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- Convenor:
-
Tyanif Rico Rodríguez
(Universität Bielefeld)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Tyanif Rico Rodríguez
(Universität Bielefeld)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Human and More than Human (and Microbial)
- Location:
- Room 14
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 20 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we will address the role of care in socio-ecological conflicts and struggles. We consider care as a relational and distributed force among a multiplicity of agencies and materials which sustain our worlds through complex infrastructures and interdependencies.
Long Abstract:
Caring for life, territory, and the more than human networks has positioned itself as a central issue in community and local struggles in Latin America. Recently scholars from multiple disciplines have found in these experiences fruitful routes to problematize the patriarchal relations of exploitation, inequality, and coloniality, as well as horizons of meaning to expand definitions of the collective by proposing ways of coexisting and caring for the web of life.
In this panel, we focus on interdependence as a central condition for sustaining life, which is now undergoing multiple crises. We want to show how the web of life requires creative forms to sustain itself. We want to bring to the conversation multiple practices and experiences of resistance, nurturing, etc. which generate continuities in the relations of production and reproduction to sustain our worlds, under the idea of policies and poetics of socio-environmental care.
We invite researchers that 1) makes visible, analyzes, and problematize the role of care in social struggles and socio-ecological conflicts; 2) papers that historicize the present to account for the changes caused by the capitalist maelstrom, with its horizons of meaning; 3) also, research that investigates the interdependent relationships between the human and the non-human; 4) research that addresses the struggles, desires, affections, and memory that today animate the tensions or continuities generated from care; and 5) research addressing sensibilities and modes of relating that call us to resist, escape, coexist, and care for the web of life in new ways.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 20 August, 2024, -Verónica Moreno (Universidad Veracruzana)
Paper short abstract:
The experience of various care communities is exposed, organized by women's collectives in Veracruz, Mexico, in order to sustain and reproduce life in a context of extreme violence and precariousness, configuring forms of the political that have care as their axis, justice and healing.
Paper long abstract:
According to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, only in the year 2021, 1004 women were murdered in Mexico. This is just one piece of the puzzle that configures a scenario in which a necropolitics of terror prevails and is actualized in this territory. Against the grain, collective initiatives have been organized far and wide to configure communities of care, placing the sustaining of life in its multiple dimensions as the axis of their political practice. These communities constitute forms of the political outside the State, and are characterized by their actions in contexts of extreme violence, dispossession and precariousness.
Juliana Robles de la Pava (Universidad de Buenos Aires)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I propose to analyze the poetic and political force of the wetlands of Patagonia in the Land Prints series by Teresa Pereda. Taking the proposals of world-ecology I intend to think the co-dependence action of artistic artifacts as mechanisms of a socioecological care.
Paper long abstract:
Multiple elements constitute the Patagonian wetlands as a place of natural and economic wealth in which the idea of a supposed "environmental resource" for human and animal availability is configured. In this paper I propose to analyze the poetic and political force of the Patagonian wetlands in the Land Prints series by the Argentine artist Teresa Pereda. From the gesture of more than human worlds exposed in the papers submerged by this artist in the Patagonian wetlands, this paper asks whether it would be possible to configure an aesthetic where the lithological, topographical and hydrological elements that make up these flooded areas in southern Argentina converge? Taking as a point of reference the proposals of the world-ecology, this paper proposes to think, contrary to the aesthetic gesture of modernity focused on the individual -the artist or producer subject only-, the co-dependence and the joint or sympoietic action that makes it possible to think of artistic artifacts as poetic mechanisms of a socioecological care. By challenging to some extent the authority and identity of a modern, Western, capitalist vision, Pereda's work and her engagement with wetland materials - not in instrumental, extractive terms, but in terms of an encounter and a response-ability - exposes a kind of resistance to the model of subject-centered aesthetics and politics.
Myriel Milićević (University of Applied Sciences Potsdam) Desiree Förster (University Utrecht) Ruttikorn Vuttikorn
Paper short abstract:
Climate Community Street Play brings global warming to the streets. In reference to Donna Haraway, we’re playing with the trouble, to design participatory formats of public engagement that recognize multispecies, interconnected support networks and shared urban habitats dealing with climate change.
