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?