an interplay of material structures and objects, imaginaries - e.g., of a sustainable, social city, or else threatened, idyllic 'nature'- , practices, such as leisure, protest and planning, and (trans-)local discourses of human and non-human actors: There is not one Dietenbach, but many, and these are continuously produced, challenged, and come into conflict with each other. For example, in the course of the transformative process, the area is (re)discovered as a natural space, medially staged, and made visible and tangible in learning and sensory practices.

To what extent could a new form of the biography of a landscape rise from the analytical perspective presented?

Paper short abstract:

Based on the research of urban planning processes in Prague and the notion of territorial complexity (Kärrholm 2012), the paper seeks to investigate how the urban brownfields' un/certain future and re-actualized past are constantly (re)assembled and (re)configured.

Paper long abstract:

Central and Eastern European post-industrial brownfields remain a suitable ground for the emergence of multiple urban transition un/certainties. Co-opted and absorbed by privatization, financialization, and densification policies, these industrial areas became animated places of in/visible motion enforced by (vested) interests and pubic needs which are connected with more-than-human agencies.

Based on ethnographic research of urban planning processes and participatory policies in Prague, the paper seeks to investigate how un/certain visions of future and re-actualized/contested versions of past are (re)assembled within the particular place of transition. By using Kärrholm's notion of territorial complexity (Kärrholm 2012) and Slater's perspective on "heteronomy of urban research" (Slater 2021), I am going to reveal the details of the “landscape of power” (re)configuration in one of the Prague's biggest transformation areas – Bubny-Zátory. Thanks to this perspective I consider urban brownfield a process of multiple territorial (re)productions that are demonstrated by "movement“ and "labor “ of various human and more-than-human actors (Mubi Brighneti and Kärrholm 2020).

Within these socio-material processes, various modes of urban phenomena – connected with housing crises, the tyranny of participation, tokenism, and NIMBY or YIMBY effects – can be easily traced and investigated. Great expectations towards the “new city within a city” are intertwined with fear of various modes of displacement, environmental issues, or specific (non)human re/un/settling strategies. Some of those un/certain processes are performed publicly on a daily basis while others remain systematically black-boxed.