Paper long abstract:
Global warming is confronting people around the world with extreme weather conditions and devastating impacts, such as flooding, cloudbursts, storms, or prolonged droughts. But it is not only such dramatic events that keep drawing attention to the reality of this crisis. Quieter and steadily intensifying effects, such as heat stress are forcing communities to prepare for the consequences of rising temperatures. It therefore needs a greater awareness for the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman entities living in these climate conditions together, as well as speculative perspectives in imagining shared future neighborhoods.
Climate Community Street Play is developed by Myriel Milicevic and Ruttikorn Vuttikorn and brought to life with students, practitioners and scholars of diverse disciplines and backgrounds. Bringing the socio-environmental dimension of challenged urban communities together with the tradition of street games, players engage with local risks while creating awareness for surprising alliances within their communities. Iterations have been developed for Berlin, Germany, as well as Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Although these cities are facing different challenges, they all tell stories of people and other species coping with the impacts. The games present different scenarios, from fighting for street trees in droughts, turning heat islands into cool spaces, rescuing animals in floods, or finding the path to biodiverse spots as pollinators.
In our contribution we will talk about the potential of play, imagination, and a positive approach to difference that are needed to care for multispecies environments by documenting the processes and games that have taken place so far.
Kitija Balcare (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of University of Latvia)
Paper short abstract:
Integrating performing arts research into the environmental humanities frame, the aim of this paper is to highlight spatiotemporality in relation to environmental issues across ecotheatrical performances in Latvia.
Paper long abstract:
One of the human challenges in deepening ecological awareness is the weak human capacity to think across spatiotemporal scales [Morton 2018]. Humans organize their dominant imaginaries, practices, and politics around a human-scaled existence [Neimanis et al. 2015]. However, ecodramaturgical approach connects human and non-human stories to the longterm cause of climate change through multivocal, multitemporal, and transspecies stories [ May 2021]. In order to address intangibility of environmental issues is needed ability to imagine our implication in pasts, futures and worlds at scales different to our own [Neimanis et al. 2015].
Environmental historians point out that natural world is not a passive background to human dramas [Bird Rose et al. 2012]; in turn, theatre scholars highlight that nature for a long time has been just a background for social conflicts in modern drama, so theatre is required to resist the use of nature only as a metaphor [Chaudhuri 1994].
Taking into account that theatre is a practice of collaborative imagination and at the same time affective experience, it gives a platform for rewriting narratives shaping human and non-human relations in the context of climate urgencies and creates place and space for ecological, also environmental imaginaries.
Integrating performing arts research into the environmental humanities frame, the aim of this paper is to highlight spatiotemporality in relation to environmental issues across ecotheatrical performances in Latvia.
Tuulikki Halla (University of Eastern Finland)
Paper short abstract:
Diverse, even contradictory forms of care are deeply rooted in the cultural epistemologies and ontologies of foresters. Their interpretations of care do not affect only to their professional attitudes, but also – via their behavior - on environments of all species, both humans and more-than-humans.
Paper long abstract:
Human care towards forests is most visible in various management and conservation actions. The diversity of caring attitudes and practices often cause conflicts in the society when people attach different cultural, ecological, economic and social meanings as well as sustainability aims to the forests. These meanings may relate very intimately to actors' key values and identities, producing severe socio-ecological struggles.
Professional foresters are often involved in these struggles. Within their traditionally hegemonic, masculine, rational and exploitative professional cultures, foresters are socialized to express their emotions primarily as economic care towards forests. Their explicitly expressed care is also very anthropocentric and utilitarian, mainly emphasizing care for future human generations.
However, care intertwines implicitly also with foresters’ personal being and doing in the forest as well as memories and even intergenerational family identities. Foresters themselves feel in many ways taken care by forest but these interdependencies are often so intimate and even unconscious and thus not legitimate within public professional discourses and practices.
