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- Convenors:
-
Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti
(University of Turku)
Victoria Walters (Bath Spa University)
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- Discussant:
-
Ullrich Kockel
(University of the Highlands and Islands)
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Environment
- Location:
- B2.13
- Sessions:
- Thursday 8 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague
Short Abstract:
Uncertainty can breed fear, leading people to take reactionary positions around identity. We invite papers considering whether environmental uncertainty might open up more progressive, fluid notions of belonging, contesting conventional notions of indigeneity. Creative approaches are welcome.
Long Abstract:
This panel continues to explore key issues around, and perspectives on indigeneity in Europe initiated at a Place Wisdom WG Workshop in Perth in August 2022, with a shift in focus towards the impact of uncertainty on such debates. Uncertainty can breed fear, leading people to take reactionary positions around identity, as can be seen in the rise of populism. This is an important moment to consider whether, conversely, uncertainty can be the driver of more progressive positions around belonging in place. Mindful of ongoing debates about indigeneity and the controversial use of the term in the Global North, we invite papers that consider whether environmental uncertainty might open up more fluid notions of belonging. Does the English term ‘Indigenous’, by its very nature, even with a capital 'I', convey a limited notion of belonging and speak of colonial notions of ‘the native’ inappropriate to people’s contemporary experience of being from a place? What alternative term(s), perhaps from other language traditions and/or created ‘from scratch’, might be proposed for the experience of being from a place to assist both people and other species in seeking equable, diverse and sustainable futures? How might “environmentally-inspired ‘conversations’” with place (Pitcher, 2016) support this process? The panel particularly welcomes papers that consider what creative approaches and methods might bring to the discussion, whether in terms of work undertaken by professional artists alone or with communities, or initiated within and led by local communities as creative agents.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 8 June, 2023, -Kirsty Kay (University of Sheffield)
Paper short abstract:
Can intangible cultural heritage models be refocused to protect the historical transmission of nature-as-culture? Looking at the political uses of folk revivals, this paper asks whether folk music and dance have the space to creatively respond to the crises and fluid identities of the Anthropocene.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I will explore whether folk culture can move on from constructing identities based around static notions of the ethnic nation-state to reflect the fluid realities of life in the Anthropocene. Reflecting on folk revivals in contemporary Europe, I will question whether intangible cultural heritage (ICH) models can be refocused onto the non-human for communities to connect their embodied experience of landscape historically through folk music and dance in response to increasingly rapid environmental and cultural change.
Founded in human rights discourse, ICH frameworks serve to protect the communities that produce traditional culture, which in turn has the political function of legitimising a group’s claims to sovereignty and protection. Within this framework, I will reflect on two examples of folk revivals that emerged in the mid-late twentieth century, the Hungarian táncház (dance house) movement and the English folk song movement. Both have developed in different ways but in their current unstable political contexts risk being co-opted to construct narrow, ethnicist definitions of national identity.
As we tentatively emerge from a global pandemic, we find an inward-looking ethnonationalism ever-more at odds with the lived reality of a global society experiencing climate crisis, mass migration and expanding reliance on the digital sphere. By repositioning the ICH model onto the non-human, where the natural world rather than the humans responding to it is understood as the transmitter of culture, I question whether we can protect nature-as-culture through creatively acknowledging identities based around historically shifting landscapes and communities.
Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti (University of Turku) Katriina Siivonen (University of Turku)
Paper short abstract:
As tools for co-creating futures, we present participatory Futures Studies methods (Siivonen et al. 2022) to be suggested to the new Horizon Europe project ‘IN SITU: Place-based innovation of cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas’ with West Coast Finland as one of six case labs.
