Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on the repair movement and its relation to environmental concerns and handicraft skills in Estonia. While activists establish public repair workshops to popularise repair and cultivate skills, repair and handicraft skills are not forgotten among the older generation.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on the repair movement and reoccurring trend of repair in Estonia. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork at the first Estonian public repair workshop Paranduskelder, and a collection of repair stories collected by the Estonian National Museum.

Repair as an anti-capitalist form of consumption and a do-it-yourself practice of circular economy has gained attention and popularity in recent years in Estonia, and globally. This, at least partly, is cultivated by local activists, whose activity is inspired by the global Right to Repair movement and the trend of Repair Cafes. Paranduskelder as a public repair workshop was established in 2019 as a private non-profit organization. The activists are motivated by the worry and anxiety about the uncertain future caused by climate change and mass consumption. The solution, as they propose, lies in reconfiguring the relation with the material world of goods. Their mission at the repair workshop is to popularise repair as an option in consumption culture and to encourage people to repair their commodities by themselves. This, as they propose, can only be achieved through learning handicraft skills.

The activists and visitors of the repair workshop are strictly driven by environmental concerns and the will to learn skills for a more sustainable future. However, repair is still not a forgotten practice among the older generation in Estonia because of the Soviet past. Many people still value handicraft skills and are used to repair things, but not everybody is doing it in reaction to the climate change.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss a contemporary cultural phenomenon in Sweden, characterized by people buying, renovating, and moving to deserted houses, while sharing their processes on social media. What is at stake when people act out notions of what is important to save and preserve for the future?

Paper long abstract:

The Facebook group "Jag räddade ett ödehus" (I saved a deserted house) was started in 2016. Today, it brings together a large number of people who dream about, own, renovate, and live in deserted houses.

Expressing identity through the home and being someone who "renovates" are and have long been important in Swedish society, while buying one's own home has become increasingly expensive. The increased interest can be seen as a way of continuing renovation and home-making practices when economic conditions have changed, but can also be related to a critique of urban life and untenable consumption, which may make a deserted house seem like an opportunity to realize one's housing dreams in a more sustainable and safer way, with reused and traditional materials and having one's own water supply. There is also interest in deserted houses from villages and municipalities that want their deserted houses to be inhabited to attract people to the area.

Based on the analysis of posts using the hashtag #jagräddadeettödehus, this paper focuses on the aspect of sharing experiences of, and creating meaning around saving a deserted house on social media. Appyling a logics approach (Glynos & Howarth 2007), which distinguishes between three logics, or three ways of structuring the world: social, political, and imaginative. Together, these logics help me answer the questions what, how, and why. Essentially, I am interested in capturing the conditions and fantasies that make practices of ‘saving’ deserted houses meaningful.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the Teduray and Lambangian indigenous agricultural system known as the "Sulagad" embodies their continuing struggle for recognition and survival. It also allows us to tap into the rich potential of indigenous knowledge systems and practices as "the basics" of our survival.

Paper long abstract:

The Tëduray and Lambangian indigenous peoples in Maguindanao, Philippines have, since time immemorial, practiced an indigenous system of agriculture called "Sulagad". Informed by their principle of "sumfat lowoh bërab fërënawa," literally, "the connection between body and breath," Sulagad ensures food sufficiency through a holistic approach that promotes living in harmony with nature. Everything in the environment that sustains life is recognized as co-equal with humans and nurtured in a web of relationships that fosters sustainability and intergenerationality.

Against the external threat of capitalism and modernization, and its concomitant climate crisis, Sulagad does not only provide an alternative to but also questions the viability of market-driven strategies. However, there is more to Sulagad than just localized food production that empowers the community. This paper argues that food sovereignty in the Teduray and Lambangian practice is a political assertion of their land, territory, and identity that is encapsulated in "memusaka inged" -- ancestral domain claim. With their ascription as "Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples" under the newly-established Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), the Sulagad system embodies their continuing struggle for recognition and survival.

Using ethnographic data from key informants, I will demonstrate how Sulagad as a cultural system embodies the fundamental principles of living, governing, sharing and caring for the rest of the duniya --the whole creation. These are central to understanding Tedurayness and Lambangianness -- an articulation of rootedness which allows us to tap into the rich potential of indigenous knowledge systems and practices as "the basics" of our survival .

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the inevitable tensions that arise in reinventing a mining landscape as a site for environmental and personal rebirth. These frictions arise between the local population and a group of “newcomers”, who know and dwell in radically different landscapes.

Paper long abstract:

“I wanted to beat the ‘tam-tam’, and raise awareness for as many people as possible. That is when someone told me about this community here” – says Rareș, one of the young “newcomers” in Corna. Corna is part of a group of villages that have been trapped in a mining conflict for more than two decades, and which seemingly continues on its resigned road towards complete depopulation. This paper proposes to follow how colliding narratives of crises experienced on a personal level and those emergent in global discourses and experiences of globalisation have instilled a need in a group of young people to find community and turn to nature in a landscape that the remaining local population perceives as empty (Dzenovska and Knight 2020) as a result of discontinued mining activities. Reconfiguring the landscape, however, leads to inevitable tensions between those who wish to partner with nature and escape a prison of society (and societal problems) on the one hand, and on the other hand, those who understand the infiltration of trees, greenery and animals in former homes, households and social spaces as aggression. These places – in the process of dwelling – used to be tended to (Ingold 2001) by neighbours, friends, family, who no longer inhabit the social and physical environment, and whose absence is a testimony to the crises and trauma that local people have experienced on a personal and on a community level.