Dear POLLEN Members and Friends,
We hope that you are having a restful break at this end of year time.
This month we are delighted to feature the great work of another POLLEN node, Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Hull, UK. If your node is keen to share your fantastic work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com. We would always like to generate dialogue around your work. As always, we are happy to post the latest publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas!
Please note that the deadline of the call for proposals for POLLEN Biannual Conference 2022 has been extended again to 31st January 2022. You can check the submission details here: https://politicalecologynetwork.org/pollen-biannual-conference/pollen-2022/
Exciting calls for paper for POLLEN 2022 are circulating from among the network. You can find updated information in the link here:
https://pollen2022.com/cfp-expression-of-interest/
With regards from your POLLEN Secretariat:
Sango Mahanty | Sarah Milne | Ratchada Arpornsilp
Getting to know your fellow POLLEN members
Each monthly newsletter includes a brief introduction to one of our many POLLEN nodes, to build connections across our community. This month we would like to introduce you to our node at Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Hull, UK.
Treatied Spaces Research Group, University of Hull
Overview
The Treatied Spaces Research Group (TSRG) is an interdisciplinary research group based at the University of Hull, UK. It brings together educators, Indigenous groups, museums, creative artists, NGOs, and policymakers to foreground treaties and environmental concerns. The group gratefully receives funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.
The group aims to deepen understanding of treaties as living and contested instruments of inter-cultural diplomacy. Historic and contemporary treaties remain central to the quest for social and environmental justice across the globe and are a foundation for renewed and more balanced relationships between Indigenous and settler communities. They shape our understanding of sovereignty over land, resources, peoples and environments on earth, in the seas and in space. We advance these themes through research, publication, innovative digital platforms and data visualisation, public engagement and outreach, impact and other forms of knowledge exchange.
Node members
Professor Joy Porter
Joy co-leads the TSRG and is an interdisciplinary researcher and teacher of Indigenous environmental history. She is a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow for a project on the environmental record of Richard Nixon, PI for an AHRC Standard Research Grant, ‘Brightening the Covenant Chain’, (2021-24), and lead editor of the Cambridge University Press book series, Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research. She is a UK REF 2021 Panel Member (History) and a sub-panel Interdisciplinary Advisor. She serves on the AHRC Strategic Review College, and reviews for the Fulbright Commission, the Leverhulme Trust, NERC, the Finnish Research Council and Higher Education Academy of which she a Senior Fellow and a National Teaching Fellow. She is a frequent contributor to a range of media.
Dr Charles Prior
Charles Prior is Reader in Early Modern History and head of the School of Humanities at the University of Hull. He has published widely on topics in early modern political thought. His most recent project, which was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, is Settlers in Indian Country: Sovereignty and Indigenous Power in Early America (Cambridge, 2020). It foregrounds Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty and power to refine the place of settler colonialism in American colonial and early republican history. His current project, is Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty in the American Northeast.
Dr Matthias Wong (Post Doctorate Research Assistant)
Matthias is an historian of early modern mental worlds. His work at Treatied Spaces understands treaties and diplomatic negotiations as similar sites of ideational encounter and adaptation. These were occasions where different conceptual universes were brought into conversation, where ideas and metaphors were learned and traded. By understanding how each side communicated concepts like territory and sovereignty, we can gain valuable insights into how they saw and understood the world around them, and how they thought the world should function. Matthias contributes to the development of digital projects including visualising concepts of space and movement in the form of a ‘Kinetic Map’.
Professor Gregory Smithers (British Academy Global Professor)
Gregory Smithers (Virginia Commonwealth University) is a British Academy Global Professor whose research and writing focuses on the histories of Indigenous people and African Americans from the eighteenth century to the present. His work explores the history of the Cherokee people, Indigenous history from the Mountain South to California and the Southwest Pacific, and environmental history.
Hannah Cusworth (PhD Researcher)
Hannah is an AHRC funded PhD researcher working in collaboration with English Heritage and the University of Hull. Her work explores the history of mahogany in Marble Hill, Chiswick and Kenwood house and the people who were involved in the 18th century Atlantic mahogany trade. She is particularly interested in the role of West African knowledge, Indigenous communities, free people of colour and women across the Atlantic World. Her research considers what is gained when we include more people in the study of the mahogany trade, from a historical and contemporary perspective.