Paper long abstract:
New ways are needed to support and advance non-urban areas and vulnerable sectors of Cultural and Creative Industry. Interlinking research and practice, this paper presents participatory Futures Studies methods, especially the concept of Heritage Futures and the method of Heritage Futures Workshop, as tools for co-creating sustainable futures (Siivonen et al. 2022). Cultural heritage transformed into Heritage Futures, become a concept whose key characteristic is intentional co-creation of novel futures based on chosen values (Siivonen 2019). The context of the paper is the new Horizon Europe project ‘IN SITU: Place-based innovation of cultural and creative industries in non-urban areas’ (2022-2026, University of Coimbra). West Coast Finland (Rauma and Eurajoki), with its strong number of artistic practitioners, is one of the six IN SITU Labs in Europe – hubs for case studies. In the Finnish Lab area, maritime environment and cultural heritage sites are key resources for individual belonging, social resilience, well-being and local economy. Heritage Futures aims to strengthen the future agency of CCI practitioners and provide tools for co-creating skills and knowledge with connected emotions, and empathy towards both human and more-than-human world. As a consequence, it pursues deliberative cultural transformation towards sustainable societies. Heritage Futures Workshops are developed to be used to initiate cultural change. Our presentation will also reflect on the role of researchers in local development work, such as the formation of a 'field' and ethical issues, and the challenges of supporting the creative sector's future agency.
Aleida Bertran (Latvian Academy of Culture) Rūta Muktupāvela (Latvian Academy of Culture)
Paper short abstract:
With environmental uncertainty in Catalonia’s countryside growing, the Festival Natures in La Noguera (central-western Catalonia) is a creative hub of hope and reflection on belonging to the land. We explore the festival’s ideas on cultural ecology, zero-waste art and vocabulary for a new rurality.
Paper long abstract:
Since the last decade, environmental uncertainty has dramatically increased in Catalonia’s countryside, mainly due to rising temperatures, wildfires and a significant demographic decrease. This scenario threatens the existing cultural ecology, the cultural memory of Catalan rural universes and their forms of belonging. However, a new and dynamic Catalan rurality is emerging to counteract such uncertainty with lively projects that shape the collective consciousness. Exemplifying this, the Festival Natures (2019-present) takes place in Catalonia’s central-western region called La Noguera. Located in a formerly-abandoned chicken farm, the festival space operates as a creative lab and residency to forge new values anchored to the land, decentralise art, create zero-waste art and inspire new ways of experiencing nature.
This paper focuses on the festival activities as a philosophical and practical proposal for re-discovering “the homeland of our thoughts” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 24) and the “vernacular landscape” as “local custom, pragmatic adaptation to circumstances, and unpredictable mobility” (Jackson, 1984, p. xii). By looking at the festival’s activities, new terms for belonging emerge. For instance, from Plantacció by Núria Costa emerges the word cugula. This term, which refers to wild oats and is a Catalan female name, embodies the resilience of being in a hostile environment, perennially finding new ways of becoming. We examine these interpretations through in-depth interviews with the festival curators and practitioners, aiming to answer the following questions: How does the festival approach environmental uncertainty? Which words and dialogue on belonging stem from the festival? Does the festival encourage a life project?
Anne Dippel (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is an attempt to re-read and contrast the use of “indigenous people” in Wilhelm Heinrich Riehls ethnographic folklore classic “Naturgeschichte des Volkes” with contemporary transindigenous and posthuman perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with the idea of indigenous fluidity by contrasting the historical usage of the term in Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl's ethnography "Naturgeschichte des Volkes" (published 1851-1869) with current transindigenous approaches to the terminology from an anti-totalitarian and posthumanist perspective in contemporary Germany.
Riehl’s work has been considered as one of the first ethnographic attempts of “German” people. Instead of synthesizing sources while sitting in an armchair, Riehl analyzed them based on field notes gathered while hiking the lands and talking with people. While in non-European contexts, the terminology of indigeneity justified colonial atrocities at that time, Riehl uses the term “indigenous” as a resource of empowerment and rejuvenation for his social-political vision of the German Empire. “Diversity,” "rawness," and “naturalness” of German “cultures” and “languages” emanate from “livings with/in a land.” Essentialness emerges from being with earth, trees, rivers, seeds and mountains. Similar ideas appear under other signs in contemporary anthropologies of and in the South and their subsequent notions of “Terran” indigeneity and more-than-human relatedness.
Riehl's characterization of indigeneity fostered the master narrative of ethnoracist German fascism. Until today, the term is politically contaminated. Is this “blocked-ness” another “German Sonderweg”? Could the acceptance of being excluded from being “indigenous” open up a pathway to a new, more fluid concept? If so, the fact that “German lands” were always a space of human (and more-than-human) migration must be integrated. As starting point I propose to entangle transindigenous and posthuman visions with existing folklore records of place-wisdom.
