Contribution short abstract:

Introducing the panel and roundtable, this paper reviews issues with, and approaches to, positioning traditional ecological knowledge, especially as evident in vernacular crafts, as a way of integrating more-than-human sociality and solidarity into everyday practices through land-based learning.

Contribution long abstract:

The analytical concept of ‘Anthropocene’, intended to capture the current poly-crisis, remains starkly anthropocentric. How we re-create awareness towards non-human energies shaping our world in its various physical, sensory, emotional and spiritual dimensions has proved to be an ambivalent question. Abram (2020) proposed the concept of ‘Humilocene’ – based on human, but also humus – which echoes humble, humility, even humiliation. Against the persistent danger of right-wing populist instrumentalization, we continue to believe in the cognitive value of critically examining the human-ecological wisdom traditionalised within land-based, emplaced forms of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). With this paper, we aim to highlight creative forms of land-based learning, such as craft techniques, that embody relationships within the more-than human-world and offer ways of material ‘re-indigenisation’ (Abram) in the Humilocene.

Introducing the case studies presented in this panel, we draw out connections between them and the aspects of our theme they address. Does it make sense to speak of indigenous knowledge in a European context, and how could such indigenous knowledge unwrite the relationality of those no-longer-indigenous-to-place? How does unwriting foster (trans-) formations and new narrations of multivalent cultural knowledge and heritage in ways that can avoid populist instrumentalization? How might unwriting illuminate environmental engagement in ways that address the current poly-crisis?

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores David Abram’s concept of ‘wild ethics’ and asks what it means to be an ethical researcher when exploring the adaptation of traditional ecological knowledge in rural communities.

Contribution long abstract:

Adopting the role of participant-as-observer in the field of emplaced traditional craft means that the lines between your roles can appear blurred and there can be limitations. But there also exists the possibility for meaningful knowledge exchange and sustained engagement. Pre-existing links to the locality as well as the sincere reciprocity of care and learning between the researcher and the community, can create a seemingly unclear boundary between different facets. A continuous dialogue opens throughout the research process between ethics in an institutional sense and ethics as an individual interacting with the world. This paper reflects on many different influential approaches to fieldwork in craft research as well as my own experience of research on the topic of dry-stone walling throughout Scotland, which reveals how craftspeople in this sphere are evolving their traditional practices in dialogue with their environment. It references David Abrams concept of 'wild ethics' to place the researcher as one influential being within ‘a community of living subjects’

Contribution short abstract:

The Journeyman stage of craft training has all but disappeared in the UK. This paper explores the past, present and future necessity of gaining multiple perspectives in creating well rounded craftspeople to enable them to attain the to sustain and pass on their crafts to future generations.

Contribution long abstract:

As a working craftsman, the bucolic vision of the thatcher plying their craft can be somewhat distant when you are balancing on top of a ladder in the driving rain! I often hear cries of ‘there can’t be many people like you left’ from the ground, and unfortunately, they are right. There are only three and a half people left working in Scotland today who have the skills and experience to form a functioning roof from plant based materials they have gathered from the land (i.e. thatching), and the Heritage Crafts Association identifies over 250 other crafts ‘at risk’ in the UK (HCA 2023).

In the face of this, training schemes are frequently reinvented in an attempt to reverse the decline. It seems that the word that is attached to these schemes most readily is ‘Apprenticeship’. But once you have finished your training, what comes next? How does one gain the confidence and ability to sustain the practice, or progress to become a ‘Master’?

Perhaps the answer lies in the much less discussed second stage of mediaeval craft training; The Journeyman. Sennett (2008, p.58) defines this as “The difference between brute imitation of procedure and the larger understanding of how to use what one knows”. In gaining experience through travel and observing other makers, this paper will seek to explore the value of perspective to create the well rounded craftspeople of the past and future, and how and why this crucial stage of learning can be (re)incorporated into craft pedagogy.

Contribution short abstract:

The paper proposes “stepping back” – understood as metaphor and skilled and practised movement – as a concept to address how one might engage in more-than-human socialities by taking distance. It proposes examples from two ethnographic fieldsites in the mountains of Taiwan and Switzerland.

Contribution long abstract:

The paper proposes “stepping back” – understood both as metaphor, and as skilled and practised movement – as a concept to explore certain forms of more-than-human socialities. It is inspired by ethnographic fieldwork among the Paiwan Indigenous people of Taiwan and ways of relating to creatures and forces in their mountain territories by removing oneself from their presence. It is further explored in relation to fieldwork among dry stone masons in the mountains of Switzerland, where, in intensively cultivated landscapes, dry stone walls offer havens for diverse species – but only once the walls are allowed to take on a life of their own, away from the direct presence of humans. Between human absence, exploitative presence, and active caring for other-than-human beings, the middle ground is learning to step back.