Rebecca Slatcher (PhD Student)
Rebecca’s PhD is a collaborative project with the British Library that focuses on the library’s print collections of North American Indigenous languages, post-1850. She interrogates the ways languages have been collected, classified and catalogued in heritage institutions and use decolonial methodologies to find Indigenous presence in the collections and explore the afterlives of language materials.
Phoebe Medlicott-Revell (Leverhulme Scholarship Doctoral Candidate)
In Phoebe’s project with the Centre for Water Cultures, studying the conflict at Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, she is researching environmental justice and Indigenous sovereign rights through the fight against the environmental destruction caused by the exploitation of Pebble Mine. Understanding our relationship with water and environment is at the core of this project.
Caroline Ward (Project Administrator)
Caroline is the Project Administrator providing administrative support to the group’s researchers, collaborators and partners. Caroline can be contacted by email at C.J.Ward@hull.ac.uk
Promoting POLLEN collaboration
Do you write with other members of POLLEN?
To gain visibility for collaborations across our network, we invite you to consider adding something along these lines to your acknowledgments:
“This paper represents collaborative work with colleagues in the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN).”
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Anguelovski, I. and Connolly, J.J.T. (eds.) 2021. The Green City and Social Injustice: 21 Tales from North America and Europe. London: Routledge.
Calvário, R., Kaika, M. and Velegrakis G. (eds.) 2021. The Political Ecology of Austerity: Crisis, Social Movements, and the Environment. London: Routledge.
Dunlap, A. and Brock, A. 2021. ‘When the Wolf Guards the Sheep: Green Extractivism in Germany and Mexico’. In J. Matee, S. Springer, M. Locret, et al. (eds). Energies Beyond the State: Anarchist Political Ecology and the Liberation of Nature. Vol. 3. London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 91-123.
Link, J., Okenwa, D. and Scoones, I. (eds.) 2020. Land, Investment & Politics: Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands. Boydell and Brewer Limited. <https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012494/land-investment-and-politics/>.
Locret-Collet, M., Springer, S., Mateer, J., and Acker, M. (eds.) 2021. Inhabiting the earth: Anarchist political ecology for landscapes of emancipation. Rowman & Littlefield, London.
Morrison, R. 2021. The New Green Republic. Waterside Productions.
Paprocki, K. 2021. Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Springer, S., Mateer, J., Locret-Collet, M., and Acker, M. (eds.) 2021. Undoing human supremacy: Anarchist political ecology in the face of anthroparchy. Rowman & Littlefield, London.
Tanasescu, M. 2022. Understanding the Rights of Nature: A Critical Introduction. Transcript, <https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-5431-8/understanding-the-rights-of-nature/?c=410000046&number=978-3-8376-5431-8>.
Tinti, A. 2022. Oil and National Identity in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Conflicts at the Frontier of Petro-Capitalism. London: Routledge, <www.routledge.com/9780367751265>.
Blogs
Carter, F. and Eltringham, D. 2021. ‘A Call for Papers on Militant Ecologies’. Undisciplined Environments, 9 November,
<https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2021/11/09/a-call-for-papers-on-militant-ecologies/>.
García López, G., Andreucci, D., Lamain, C., Boston, D., Balamir, S., and Karch, J. 2021. ‘Green New Deals: Beyond growth?’ Undisciplined Environments, 10 December,<https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2021/12/10/green-new-deals-beyond-growth/> (republished from DevIssues)
Harcourt, W., Leonardelli, I., Still, E. and Voss, A. 2021. ‘Degrowth and Feminist Political Ecology and Decoloniality: Reflections from the WEGO network’. Undisciplined Environments, 3 December,
<https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2021/12/03/degrowth-and-feminist-political-ecology-and-decoloniality/> (republished from DevIssues)
Torchio, P. and Thomas, K. 2021. ‘Tracing the ecological crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border to national security policy’. Undisciplined Environments, 27 October, <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2021/10/27/tracing-the-ecological-crisis-along-the-u-s-mexico-border-to-national-security-policy/>.
