Paper short abstract:

What if the environment is not "out there" but rather the world available through our different senses? This paper considers Lewis Mumford's and other historical thinkers' notion of the environment as primarily the world of concrete experience, secondarily the world as an abstract object of mind.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the nature of the environment by thinking through the American intellectual Lewis Mumford (1895–1990). We can study shifting understandings of the environment, be it the term itself or what we today put into it, but is it possible to establish a philosophical and metaphysical basis for what it means to be environed? Mumford thought so and tried to root his environmental awareness in awareness itself. Drawing from philosophers, poets, and scientists alike, he embraced an experiential approach to the environment that was at once psychological, ecological, and philosophical. This interdisciplinary interpretation of the environment, grounded in concrete experience, came to constitute the basis for our relation to the surrounding world, relating the subject not only to an inner life but to the outer world. By contrast, Mumford stressed that abstract understandings of the environment were at least one remove away from reality, and that our various conceptions of it will have consequences also for how we act in relation to it.

The second part of the paper considers the environment through the categories of the abstract and the concrete from an interdisciplinary perspective, arguing that we have much to gain from grounding our notion of the environment in Mumford's and other historical thinkers' insistence on the primacy of raw experience. To understand the nonhuman world, we must paradoxically begin by thinking like humans. What this means to environmental history, which cannot but use abstraction to make sense of past environments, is the subject of the conclusion.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how concepts of social ecology capture the relational character of environmental interactions. What concepts were coined in social ecology institutes in Vermont and Vienna, for example? How did the members of the “thought collectives” relate to their sociopolitical environments?

Paper long abstract:

The 1970s and 80s were the heyday of research collectives and political groups on social ecology. Born out of an awareness of the climate crisis and social inequality, they sought a transdisciplinary dialogue between their members and society rooted in multiple perspectives—including the sciences and the humanities, the arts and new technologies. In this paper, I look at concepts of environmental knowledge that have been coined in two different places: The Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont – with Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl as advocates of social ecology in the sense of municipalism, and, secondly, the Vienna Institute for Social Ecology and the concept of the social metabolism. Interestingly, the two institutes have very different approaches to social ecology—with the relationality of environment-interaction as a common ground. In this paper, I examine how members of these collectives defined key concepts of social ecology, and how the social ecology collectives interacted with other groups in civil society in the places where they were based. Through these key questions, and by tracing the concepts and knowledge exchange between and around social ecology institutes, the paper aims to contribute to the history of social ecological thought in the last third of the twentieth century.

Fleck, Ludwik. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Translated by Frederick Bradley and Trenn, Thaddeus J. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores human-environment relationality and intercarnality, and discusses situated knowledges in the context of Baltic pre-Christian mythologies as alternative genealogies for an affirmative ethical futuring of human-environment relations.

Paper long abstract:

In „The Spell of the Sensous” David Abram critically analyzes the dominating human-environment relationship, and highlights an animist relationality as a potential alternative. His proposal suggests the necessity of an ontological shift in thinking and living environments and considers recognition and analysis of historical and indigenous knowledges, in context with a potential revitalization of relations and approaches supposedly already lost. In my paper, I build upon this stance by exploring pre-Christian Baltic mythologies and elemental knowledges as viable alternative genealogies for an affirmative ethical futuring of human-environment relations. Employing an interdisciplinary genealogical approach between folklore, history and philosophy allows arguing for the presence of history within lived materialities today, thus, approaching revitalization of alternative knowledges in the context of remembrance of what is “already there”. Thus, I explore the potential of employing situated knowledges as vehicles for unearthing the felt sense of environmental embeddedness of the self and human-environment processuality and entanglement at the intersection of ecophenomenology and critical genealogy. With this, the paper mobilizes the genealogies of the past for a reevaluation and reinvention of the concept of environment as something that is not only around us, but also an extension of us and within us on an experiential as well as an analytical level.

Paper short abstract:

In the Anthropocene, society faces increasing environmental destruction. At the same time, 'production' – the dominant concept with which we understand society's interaction with the environment – has a strong creationary meaning. How can we understand this contradiction historically?

