{"id":472,"date":"2021-06-14T14:39:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T13:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/?p=472"},"modified":"2021-06-14T15:25:27","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T14:25:27","slug":"hope-and-resistance-in-the-anthropocene-event-reflections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/2021\/06\/14\/hope-and-resistance-in-the-anthropocene-event-reflections\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope and Resistance in the Anthropocene event reflections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Audrey Verma<\/strong>\u00a0is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow whose research revolves around the connections and frictions between humans, nature and technology. Her current research asks what it\u00a0means to be human and a citizen in the digital\u00a0Anthropocene, and the next project she is piloting examines heat inequalities.\u00a0In the fourth post in our Imagining Better Futures mini-series, Audrey shares some of the context and motivations behind her event, Hope and Resistance in the Anthropocene, co-convened with <\/em>JC Niala<\/strong> in February 2021.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of my research has been a search for hope where there appears to be little. This goes a long way towards explaining why I chose to research digital environmental activism at a time when both the digital and the environmental are depressing domains. It is why I do research that has me doom-scrolling on social media for hours each day, with bad news broken up only rarely by concessions hard-won by tireless activist communities. My search may also explain the Hope and Resistance event. From one perspective, the event was borne out of a shared disaffection between my co-organiser JC and myself, with unrelentingly declensionist narratives on the Anthropocene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As necessary, paradoxically comforting, and even titillating as dystopian imaginaries can be, my sense has always been that the more challenging and critical task is to move past repetitious identification of the problems. Much as identification of issues is a strength of sociology, we need to move toward imagining and enacting change. The latter is frequently far less within the grasp and will of sociology.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0atrophied imagining of alternatives (Fisher 2009)\u00a0when it comes to\u00a0current environmentally devastating modes of production and social\u00a0organisation\u00a0is\u00a0also\u00a0not simply down to the neo-liberal\u00a0colonisation\u00a0of thought and meaning. It\u00a0increasingly resembles a series of political and agential choices that excuse action and facilitate ongoing opportunism with destructive projects. Heavily\u00a0westernised\u00a0dystopian visions of environmental ends can border on tasteless\u00a0too. For\u00a0colonised\u00a0groups and species already gone or on the brink, there are multiple inhabited, real worlds that have already ended or been irreversibly altered (Danowski and De Castro 2017).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

– Silverweed\u00a0(Potentilla anserina)\u00a0a common edible plant from the rose family with distinctive silvery\u00a0underleaf. The plant grows well\u00a0perenially\u00a0on many habitats, including sand dunes, and its\u00a0yellow\u00a0flowers are a source of nectar.\u00a0With thanks to Dr Tom Dargie.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our shared principles and vision for the Hope and Resistance event followed from these senses and were threefold: First, we\u00a0hoped to move away from modes of resignation and decline discourses. We wanted instead\u00a0to\u00a0nurture\u00a0the conceptual and empirical seeds of hope not in any banal sense, but in ways that \u2018acknowledge catastrophe while imagining and enacting possibility\u2019 (Tsing\u00a0et al,\u00a02019).\u00a0Our focus\u00a0was\u00a0on the spaces of ecological hope and environmental practices that sustain us, to reflect on what it means to be citizens and humans in these times. Second, we wanted to create an event\u00a0sensitive to\u00a0unequal levels, flows and intentions of current consumption and extraction.\u00a0The event would\u00a0recognise\u00a0and respect\u00a0the differing capacities and impetuses of the Majority World to grieve, hope and resist compared with Euro-America (Head,\u00a02016). Third, we wanted to create calm,\u00a0collective thinking times and spaces, with research, stories and art from across a wide range of disciplines, perspectives and locations. We sought contributions\u00a0that would bear witness to the many ways in which we cope, counter and confront life and loss in the\u00a0Anthropocene.