un/predictable environments
A space for conversation, analysis, and inquiry following the Un/Predictable Environments Conference, May 20-21, 2021
It has been over a month since the close of the Un/Predictable Environments Conference, yet I continue to contemplate the questions posed across the various sessions. In particular, Anthropologist Hilary Cunningham Scharper’s inquiry into how to write with non-human beings, and achieve co-becomings in the process, has stuck with me. Though this is not necessarily a new question, as multispecies ethnographers have been grappling with this idea since the onset of the ‘animal turn’ in anthropology, there remains little consensus on how to write nature’s value and agency into ethnography (Kiik 2018). Despite their good intentions to bring the non-human into ethnography, multispecies ethnographers have garnered plenty of criticism over the years, often being referred to as ventriloquists given their attempts to speak for other species (Appadurai 1988, 17). To mitigate this, Cunningham Scharper proposes co-authorship accomplished through ethnographic fiction in order to avoid treating non-human beings as mere products of research. It is through this challenge of mainstream social science writing that Cunningham Scharper is able to draw a connection and affectionate bond to the Eastern White Cedar forests of the Bruce Peninsula Ontario, whose trunks are also not growing straight. These forests have acted as an escape for Cunningham Scharper during the Covid-19 pandemic and now serve as the basis for her book Dear Forest. The embodied experience evoked by the sentient landscape shapes Cunningham Scharper’s writing practice to form a co-authorship. (click read more to continue) I deeply appreciate the creativity enacted in Cunningham Scharper’s fictive writing. With the current state of the ecological crisis and the un/predictable nature of human and non-human futures, the wicked problems that we face are complex, ill-defined, and do not have a single correct solution, but rather many (Balint et al. 2011). Therefore, I see creative experimentation and exploration at the academic level and beyond a necessity for collaborative survival in the Anthropocene (Tsing 2015). Cunningham Scharper offers playful possibilities for re-imagining thriving futures as opposed to fostering fear or even complacency with the current environmental decline. While the writing practice proposed by Cunningham Scharper is promising, acknowledging and embracing the agency and sentience of the non-human world – which underlies the kind of respectful co-becoming she advocates for – is easier said than done. Perhaps a more urgent question that needs to be asked is: how can this realization can be fostered in the first place? For many Indigenous cultures worldwide, nature’s inherent vitality, inclusive of humans, animals, and spirits, is recognized and embedded within cosmologies and cultural teachings. This worldview has proven to be essential in the context of conserving biodiversity as evidenced in the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report, which states that nature managed by Indigenous Peoples is generally declining less rapidly than other lands. On the contrary, many Westerners like myself have been socialized into a system premised on the distinction between nature and culture. This construction is often referred to as naturalism, which situates humans as superior to non-human beings given their possession of a spirit or soul, thereby justifying the exploitation of nature (Descola 2013). It is well known that the ecological crisis is in part, a result of the “idea that there is, on the one hand, a natural environment and, on the other, a society that views and understands and projects its conceptualization of this environment” (Descola and Toro 2016, 22). Given the necessity for co-becoming in the ecological crisis, how can individuals experiencing a disconnect from nature come to recognize the agency and value of non-human beings, beyond the ecosystem services and functions they provide? In the context of North America, many news articles have drawn a connection between the Covid-19 pandemic and an intensified appreciation and connection to nature (Dingfelder 2020; Kraus 2020). Is it possible that these experiences in nature, driven by a global health crisis, will transform worldviews of nature and the non-human? Will they foster an increased desire to protect the natural landscape? Will this appreciation be sustained following the end of the pandemic? Only time will tell. References
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