Paper long abstract:

I am interested in the question whether it makes sense to understand environmental destruction with a concept of ‘production’ so closely associated to human creation? I propose a thorough defamiliarization with the concept by laying out a concise conceptual history of ‘production’. I argue that since the 17th century the concept shifted from a natural emanative meaning to one that refers to the creationary potential of the productive human mind. The modern emphasis on the human mind not only enabled to disassociate environmental destructive consequences from production but is also closely related to the control and command over humans and nature. This is accompanied by a shift from a 'spatial' to a 'temporal' meaning of production. For this temporal production, the environment must be managed as a stable condition for production over time. However, destruction as an absolute end point cannot be adequately conceptualized if we understand the environment in such terms. Thus, efforts to describe environmental destruction with ‘production’ are hindered by the problematic logic of the concept itself.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses past and contemporary examples of the health-environment coupling via a philosophical and historical analysis. The variability of this relationship is due to several factors, such as conceptualisations, healthcare practices and scientific theories.

Paper long abstract:

The paper shows past and contemporary examples of the pathogenic and salutogenic conceptualisations of the environment (and related terms such as landscape and place) with respect to health in the history of medicine and healthcare practices. The variability of the health-environment coupling is due to several factors, such as the meaning assigned to both environment and health by cultures, disciplines, and branches of sciences, as well as the evolution of the practices of health, or the changing role of the body in medicine. Starting, for instance, from the Corpus Hippocraticum the role of the environment has been causally related to several symptoms and conditions. Humoral pathology, derived from the Corpus Hippocraticum and Galen's theory, was often accompanied by miasma theory, according to which the environment was mostly identified with air. Miasma theory was then questioned during the nineteenth-century London epidemic of cholera and it was later replaced by the germ theory. The introduction of germ theory radically changed the comprehension of the relationship between environment and health and it may have intensified the separation between health and environment. These theories show different pathogenic conceptualisations of the environment, with implications for healthcare practices and treatments. During the contemporary history of medicine, the pathogenic account of the environment remains preponderant. Yet, in this paper, I will briefly sketch also the main characteristics of the so-called salutogenic account in medicine, which is based on the positive role of the environment for health. I retrace it in the history of medicine and contemporary psychology.

Paper short abstract:

'Eco-Devo' advocates for the significance of the environment in organismal development. Comparing accounts of genetic and environmental sex determination over the last century using narrative theory reveals the way the environment drops out of explanations and the challenges to reintegrating it.

Paper long abstract:

Proponents of 'Eco-Devo' (Ecological Development) advocate for the significance of the environment in organismal development. Sex determination is paradigmatic. Genetic Sex Determination (GSD) has become the dominant model, pulling attention from research on Environmental Sex Determination (ESD). For instance, many turtle species undergo temperature-based ESD. As these species may be adversely impacted by climate change, they are a pertinent subject on Eco-Devo's agenda. However, recognition of the environment's role in development is not new. Temperature-based ESD theories have ancient origins. Given this, what change does Eco-Devo entail? I approach this question using Narrative theory, as development in Biology is expressed in terms of processes, and narrative is the major way people make sense of processes. A traditional account of development would hold the organism to be a 'character' (or set of actants) and the environment to be a 'setting' or 'background'. The Eco-Devo position recognizes that keeping the environment in the background devalues its relationship to the developing plot, problematically erasing it from the narrative. With narrative and semiotic theory, we see that the environment could be made significant in biological narratives either synthetically (as actant) or thematically (as catalyst). Yet, examining the last century of ESD and GSD accounts, Eco-Devo appears restricted from changing the content of explanations. Rather, it changes the context, evoking a genre shift, played out in practices of reading rather than writing biological narratives. Independent of biological particulars, this narratological approach can be valuably employed for any inquiry into relations between nested processes.

Paper short abstract:

Through a close reading of contemporary artworks by Bianca Hester (AU), Iriani Halperin (US), Robert Zhao Renhui (SG), Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho (KR) this paper explores how interdisciplinary artists collaborate with geology in order to offer new ways of mapping planetary transformations.

Paper long abstract:

A number of contemporary artists approach geology as a multispecies witness. However discussions of the multispecies within environmental histories tend to focus on (animal and vegetable) species that humans consider to be ‘living.’ Through a close reading of contemporary artworks by Australian artist Bianca Hester, American-Scottish artist Iriani Halperin, Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui, and Korean duo Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho this paper proposes the geology of the planet itself as a multispecies witness. Each artist discussed here engages in a speculative practice that builds new ways to consider landscape as a living form emergent from, and in collaboration with, geological matter. Each artist enters into a transformative relationship with a specific location/ landscape on the planet, whether via extractive materials, surface, subsurface, or archive.