In my presentation, I analyze the caring attitudes and practices of the forest professionals. My qualitative phenomenological analysis of 37 Finnish foresters reveals both the multidimensionality and contradictions of their care-related experiences and meaning making. It makes visible the role of historical and prevailing societal paradigms, policies and power producing and maintaining these more or less hegemonic professional interpretations of care. To enhance transitions towards more coexisting future it is vital to identify these deeply rooted personal and societal power structures towards forests.
Aleksandra Arent (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The transformation of coal mining regions requires an insight into new employment opportunities, restructuring of the social institutions and revitalisation of the environment. I analysed shepherdism in the context of building the future of care after the closure of the Bełchatów brown coal mine.
Paper long abstract:
The EU is currently under an energy transition and the phase-out of coal mining and burning. The Bełchatów brown coal mine is scheduled to stop its operations in 2036. It is crucial to analyse the transformation of the coal mining regions as a multilayered problem, which requires an insight into the creation of new employment opportunities, restructuring of the social institutions and remediation and revitalisation of the degraded environment. I focused on the implementation of wood pastures, which are currently not researched in the context of post-coal mining landscapes. Wood sheep pastures have a positive influence on degraded landscapes by enhancing the accumulation of soil organic carbon, soil formation, water-holding capacity, development of soil microorganisms and provision of varied habitats for different species. Local employment will have higher resilience if industrial heritage tourism is supported by pastoral tourism and the manufacturing of sheep-derived products. Through literature review, I found that the local economy, society and landscape altogether will benefit from shepherdism if it is implemented along with social change and land management transition towards community-led common pool resource institutions. They are advantageous by being governed by a group of members, local and scientific knowledge diversity, high consent with decisions, improved monitoring and socio-ecological endurance. Finally, the application of sheep pastoralism in multiple post-coal mining sites can contribute to the revival of sheep farming in Poland.
Ryan Hellenbrand (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Paper short abstract:
Forestry is a practice of asserting identity and belonging into the future. Examining forestry in Wisconsin shows how forestry entitles settlers to maintain a presence on Indigenous homelands, while for Menominee Nation, cultivating careful relations provides avenues for collective continuance.
Paper long abstract:
The College of Menominee Nation – Sustainable Development Institute places Menominee autochthony in the center of their sustainable development model. Considering Menominee autochthony and the importance of tending to forest resources for their collective continuance requires examining how settler claims to autochthony inhere to and are advanced by forestry. The evolution of forest management for Menominee Nation and the State of Wisconsin offers an important comparison in caring about and for forests.
By the late 1800s, Americans realized that to continue over-exploiting forests would undermine the settler project. It would mean that the settlers could not stay. Implementing forestry then could address the desire to extinguish Indigenous relationships to their homelands, while establishing meaningful ecological relationships for settlers to uphold their own claims to autochthony.
Simultaneously, the Menominee Nation was able to maintain control over their forests by astutely navigating U.S. attempts to terminate their sovereignty. The first federally mandated limits on timber extraction were specifically to protect Menominee forests and establish a tribally owned sawmill.
Engaging in forestry and restoration that is conscientious of and responsive to the self-determination of Native Nations requires interrogating stories of belonging to place. Forestry is not only about the material conditions of forest ecosystems – it is also a practice of asserting identity and belonging into the future. For the U.S., forestry entitles settlers to maintain a presence on Indigenous homelands. For the Menominee Nation, however, cultivating careful relations, reified through the actual practices of forestry provides avenues for collective continuance.
Sarah Clay
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses healing and care in the context of urban-to-rural migration on the Japanese Miyako Islands. I place interactions between emigrants and Miyako’s natural world in their socio-historical context to draw attention to the way notions of care shape social life on the remote islands.
