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- Convenors:
-
Laura Alice Watt
(Aspara Consulting ehf.)
Karen Jones (University of Kent, UK)
Tim Waterman (University College London)
Sarah Hamilton (University of Bergen)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Streams:
- Landscapes of Cultivation and Consumption
- Location:
- Room 16
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 20 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Interactive session exploring current debates around boundary crossings and overlaps between landscapes of work and parks and protected areas; how might we re-envision twenty-first century preservation to avoid false oppositions between labor and natural and cultural heritage protection?
Long Abstract:
In 1995, Richard White published a book chapter detailing how, by positing modern work as the enemy of nature and campaigning for a more pure, untouched vision of nature, many environmentalists had created an artificial separation between people and their natural surroundings that did more harm than good: “This fixation on purity and this distrust of our own labor—along with our casual, everyday ahistoricism that robs us of any sense of how our current dilemmas developed—explain at least some of our own inability to deal with mounting environmental problems, bitter social divisions, and increasing despair about our relations with the rest of the planet.” Now nearly thirty years later, how might this dynamic be changing through the deliberate inclusion of human work within protected natural landscapes—or has it changed at all? In particular, management debates relating to parks and related public spaces, often set aside for both nature protection and human recreation, tend to reveal undercurrents of assumptions about which publics and which uses are assumed to “belong” in the natural world—or not. Our roundtable panel (sponsored by the Landscape Research Group) will offer some brief observations/remarks and then open the conversation up to include the audience—we envisage this as a participatory and interactive session in which we hope to explore current debates around boundary crossings and overlaps between landscapes of work and play; how the long history of idealization of wilderness might be continuing to shape ideas, practice and ecosystems; and whether new concepts are gaining ground in a world of post-humanism, rewilding and decolonial critiques. How might we re-envision twenty-first century preservation in terms of intersectionality, social justice and care? Just what is a park in a world of increasing complexity, transdisciplinarity and climate emergency?
We envisage a roundtable of 5-6 people, drawn from different regions/specialisms and will confirm the final speaker list nearer the time, once individual travel plans are in place. Confirmed panelists include Karen Jones and Laura Alice Watt, environmental historians with expertise on parks and designed landscapes and with particular interests in the complicated striations between natural heritage, cultural values and ecosystem preservation, and Tim Waterman, specialist in landscape architecture, history, theory and concepts of utopia.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Tuesday 20 August, 2024, -Contribution short abstract:
I can discuss parks that displaced loggers and others built with concentration camp prisoner labor in the US and Germany,1920-1945. For example, Killesbergpark was built with Jewish prisoners and to entertain Nazis. How can contemporary visitors understand parks’ past labors while recreating?
Contribution long abstract:
My dissertation considers how institutional environmental racism has been curated and displayed in parks and museums. For example, Killesbergpark in Stuttgart, Germany was built by concentration camp prison labor to educate the public on Blut und Böden / Blood and Soil principles (German men must work German soil with German plants). Trees were planted with political purpose; prison labor built a park train for Nazis. Visitors do not know this history, and children still ride the train. This is one example of how parks and protected areas can literally be built by racism and white supremacy. How should parks and protected areas worked on by enslaved or incarcerated peoples be remembered today? In some cases, forced labor built the sites into the recreation and preserved places they are today. Not all labor histories are inherently violent, but all deserve to be remembered. I argue that sites of forced labor have extra layers of the past, morality, and complexity to contend with as sites of recreation today, and these different layers of a site’s history ought to be accessibly interpreted and curated in its multilayered complexity for visitors. Using my theoretical and practical public historical experiences, with examples raised by the roundtable and audience, as a participant, I would want to consider the boundaries between the past and present, how political idealizations of nature shaped and continue to shape visitor experiences, and if different theoretical approaches to interpretation and curation can help the public to understand labor histories with respect and care.
Contribution short abstract:
My paper addresses the historic erasure of labour in parks, but then moves on to a discussion of how the recognition of labour and related knowledge is fundamental to some newer park models including those created by Indigenous peoples and by citizen groups.
Contribution long abstract:
My paper addresses the historic invisibility of labour in parks, but then moves on to a discussion of how the recognition of labour is crucial to some new park models. The labour of refugees and “aliens”, seasonal workers, Indigenous peoples, the unemployed, migrants, conscientious objectors to military service, the imprisoned, and the war-time interned were essential to parks worldwide. Active efforts have been made to conceal this work, whether by destroying physical evidence or omitting it from official histories. Instead, cadres of administrators, rangers, guides and conservationists have provided the uniformed and scientific face of the state in parks, emphasizing through military references (uniforms and weapons), and expert knowledge, the state’s territorial claims.
Informal and often illegal subsistence and market-driven labour continued on the margins of parks and this realpolitik has been tolerated and even encouraged by established park management. Examples include supplementary part-time and seasonal/migratory labour in parks, partial Indigenous access to parks for food sourcing, the performance of Indigeneity for tourists, and a range of illegal activities such as poaching. Given the historic power relations involved in parks and the dominance of state actors it is important to observe today (with examples) the parks more recently created by Indigenous peoples, initiated by urban dwellers on un or under-used public and private land, and hybrid parks initiated by new alliances and authorities. The political and legal recognition/tolerance of these new park forms rests on a new foundation of respect for the labour and knowledge of their creators.
Contribution short abstract:
A Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ governs the historic mines of Patkai foothills marked by the presence of the ‘absence of state’ where accusations of violating a biodiversity hotspot is counteracted by upgrading the remaining stretches of India’s only lowland evergreen rainforest to a ‘paper park’.
Contribution long abstract:
When B.C. Allen penned the gazetteer of Lakhimpur a seemingly nondescript district nestled in the then colonial province of Assam in British India’s North Eastern region, he mentioned the presence of damp and dreadful tropical rainforests in the south eastern corner of the province’s Brahmaputra valley in the foothills of the Patkai mountain range that acts as the international boundary between India and Myanmar. The location of these very forests would later see the creation of the first resource frontier for the region as the wilderness made way for the setting up of oil rigs, coal mines and tea plantations which I have termed as the ‘Patkai rainforest frontier’. As the settlements of indigenous tribal communities amidst these forests became the ‘workscapes’ of British industrial capital, the historical mines of Patkai were set up around the newly created town of Margherita which prided itself as the ‘coal queen’. The first colliery which started in 1882 at nearby Ledo would eventually be followed by seven others which saw the use of advanced technologies of extraction. Post independence as the colonial era infrastructure laid in ruins at the turn of the 21st century, an aggressive and chaotic rush now takes over the mining landscape in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ where the presence of the ‘absence of state’ and the accusations of violating a biodiversity hotspot is counteracted by upgrading the last stretches of India’s last lowland evergreen rainforest to a ‘paper park’ whereby the production of nature is governed purely by the logic of capital accumulation.