Furthermore, these artists all challenge the legacy of Linneaus by reforming the species boundaries between human and nonhuman, mineral, animal, and vegetable. If animal or plant sentience is critical to our understandings of landscapes within the Anthropocene, then addressing the geological as a species of sentient witness opens up new (and old) ways to expand multispecies understandings of landscape. The artists discussed in this paper all offer new ways to think about and experience specific geological relationships as key contributors to any ecosystem and imagine landscapes as living environments. Building on their work, this paper suggests that collaboration with geological forms offer a new way of mapping and understanding the transforming multispecies landscapes of the planet.

Paper short abstract:

Ancient environments are rapidly changing amid land use change and bushfires in southeast Australia. Looking at deep time, colonial-extractivist and climate changed histories of East Gippsland´s forests from a relational perspective, I explore how meaning over the environment is negotiated.

Paper long abstract:

The devastating 2019-20 bushfires in southeast Australia have unsettled the ways both humans and nonhumans relate to each other and with their environments. Haunted not only by the short-term losses of human assets, local biodiversity and landscape change but also by the accelerating threats of extinction and eco-system collapse, local residents, land managers and conservationists make meaning together with gliders, owls and trees amidst Australia´s climate catastrophe. In this paper, I focus on the forests of the Errinundra plateau in far-east Gippsland which harbors some of Australia´s most spectacular old growth and Victoria´s largest remaining stands of cool-temperate rainforest, providing a refuge for threatened species and exceptional biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. However, with a history of land use strongly informed by colonialism and extractivism, these unique ecological communities are in peril: Can they persist in a fundamentally altered environment? How can humans and nonhumans live well together in ancient environments in a rapidly changing world? What ideas, values and materialities inform negotiations over their management amidst these challenges? To better understand how meaning over the environment and environmental change is negotiated in light of the Australian climate catastrophe, I look at human-nature relations in the aftermath of the 2019-20 bushfires. By conceptualising human-nature relations as relationships of care from an interdisciplinary perspective, involving anthropological, sociological and ethical considerations, I seek to unravel the deep time, colonial-extractivist, and climate changed histories of the environment of the Errinundra forests.

Paper short abstract:

The paper tries to interweave Darwin's Artificial Selection of profit-oriented species and Plant importation, both characterizing Environmental modernity and ecological maneuvering dawning the age of radical evolutionism.

Paper long abstract:

Darwin’s natural and artificial selection established that species (both plants and animals) achieve mutation from their parent species. Human selection or Artificial Selection also helps to multiply species as asserted by Darwin and his critics incepting materialistic or radical evolutionism. Thus, Robert Chambers and Herbert Spencer tied biological and social progress together with an emphasis on humans' cumulative efforts. Thus, Biogeography became an emergent field of environmental modernity that was made more inventive through the working of colonial botanists and biologists. Thus the environment was programmed to preserve only rare and valuable species. The environment turned racist, mute, anonymous and external to serve the ill-imperialism that trended the notion of Bio-conquest. Plant importation was one of the weapons that bio-conquest employed in British India in the late 19th and early 20th century spreading plant diseases from imported invasive pests ,insects and fungi . Woolly Louse of the apple, pests from American cotton plants , Cotton stem weevil from Cambodia cotton, were to name a few. The paper thus locating the environment as a major gate pass to understanding Victorian modernity clubs several historical flaps that attach many transitional themes such as Artificial Selection, Colonial Botany, Plant Transfer and importation, and colonial ecology all conjoined to understand post-Darwinian calculable, and manipulable environmental modernity that never kept the environment at a distance but only stopped communicating with it.

Keywords: Artificial Selection, Evolutionism, Environmental Modernity, Plant Importation, Bio-conquest.

Dr.Priyanka Guha Roy

Assistant Professor

Kazi Nazrul University

email-basupriyanka1983@gmail.com

Paper short abstract:

What is the environment in Conservation Biology, and how has it changed over the discipline’s forty-year history as its goals and approaches have evolved? In this talk, I will explore these questions in relation to conservation in India, based on an oral history of Indian Conservation Biology.

