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- Convenors:
-
Libby Robin
(Australian National University)
Claudia Leal (Universidad de los Andes)
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- Chair:
-
Libby Robin
(Australian National University)
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Streams:
- Expanding the Practice of Environmental History
- Location:
- Room 20
- Sessions:
- Thursday 22 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
History-writing in the 21st century engages with both planetary concepts (Anthropocene, Great Acceleration) and personal response to environmental and climate crises. With creative arts and museums, transdisciplinary teams enrich environmental history and enable it to better engage with communities.
Long Abstract:
The roundtable explores the partnerships between history and environmental humanities within and beyond universities and museums that can enable ‘cultural, biological, and academic diversity, all of which are necessary for sustainable futures for flourishing life on earth’. One early manifesto for ecological humanities called for 're-threading the fabric of knowledge’, and suggested methods including Curiosity, Crisis and acknowledging uncertainty and Concern to repair damage. Increasing collaboration across the humanities over the past two decades has raised awareness of the social justice and ethical dimensions of sustainable futures, and their more-than-human dimensions.
At the beginning of the 21st century, environmental history focused on the land, particularly 'productive' land. Its central concerns were natural resource management and 'wilderness' protection, mostly in rich, western countries. Now it is inclusive of the oceans and atmospheres that operate beyond national borders, considering environmental and ethical flows at a global scale. It is actively engaged in dialogues with Indigenous peoples, and with those who disproportionately suffer from global change. not just those who have the power to curb excesses. Environmental humanities reach beyond the human - to the other kingdoms of life, to plants, to animals and to fungi, exploring connections and reciprocal relations generated by new understandings of justice and ethical care. Key themes raised in this international roundtable will be Animals in History, Forest Justice, the Blue Humanities, Soils and underground connections, Multispecies studies and contributing constructively to understanding life in the Anthropocene.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Thursday 22 August, 2024, -Contribution short abstract:
I focus on a missing issue in Environmental Humanities: the indigenous archive. I discuss the transdisciplinary nature of using such archives ethically, writing better 'more-than-human histories'. So I tackle 3 neglected issues in E.H.: multispecies research, Deep Time, and traditional knowledge.
Contribution long abstract:
I want to contribute both thematic and geographic specificity to this roundtable. My work is on animal history, local ecological knowledge and the idiographic contours of human-animal relations over the longue durée, on a project called Beasts of the Southern World: multi-species history and the Anthropocene. Thus my research contributes to this roundtable by focusing on a key issue missing in the Environmental humanities: using the indigenous archive. I want to discuss the transdisciplinary nature of the ethical creation and use of such archives, to write stronger 'more-than-human histories' of southern Africa, reaching back into Deep History. So my part tackles three often-neglected issues in Environmental HUMANnities: multispecies research, deep time, and traditional ecological knowledge. I deploy different time scales (from very recent to millennia ago). I explore vernacular knowledge (or traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous knowledge systems). I also propose that such an approach can advance a ‘usable past’ that helps both animals and humans in the present.
Contribution short abstract:
Environmental Humanities scholars experiment with new forms of collaboration for studying the Anthropocene. What does the field offer for studying anthropogenic soils, and emerging practices and ideas of repairing contaminated, toxic, and depleted soils in different parts of the globe?
Contribution long abstract:
Environmental Humanities scholars experiment with creative forms of collaboration for studying anthropogenic landscapes and sites. What do the environmental humanities have to contribute for studying the repair of soils after contamination and depletion though toxic substances, radioactivity, or post- Green Revolution agriculture?
How can scholars work together across the sciences, humanities and arts, to find ways of recuperating soils that are eroded, toxic or radioactive. What forms of collaboration are needed beyond the university to make an impact? How to meaningfully include activists, artists and the wider public?
Contribution short abstract:
Within this round table we will discuss how the use of different methods and approaches of the Blue Humanities such as art and literature through movements and objects cope with the natural dynamics of marine ecosystems and populations for an undisciplined and comprehensive study of the ocean.
Contribution long abstract:
Societies have historically depended on and have been shaped by marine organisms and ecosystems, through which relationships have been built at ecological and cultural levels over millennia. These mutual interactions have ensured the subsistence of humans and the resilience capacity of societies based on a sustainable use of the oceans, but also caused deep impacts on ecosystem composition, structure and function due to over-exploitation, leading to habitat degradation, species endangerment and extinction. Using the methods and approaches of the Humanities for the study and knowledge of the oceans thickens a narrative in itself multilayered, cross-cultural, and multi-specific narrative. This includes not simply diversifying scientific disciplines but truly undisciplining the Humanities. We aim at presenting a transdisciplinary approach within the framework of the Blue Humanities where art, literature and objects are sided with oceanic currents, the migrations of animals, people´s circulation across the globe and the movements created by some artifacts and non-human remains. We expect to also contribute to the discussions about the Anthropocene, placing the ocean and a more-than-human reality at the centre of the stage.
Contribution short abstract:
South Asian history is an entangled history of colonisation. The colonial processes introduced a new era and scale of changes – especially the river. This paper locates how historical interventions in the natural world continue to inform emergent practices that make rivers a subject of control.
Contribution long abstract:
South Asian history is an entangled history of colonisation of human and non-human habitations. The colonial processes introduced a new era and scale of changes to the landscape – especially the river. Through the large-scale financialisation of canals, rivers emerged as subjects of control and profit. This paper locates how historical interventions in the natural world continue to inform emergent practices that make rivers a subject of control. In particular, the paper centres on the effective use of the political – that is undermined in approaching the emergent needs of environmental humanities from the Global South.
Contribution short abstract:
Environmental history has grown strong in Latin America, addressing a wide variety of topics that include deforestation, cities and energy. Dialogue with environmental humanities has been scant. How can historians collaborate with artists inspired by topics ranging from landscapes to animals?
Contribution long abstract:
Environmental history has grown strong in Latin America, initially centered around deforestation and agricultural export commodities, soon expanding to build broader forest histories and consider internal markets, and later colonizing new grounds including cities and, more recently, energy. Dialogue with environmental humanities has been scant. Yet artists have been inspired by a variety of environmental topics ranging from landscapes to animals. How do these two forms of “environmental humanities” compare? What possibilities for collaboration emerge? This contribution will emerge from dialogue with environmental historians and artists from at least two different countries in the region.
Contribution short abstract:
This contribution to the roundtable will draw on a combination of Blue Humanities and Anthropocene History, discussing how the ocean is increasingly taking up space in the environmental humanities and adding new perspectives to historical studies of the Anthropocene.
Contribution long abstract:
This contribution to the roundtable will draw on a combination of Blue Humanities and Anthropocene History. We are interested in exploring intersections between technology, time, space and scale where the blue humanities meet other disciplines in order to make sense of the oceanic environment and its meaning for the planet at large. We will discuss how the ocean is increasingly taking up space in the environmental humanities, both benefiting from previous theoretical work in the humanities that can bring out important aspects of ocean environing, and adding new perspectives to Anthropocene studies by making visible the historical agency of the human and also non-human world.