With reference to moments from the fieldwork, the paper gives shape to the concept by proposing four of its features. Stepping back is not absence or disengagement; stepping back is embodied; one steps back also from knowing; stepping back is caring by withdrawing from relations of dependence. I go on to reflect on the use and application of the concept: how as scholars we can be attentive to diverse forms of stepping back; how we might ourselves take distance from knowing other beings; and how, by taking backward steps in our research, we might opt to refrain from talking for other beings, allowing for their ontological self-determination.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper considers the unwriting of sustainability education through embodied community practice in Scotland. Thinking with ‘ecologies,’ I explore peer learning across place-based environmental education, land work, and culture making with/in more-than-human communities.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper presents an ecological understanding of peer-to-peer learning in rural communities as a case study of unwriting conventional forms of sustainability education.

I explore how networks of practitioners across place-based environmental education, land work, and culture making in Scotland might comprise dynamic living systems with/in the landscape and more-than-human communities. How can the co-creative, non-linear action of ecologies invite inclusion and innovation while centring TEK and I/indigenous ways of being? How and why this is an important question in Scotland is evident in the work of Williams (2024), Smith (2024), Barding (2023), Sandilands and McFadyen (2022), and others. Flow and change are necessary for ecologies to survive, ie. be sustainable.

Learning communities as ‘ecologies’ builds on Affifi's (2022) ecologizing education, and particularly on the ‘wild pedagogies’ of Jickling, Blenkinsop, et al (2018, 2022), which illuminates the agency of more-than-human beings as teachers and partners in education. My inquiry shifts from their focus on children and teachers-in-training to consider the relationships among practitioners, particularly those outside the school system, and their larger communities.

These forms of education resonate with the work of Indigenous scholars Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013, 2024), who writes of plants as teachers and invites the possibility of ‘becoming indigenous,’ and Randy Woodley (2012), who presents a dynamic, active peace within ‘the community of creation.’ Perhaps in an echo of Abrams’s (2017, 2020) and Rosenfeld’s (2021) wild ethics in the Humilocene, the paper imagines ecologies as a model for practical action towards ecocultural peace building.

Contribution short abstract:

Achieving sustainability requires reshaped food supply chains. University of Limerick is developing an Agri-hood campus as part of its holistic sustainability mission. The paper focuses on the stories that motivate the permaculture development and participants are shaped by working the land.

Contribution long abstract:

University of Limerick has developed a systemic Sustainability Framework 2030 through the engagement of >70 staff across its campus community, facilitated by its Future and Foresight team. This strategic initiative seeks to demonstrate the value of permanent adaptive responsiveness and synergetic in/ter/ventions to ongoing change and towards achieving sustainability.

Under the framework’s societal strand, which sits beside governance, ecology and economy, one of the mission labs focuses on the development of an Agri-hood campus. It aims to recast the food supply chains to offer healthy, regional produce including growing a substantial amount in a permaculture garden on campus. A mission lab offers a space for experimentation and knowledge creation, learning and skills development across disciplines and sectors to address a wicked problem. To motivate students, staff and partners to commit to this long-term Agri-hood project, it is essential to conjure up captivating stories that relate to the indigenous knowledge of the seasonal’ waves of plenty and scarcity’ and talk of the traditional tools and skills for working the land organically. It is hoped that in turn, the participants will learn and tell stories about the place of humans in nature. The paper is considering those narrative developments.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper discusses Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in indigenous practices of viticulture to ensure a sustainable, “honorable harvest” (Wall Kimmerer). How might interdisciplinary work between Art and Anthropology assist in sharing such practices with non-indigenous communities, if at all?

Contribution long abstract:

This paper will discuss an artistic response to the wild and fallow zones of a former vineyard as an entry point into a consideration of the way in which indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) has shaped viticulture practices past and present. Could indigenous communities be said to un-write settler colonial traditions by instituting practices of listening to other species and giving thanks to the earth in particular ways as part of the wine making process? Or is the notion of un-writing ill-equipped to deal with the messiness of de-colonisation, instituting a binary of inscription and erasure that fails to acknowledge complex relations, a degree of continuity of viticultural practice within some indigenous communities over time and the sense of re-emergence and un-earthing such practices engender. Further, might an art practice informed by Anthropology constitute a means of supporting those who are not indigenous to place to learn TEK practices, paying respect to and learning from the knowledge traditions of indigenous communities, while respecting their rights to privacy and opacity (Glissant). Alternatively, is it vital that such practices are taught by indigenous communities themselves and shared in the context of respectful collaboration?

Contribution short abstract:

Sharing TEK alive in land- and sea-based learning and ways of crafting (a living) on Barra & Vatersay, this paper considers ambitions to co-create - cognisant of more-than-human socialities – coastal practices that are appropriate to people, place and our times of poly-crisis.