Paper long abstract:

Initially, “environment” in Conservation Biology meant one thing: the ecological requirements of endangered and charismatic species. However, as the field’s goals and approaches evolved, “environment” has taken on multiple meanings. For example, as interest shifted from single-species to communities, biologists had to find ways to characterize multi-species environments. Or, as wildlife entered anthropogenic landscapes, humans needed to be included in its conceptualization. And as global drivers of local impacts began to be recognized (e.g., climate change), the scale of what constitutes the environment of a species needed broadening. In this talk, I trace these shifts in conceptualization of the environment in Conservation Biology, based on oral history interviews of 25 Indian Conservation Biologists.

Indian Conservation Biology is unique in the global south. Like the rest of the world, it is based upon ideas and frameworks from “the west”, mainly from the US (what one might call Michael Soulé’s Conservation Biology). At the same time, due to India’s historical resistance to foreign biologists its Conservation Biology community is entirely local. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the global south, where Conservation Biology historically, and to a large extent till date, is dominated by global north biologists. Indian biologists, have had their ears closer to the ground, so to speak, and have often questioned Conservation Biology’s relevance and values, including its characterization of the environment. Therefore, I believe that the “Indian experience” is a particularly useful lens to critically examine the idea of the environment in Conservation Biology

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines land conceptualisations amidst shifting environmental relations. Drawing from agrarian environments of South Asia and assemblage thinking, it looks at the ecological and material implications of two technologies of government: statistical enumeration and digital land governance.

Paper long abstract:

Land conceptualisation and categorisation questions have invigorated discussions on the ongoing radical environmental transformations. Recognising the interconnectedness of the agrarian and the environment, it is crucial for studies that take relational approaches to the environment that pay closer attention to land transformation mechanisms and consequent changes in environmental subjectivities.

This paper extends recent discussions on relational approaches to the environment in two ways. Firstly, it draws on the insights of assemblage thinking applied to the hybrid nature of agrarian environments in South Asia. Secondly, it incorporates the historical trajectories of changing 'technologies of government' under British colonial rule and independent India, shedding light on the reconfigurations of social, material, and ecological relations that define land.

Technologies of government mediate relationships between states, localities, communities, and the non-human constituents of the environment. In this study, I delineate the ecological and material implications of two cases: statistical enumeration of forests during British Colonial rule and digitalised land governance in contemporary India.

Many studies across disciplines have argued that numerical representations and statistical enumeration, as particular forms of power/knowledge, have played significant roles in shaping and constructing forests as a land-use category. Building on these and considering the increasing prevalence of digital technologies in land governance, this paper investigates how digital representations are remaking the relational aspects that constitute land. It explores the conceptual and material implications of the digitalized ecologies of land.

Paper short abstract:

Since the advent of Hobbes' Leviathan, our modern liberal view of nature has become dominant. The question is, can we solve the problems it creates without understanding the dialectics of its development, which is encapsulated in Leviathan?

Paper long abstract:

If we follow the historian Marcel Gauchet's interpretation, it becomes clear that Hobbes' Leviathan is the culmination of a development that led to our liberal approach to nature. The question is whether the problems that arise in the process can be compensated for by contemporary concepts if they ignore this history and our current state of exception (Anthropocene). There have been several strong attempts to synthesise these antagonisms. Keywords such as embedding liberalism, ecological republicanism and concepts of horizontal transcendence are examples of these attempts to heal the separation from nature. But in the face of impending and approaching climate catastrophe, we are reaching a new form of "state of emergency (or exeption)" (Schmitt, Hobbes) (perhaps marked by the "Anthropocene"). Therfore we should as ourselves: Is it enough to find the problematic concepts in the history of ideas and "straighten them out"? But also: can we find buried resources to solve this "state of emergency", thus enabling us to fulfil the hope of an anti-antagonistic relationship with non-human nature and to reopen ourselves to the experience of the concrete alterity of the non-human world? This lecture would like to pursue this question by paradigmatically tracing the paradoxical dialectic of the genesis of the liberal concept of nature, which was not a liberation from the Other in nature (transcendence), but suppresses this to this day.