Datum
23. Juli – 26. Juli 2024
CfP/Panel “(Un)Knowing Harm: Localised Epistemic Responses to Global Environmental Degradation” at EASA2024: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology (Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024)
“(Un)Knowing Harm: Localised Epistemic Responses to Global Environmental Degradation”
EASA2024: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology (Barcelona)
Date: 23–26 July 2024
The deadline for paper submissions is 22 January 2024. Please note that the panel will take place face-to-face.
Short Abstract:
The panel examines the techniques and technologies by which environmental damage and harm on the individual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, manifested and repressed, thus shedding light onto the nexus of epistemic uncertainty and environmental injustice.
Long Abstract:
Capitalist extractivism, industrialism, militarism, and ongoing forms of colonialism leave the planet damaged. Be it the loss of habitats for human communities and other forms of life or the amounts of toxic contaminants that suffuse the environment, the very reality of environmental damage is often contested as it gets tangled in processes of knowing, unknowing, denial, disavowal, and ignorance. Powerful actors—state authorities, corporations, the military—all play a central role in such politics of (un)knowing by exercising monopolies on scientific and expert knowledge, thereby prescribing what ought to be known and unknown in order to protect their political, economic, and strategic interests. Civil society organisations, activist groups, and individuals often protest such epistemic and environmental injustices, fighting for greater transparency and access to knowledge. But what counts as knowledge is frequently disputed—even when it comes in the form of hard scientific evidence—not only by the vested interests of power, but also by those who bear the burden of environmental harm. For it is not uncommon for people and groups to harness practices of (un)knowing to deal with environmental degradation in ways that might allow them to escape stigmatisation, resist or refuse empowered constraints, or simply live lives that are more meaningful.
We invite ethnographically-rich papers that examine the techniques and technologies by which environmental damage and harm on the individual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, manifested and repressed, thus shedding light onto the nexus of epistemic uncertainty and environmental injustice in late industrialism.
More info
Panel convenors:
Nikolaos Olma (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient – ZMO)
Rishabh Raghavan (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)