Paper Short Abstract:

Using walking ethnography and memories, this paper examines the multispecies relationality shaped by living and working in steljniki. Drawing on the concept of slow disturbance (Tsing 2012), it acknowledges the agentive, co-constitutive roles of humans, grazing animals and common bracken.

Paper Abstract:

Using walking ethnography and memories related to mixed extensive farming, this paper examines the multispecies relationality shaped by living and working in steljniki. These distinctive patches of land, unique to Southeastern Slovenia, are characterized by common bracken and sparse birches, sometimes also spruce and juniper. Steljniki gave the landscape such a special appearance that, according to one explanation, the region even got its name from the white trunks of birches.

By paying attention to interspecies collaboration, this study acknowledges the agentive, co-constitutive roles of humans, grazing animals and common bracken in inhabiting and shaping steljniki. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of slow disturbance (2012), the paper first traces the emergence of steljniki through grazing, bracken harvesting and bracken’s reproduction labour alongside topography and the composition of the soil. As Donna Haraway explains with her notion of sympoietic worldings: nothing makes (only) itself, but is always in making-with (2016, 58). Finally, the paper also considers the trajectory of abandoned steljniki. It was observed that the natural regrowth of hornbeam and oak forests takes 40–50 years after the abandoning of bracken harvesting. Once labelled as degraded land, actively maintained steljniki are nowadays valued for their biodiversity and some have gained recognition as cultural and natural heritage. Thus, in the case of steljniki, human and animal slow disturbances in fact sustained diverse multispecies life, yet the question remains what kind of work is needed from all living beings inhabiting the shared landscape for mutual thriving.