Verweijen, J. 2021. ‘Fighting agrocolonialism in the Congo’. Cartoon Movement, 26 November, <https://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2021/11/fighting-agrocolonialism-in-the-congo.html>.
Journal articles
Amira, S. 2021. ‘The slow violence of Israeli settler-colonialism and the political ecology of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank’. Settler Colonial Studies, <https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2021.2007747>.
Boucher, J., and Mérida, W. 2022. ‘Inflated lives and a clean tech privilege in Washington State: Policy amidst spatialized affluence’. Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 85. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102418>.
García-López, G. A., Lang, U., and Singh, N. 2021. ‘Commons, Commoning and Co-Becoming: Nurturing Life-in-Common and Post-Capitalist Futures (An Introduction to the Theme Issue)’. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Online First. <https://10.1177/25148486211051081>.
García-Lamarca, M., Anguelovski, I., Cole, H.V.S., Connolly, J.J.T., Pérez-del-Pulgar, C., Shokry, G., Triguero-Mas, M. 2022. ‘Urban green grabbing: Residential real estate developers discourse and practice in gentrifying Global North neighborhoods’. Geoforum, vol. 128.<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.016>.
Milne, S., Mahanty, S. and Cristofoletti, T. 2021. ‘Ruptured Worlds: A Photo Essay on the Lower Sesan 2 Dam, Cambodia’. Made in China Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 218-224.
Sovacool, B, and Dunlap A. 2022. ‘Anarchy, war, or revolt? Radical perspectives for climate protection, insurgency and civil disobedience in a low-carbon era’. Energy Research & Social Science, pp. 1-17.
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962100503X>.
Staddon, S. 2021. ‘Recognising and Resisting injustice: Knowledge practices amongst Nepal’s forestry professionals’. Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 5. <http://doi.org/10.16993/rl.71>
<https://www.rurallandscapesjournal.com/articles/10.16993/rl.71/>.
Suong, S., Mahanty, S., Milne, S. and Sao, S. 2021. ‘Under the Water: Cambodian Artist Sreymao Sao on the Lived Experience of Hydropower Dams’. Made in China Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 232-238.
1) Call for participation
Webinar: Mining and the genocide-ecocide nexus
When: 4-6 pm (UTC+2) Monday 31st January
Where: Zoom
There is no charge for attending the event, however registration is required.
Please register using this link by 28th January, 2022.
Details: Webinar: Mining and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus | EXALT 2021 | University of Helsinki
Speakers:
- Alexander Dunlap, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo
- Martin Correa-Arce, Universidad de Comunalidad, Union Hidalgo, Oaxaca
- Sakshi Aravind, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge
- Markus Kröger, Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki
Capitalism and Industrialism have been systematically consuming the planet, working to assimilate and homogenize human and nonhumans into their networks of production and consumption. This has had exterminating consequences, taking a serious toll on human and biological diversity, triggering widespread socio-ecological crisis, climate catastrophe, and is making a sixth extinction an imminent possibility. John Clark consequently has argued that the ‘Necrocene’ is far more accurate than the Anthropocene to describe this geological epoch. The harsh realities of technological capitalism raise the conceptual relevance of genocide and ecocide in research. Why are researchers systematically underestimating the progressive and ‘slow’ cumulative impact of capitalism, industrialization, and technological development?
This webinar focuses on bridging this gap by exploring colonial/critical genocide studies in relationship to political ecology, anthropology, and human geography. Discussing critical genocide studies in relationship to fieldwork, this webinar unpacks the particular relevance of the ‘genocide-ecocide nexus’ to political ecology, but also the difficult dilemmas faced when substantiating the claims of research participants on the ground. This webinar begins with the keynote speaker, Dr. Alexander Dunlap, who will give a presentation based around two open access articles (see links below) discussing how they came to critical genocide studies, their experience with applying these terms, their relevance, and the dilemmas.
Laying out a terrain of terms, reasons, and concerns, 3 discussants— Markus Kröger, Sakshi Aravind and Martín Correa Arce—will reflect on these studies, concerns, and dilemmas in relation to their own experiences, work, and ideas. After short presentations from each these scholars and an exchange, the floor will then open for a facilitated Q&A session with the attendants.