Contribution long abstract:

Our paper draws from year one of an Engaged Science project, Muir is Tir (Sea and Land (Gaelic)), which is the collaborative vision of the communities of Barra and Vatersay in partnership with social and environmental scientists and creatives from four universities. Together we desire practical approaches to coastal change that we can collectively craft and that can support quality of life for the islands’ communities and a flourishing coastline, both. Our paper describes, with reference to creative approaches and specific craft techniques, our attentiveness to the more-than-human –including in the sense of world-shaping non-human energies such as those felt in extreme weather events and of the more-than-human others with whom human islanders are related and entangled such as seagrass, cow or scallop. Cognisant of the wisdom that sits in the places (Basso, 1996) of Vatersay and Barra, we will share the way in which the ecotone (which in Ecology describes a transitional area between two biological communities) has become a powerful poetic concept for us as we grapple with literal and metaphorical shifting sands, with change and transition here. It speaks to the project’s efforts to produce both so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ and new stories of adaption, that are both rooted in traditional island culture and informed by science. Learning from life in ecotonal areas seems fitting as traditional forms of living shift and are reinvented, as eco-anxieties swell whilst ecoliteracy is pursued, as coastlines shift, communities rally, and publics form around both concerns and hopes for futures.

Contribution short abstract:

The study explores the intersection of musical practices and environmental awareness, seeking to demonstrate how music could contribute to our understanding of sustainable relationships with nature, and to reveal the potential of music performances in creating and promoting eco-friendly practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are based on economic, social, and environmental aspects. Nevertheless, the crises of the 21st century reveal that sustainable development cannot be complete without a cultural dimension. One of the essential functions of culture and arts nowadays is to restart humanistic values and promote empathy and sensitivity towards more-than-human Earth (Abram), revising our relationships with non-human agents, animals, plants, things, and technological artefacts, thus implementing the idea of Humilicene and ascertaining that the anthropocentrism of modernity, treating man as the master of nature, is neither resilient nor sustainable.

Our presentation is based on an ecomusicological approach, which synthesises musicology, ecocriticism, and cultural studies, offering new perspectives on the interconnections between music, culture, and nature (Allen) and promoting creativity, imagination, and empathy in raising awareness of environmental challenges. The aim of the study is to explore the intersection of musical practices and environmental awareness, seeking to demonstrate how musical traditions could contribute to our understanding of sustainable relationships with nature, and to reveal the potential of music performances in creating and promoting eco-friendly practices. The empirical data of the study are primarily based on an autoethnographic approach: from the perspective of the ethnomusicologist and composer himself, the analysis of sources of inspiration and motivation (Lovelock, Abram, Gerrard, Poulelaouen) in relation to his musical cycle “Gaïa”, which illuminates the potential of the primordial culture to modern society, is offered.

Contribution short abstract:

Digital Cultures and Cosmology, Identies

Contribution long abstract:

Posthumanism, Media Theory, Cosmology; German-Speaking Cultures, Post-imperial cultures of austro-hungarian monarchy, Cultural Anthropology, Post-humanist economies, post-capitalist speculations, property, gift cultures; more-than-human epistemology; aesthetics, ethnographic theory - sensual ethnographies

Contribution short abstract:

Folklore; Anthropology; Study of Religions; Folk Religion

Contribution long abstract:

Legends; Landscape Lore; Sacred Sites; Sacred Geography; Agricultural Practices; Seasonal Lore; Weather Lore; Land as Agent/Living; Other-Than-Human Persons; Otherworld; Spirituality; Religion; Sacrality; Mythology; TEK

I am interested in the intellectual history of the academic disciplines of anthropology, folklore, ethnology, and the study of religions and how theories and views of culture have been "applied" differently to indigenous peoples and to peoples in European/Euro-diasporic countries and regions. I am interested in re-framing "folklore" as indigenous knowledge and TEK and spiritual connection to place.

My research interests are in the area of traditional knowledge systems/cosmologies as well as new and emergent religious movements, including contemporary Paganism in the Irish context.

Contribution short abstract:

posthumanism; human-environment relations; anthropogenic climate change/Anthropocene; Kashubia; Stimmung (attunement); eco-affects and emotions; anthropology of art

Contribution long abstract:

T. Morton's concept of ‘being ecological’: according to Morton, humans are already ecological; it is therefore less a question of learning to be ecological than of rediscovering it. Furthermore, Morton assumes that all art is ecological because it implies solidarity with non-humans. To what extent does this also apply to crafts?

What role does (critical) posthumanism play in the rediscovery of the ecological condition of human beings? My posthumanist studies on Kashubia transcend previous academic knowledge production on this region in that they do not ask what is Kashubian, but attempt to ethnographically describe concrete spatial-material assemblages and the human and non-human entities embedded in them in their potentiality and openness, in their multiple appearances and essences beyond stereotyping, essentialising, anthropocentric and dualistic attributions in the light of the Anthropocene. I have tried to think the abstract anthropocene processes in terms of concrete landscape assemblages, objects and materials, in terms of the concrete narratives of those human and non-human actors, in order to allow an empathy with, engagement with and attunement to concrete transformations audible in everyday life.

What role can a Stimmung-centred perspective play in the ethnographic approach to indigenous knowledge?

We could talk about the dwelling perspective, the inhabiting and caring constitution of the human being (Heidegger): How does it correlate with the nomadic constitution of the subject (Braidotti; Deleuze/Guattari)?

Why should we abandon the Anthropocene concept in favour of the Humilocene? Both terms are equally post-anthropocentric insofar as they describe the defeat and crisis situation of humans.