Paper long abstract:
Within the borders of Japan, the Miyako Islands have primarily been known for their emerald-green sea with healing (iyashi) properties. Especially since 2015, the remote islands have become a popular destination for emigrants who aim to find alternative ways of living and working outside of the urban centers of Japan. What draws attention is that after individuals “fled society” (shakai kara nukedasu), they feel a need to “do something in return” (ongaeshi suru) and become greatly involved in protecting Miyako’s natural world. In this paper, I historically trace the image of “healing islands” (iyashi no shima) to contextualize present-day notions of care that Miyako as a place provides to newcomers, and vice-versa. Understanding local practices and experiences of care as relational, I argue that they are shaped by sociocultural understandings of nature and place that largely originate elsewhere. These conceptualizations have nevertheless fargoing consequences on the ground. Based upon data derived from on- and offline interviews, participant observation, archival material, and more, I demonstrate how practices of care are important mechanisms for in-and exclusion and as such shape social life on Miyako. In doing so, I aim to provide meaningful insights into the situatedness of environmental concerns and their social implications. Moreover, by providing a case from the Japanese context, I contribute to debates within the environmental humanities and beyond on the diversity of ecological discourses and practices, as well as the complexity and ambiguity of healing and care.
Mara Dicenta (William and Mary)
Paper short abstract:
This talk focuses on necro-political care developed by subjects involved in a global conservation project of invasive species eradication. It shows their partial resistance to globalization by attending to their daily and affective relations of care for animals, ecosystems, and colonial pasts.
Paper long abstract:
My research in Patagonia centers on a globalist conservation project that seeks to eradicate all the beavers. Once brought from Canada, they are today severely damaging native ecosystems. While I critically address the militaristic and colonial approach of the project, in this talk, I focus on the partial care practices that resist the standardization of ethics, technologies, and nature protection.
Inspired by Anibal Quijano and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s reflections on the coloniality of mestizo subjectivities and desires to become Euro-America, I explore the partial responses of care in which biologists, trappers, and park guards with colonially troubled subjectivities engage. These involve care for the beavers, the forests, and the ecosystems but also for the ghosts of violent memories of colonization, militarization, and national assimilation.
I highlight two cases. The first is a park guard who refuses to use traps mandated by the project, considered humane by European standards. His refusal centers on daily relationships with the beavers and the environment from which notions of ethics based on shared suffering are privileged over maximizing efficiency and economic cost reduction. The second involves a married couple of biologists from Santiago de Chile who joined the eradication project. Focusing on their first animal killing attempts – and their failures-, I examine how the act of killing haunts them both and the silences they navigated. Grappling with masculine mandates in the region patriarchal dynamics within their relationship and within science, they find some responses to care for the beavers and learn to kill better.
Eric Mc Neill Rummelhoff
Paper short abstract:
Through the lens of a renewed understanding of the linguistic turn in the philosophy of History through Walter Benjamin's work, the writings of the Subaltern Studies Group act as a guide to writing species history by adding precision to the historian's approach to synecdoche, alterity, and allegory.
Paper long abstract:
Dipesh Chakrabarty in his essay “Anthropocene Time” criticizes the admixture of socio-institutional power and the geo-physical Newtonian forces of the planetary system in a sampling of world-historical writing. As the planetary system is by nature plural in its construction, he recognizes that no single human institution (whether colonialism, capitalism, or empire) can be completely held responsible for the Anthropocene for they only appear in a relation of synecdoche to the geological actor of humanity as species. Approaching the linguistic turn through the writings of Walter Benjamin and Brenda Machosky on allegory reveals how historical writing can use devices like synecdoche, metaphor, and allegory in a scientific way. With this as a starting point a careful reading of Amitav Ghosh’s narrative “The Ascent of the Anthropoi: a Story” exemplifies the possible richness of allegorical storytelling to do justice to plural concepts like the “Anthropocene” (understood as a complex of problems which includes other concepts like climate change or global warming) as well as world-historical narratives of colonialism and capitalism. Within this interpretive space of reading allegory, specific narratives and epistemologies can be related giving subaltern planetary histories a voice within the broader narrative of planetary history. With the concept of "planetarity" from Gayatri Spivak one can give validity to these various epistemological approaches by first establishing alterity as a necessary precondition to humanity's relation to Earth. To conclude, alterity, and not the pursuit of "truth," will be shown to be necessary to the writing of planetary history.