2) Call for application
Surfing & Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica
July 5 – August 2, 2022
Taught by Dr. Pete Brosius, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia
Surfing is simultaneously a sport, a lifestyle, and an iconic part of American and global popular culture. It is also an ideal lens for analyzing a range of contemporary cultural processes associated with commodification and globalization, histories of colonialism, gender, tourism, and sustainability. The Surfing & Sustainability program introduces students to surfing as a globalizing cultural phenomenon as it is manifested in communities on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a country widely recognized as an icon of successful conservation. As a magnet for global surf tourism, Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast is being rapidly transformed as communities face the complex challenges of promoting sustainability and conserving nature while catering to increasing demands for development and economic growth.
During the program students visit a number of national parks and reserves as well as sites of rapid development – resorts, large housing tracts and gated communities. In the process we will meet with people representing different viewpoints on conservation, development, and sustainability. The program emphasizes an ethnographic approach and includes surfing/learning to surf as an experiential component of observation and analysis.
In the Surfing and Sustainability program students will explore fraught coastal transitions on the ground (and in the water), as they receive 6 credits in 2 course offerings: Communities, Conservation, and Development (ANTH/GEOG 4275/6275) and the Anthropology of Surfing (ANTH4900/6900).
More information and application instructions: Surfing and Sustainability: Political Ecology in Costa Rica • Summer | Anthropology (uga.edu)
Contact: Peter Brosius – pbrosius@uga.edu
3) Vacancies
1. A 1-year scholarship in France for Post-doctoral researcher
Interests: sustainable science and specifically on ways to reduce the carbon footprint of science
The funding includes: 2500 € monthly salary + free full coverage of health insurance + free extra health insurance coverage. For installation a 500 € stipend will be given. French partners in Toulouse are also willing to paid first travel expenses to some extent. (Project Start: 09/2022)
Requirement: Be of foreign nationality; have received PhD between 12/2016 and 12/2021.
Deadline: 10th of January 2022.
All details are here: https://www.campusfrance.org/en/visiting-fellowships-program-for-young-researchers
We expect the post-doctoral project to focus on:
– Quantifying and articulating solution complementary to technological options, including the refinement of the existing GHG budget, the creation of quantitative reduction scenarios, discussing how to go towards rules making science laboratory greener (less flying, more careful choice of spending, re orientation of research etc.)
– Exploring and understanding individual, collective and structural effects resisting or motivating these changes within laboratory of different fields, including inequalities arising from gender or status (for example).
More info on potential approaches and ongoing work on these topics are on the website of the French collaborative group on these topics: https://labos1point5.org/ .
The project would be hosted in Toulouse and work in collaboration with several scientists of the Atelier d’Ecologie Politique (which includes both natural and social scientist, as the project would likely include both aspects). An interest in interdisciplinary approach and for social sciences is required, though a formal background in social science is not necessary.
Candidates interested in these topics should make contact as soon as possible to discuss and draft a project. Foreign candidates with an already structured project in the broad field of societal transition related to the environmental crisis as it may be hosted by some members of the Atecopol network would also be considered.
Please email us rapidly (altogether):
odin.marc@get.omp.eu
julian.carrey@insa-toulouse.fr
mickael.coriat@irap.omp.eu
vincent.gerbaud@ensiacet.fr
laure.vieu@irit.fr
2. Fully funded PhD position: critical analyses of sustainable development approaches
By Section for Development Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University
Deadline for applications: 16th Jan 2022
Based on global and North/South perspectives, the Ph.D. candidate will engage in research that critically examines aspects of major approaches to sustainable development, spanning from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to degrowth approaches. Main challenges for universal human well-being today and in the future are related to global warming, poverty, and inequality. The Ph.D. candidate’s work might include analyses of how some of these challenges are addressed in one or more of the approaches. Contexts of economic and political power relations should be emphasised. Framings and theories can be drawn from relevant social science disciplines and fields such as development studies, education and development, political economy, world-systems analysis, and/or political ecology.
More information, please see:
https://www.oslomet.no/en/work/job-openings/ph.d.-fellowship-position-in-international-development-studies?fbclid=IwAR0zOXw3O5_USWaxog6KWLKwLPgYUmLu7nFjm3yA-UU7oZnYWaLYs7c4KMM
POLLEN 