Dace Bula (University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
Uncertainty has been a chronic condition of dwelling in the Riga port neighbourhoods. Their residents’ narratives abound in motifs of displacement, territorial restrictions, landscape degradation and ecological concern. The paper problematises trans-corporeal environmental embeddedness of urbanites.
Paper long abstract:
Based on an ethnographic study of five Riga neighbourhoods, the paper attempts to interpret narratives of their residents. Uncertainty has been a chronic condition of dwelling beside the Port of Riga. The environmental talk of local communities abounds in motifs of displacement, territorial restrictions, landscape degradation and ecological concern. Glen Albrecht’s concept of solastalgia (2003) — “the homesickness you have at home” — might be the most apt description of their emotional state. Concurrently, peoples’ narratives demonstrate a deep trans-corporeal embeddedness and place-attachment, which has not served as an important enough argument for local activists and NGOs in the debate on the rights of Riga port to expand and profoundly transform the terrain. The defence of natural habitats of particular plant and animal species has turned out to be far weightier and more efficient. Reverberating the idea that the long-lasting divide between culture and nature has resulted in the exemption of humans from basic laws of physical existence, the paper problematises urban environment as a habitat for contemporary city inhabitants.
Katerina Schoina (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Paper short abstract:
What happens after a natural disaster? What are people’s feelings? What will happen to them if something similar happens again? Then fear and uncertainty change the whole structure and function of the community. One example is the case of the flash floods in Western Attica in Greece in 2017.
Paper long abstract:
A natural disaster due to climate change can be a field of research for the humanities, as it can cause significant changes in the society. What happens after a disaster? What are people’s feelings? What will happen to them if something similar happens again? Then fear and uncertainty change the whole structure and function of the community.
Floods are the second most common natural disaster after forest fires and they cause serious effects on the societies that are affected. The Prefecture of Attica in Greece has suffered many disasters from dangerous phenomena in the last twenty years. As an example, the case of the flash floods in Western Attica is used for this research. On the morning of November 15, 2017, the sudden rainfall on Mount Pateras created enormous destruction in the settlements of Mandra and Nea Peramos. The phenomenon was local and the bulk of the rain fell on the mountain. This is the third-largest flood in Attica, based on the number of dead.
The analysis is based on qualitative research, on-site ethnographic research and is theoretically framed with the tools of the Science of Folklore, Anthropology and Ethnography. Narratives from victims who lived through the disaster are used to record their memories, the environmental impact on the areas, as well as their uncertainty about the area’s past and future. Finally, special emphasis will be placed on the analysis of the emotions connected to memory.
Lolita Ozoliņa (Latvian Academy of Culture)
Paper short abstract:
The interdisciplinary study of the place identity narratives and the practices of local communities in the formation of the place identity and belonging of the newly emerged Selonian region in Latvia.
Paper long abstract:
On July 1, 2021, the Law on Latvian Historical Lands entered into force in Latvia. The aim of the Law is to promote the common consciousness, identity, and belonging to the population of the Latvian historical lands. In the case of Selonia, the new region was shaped on the map of Latvia and also encouraged the local communities to revoice the narratives of Selonian identity, place belonging, and affiliation in the context of the newly emerged region. The Selonians are one of the four ancient Baltic tribes: Latgalians, Semigallians, Curonians, and Selonians, who have formed the Latvian nation by merging with the Livonians. (Livonians are belonging to the Finnic language group). The Selonians are the least studied tribe of ancient Latvia, the least known in chronicles and ancient documents. Besides this historical context, the Selonian cultural and historical region consists of multifaceted territorial units: 4 counties, 2 parts of the territory of state cities, 6 cities, and 42 parishes. Almost 800 years later, after the founding of the Diocese of Selonia, and after several identity awakening attempts, the local communities have linked in the initiative "A Community Growth Catalyst. Identity." The narratives and visual signage of Selonian identity resulted in the concept of “Selonian tribes” which is mostly used in the tourism offer of communities. Considering the complicated region’s administrative structure, the imagined character of the region's cultural landscape, and the local community initiatives, it is a place identity creation phenomenon worth academic study and consideration.