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creating spaces of hope<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response to our call was humbling, generating a programme and participation we are proud to have drawn together. The excellent contributions we received serendipitously fit under four connected thematic sessions<\/a>:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Messy Worlds, with contributions that spoke not only to the actual stuff of mess, sewage and waste, but also to the complicated and complicating political and conceptual factors surrounding resistance and hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Experiencing Worlds, which featured empirical entanglements with extinction, climate change, grief and the possibilities that come with the resurgence of life and rethinking our relations to the natural environment.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Imagining Worlds, which revolved around the roles of literature, art, film and speculative fiction in actively shaping environmental futures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Growing Worlds, with vibrant engagements on plants, re-wilding and practices of growing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shape of the event was itself a valuable experience too. It had a sense of glorious un-disciplinary unruliness. The spirit of sharing and collegiality was present throughout the day\u2019s active discussion, and there were multiple digital interfaces facilitating conversations before, during and after the event with participants from across the globe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the\u00a0lively event, several threads stood out\u00a0for me:\u00a0I found myself thinking about the varying scales of hope.\u00a0My attention was drawn to the small actants and nano-utopias (McKnight 2020) often overlooked. From children in Yan Gao’s reflection on the changing shape of East Asian environmentalism to the beauteous detail of plant growth depicted by Michelle Lai in \u00a0Plantopia.\u00a0The unexpected spaces of hope came across strongly, from the\u00a0heterotopias<\/a>\u00a0of the Korean DMZ discussed by Myung-Ae Choi, Kolkata’s wastewater wetlands described by Jenia Mukherjee, conflict-fraught waste management sites in Kerala detailed by Ashish Prabhakar, and the charred earth in the aftermath of the Australian fires\u00a0discussed by\u00a0Helena Bender and Andrea\u00a0Rawluk.\u00a0Reflections on the\u00a0timespans of hope and change\u00a0emerged with\u00a0Greta Schiller\u2019s film The Land of\u00a0Azaba<\/em>\u00a0and Katy Davis\u2019 research\u00a0on\u00a0North American Arctic communities living with climate change.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

– Kelp-rafting is an important way in which aquatic material and life circulates.\u00a0With thanks to Dr Tom Dargie.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope\u00a0still\u00a0feels like\u00a0an\u00a0airy, abstract\u00a0and\u00a0inadequate concept\u00a0for the times we find ourselves in,\u00a0especially when\u00a0compared\u00a0to\u00a0intellectually profound\u00a0ideas\u00a0such as\u00a0utopia, as Lisa\u00a0Garforth\u00a0articulated\u00a0brilliantly\u00a0during the event and\u00a0in\u00a0preceding posts<\/a>.\u00a0When JC and I first came together to start thinking about the event, the\u00a0rank inequalities\u00a0highlighted by the pandemic\u00a0and gross extractive opportunism\u00a0in its wake\u00a0were starting to\u00a0come into\u00a0full\u00a0view.\u00a0My own ethnographic fieldwork\u00a0was (and continues to be) marked by\u00a0the palpable\u00a0exhaustion of the environmental activists and communities\u00a0I work with.\u00a0Hope seemed\u00a0to be one of the few things we could\u00a0latch on\u00a0to at the time; it still is. The difficulty of holding on to hope\u00a0when the end of the world is easier to imagine than the end of capitalism (Jameson 2003)\u00a0can be\u00a0instructive. Hope is\u00a0the spark for activism and\u00a0perhaps\u00a0change, but it is\u00a0itself\u00a0an active doing, a\u00a0habit and practice\u00a0that requires care,\u00a0cultivation\u00a0and\u00a0the creation of\u00a0communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to get involved in follow-up event activities or request resources from the day, please email Audrey (audrey.vermajames@gmail.com<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danowski, D. and de Castro, E, B. V. (2017) The Ends of the World. Cambridge, UK: Polity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fischer, M. (2009) Capitalist realism. Hants, UK: Zer0 Books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jameson, F. (2003). Future City. New Left Review. https:\/\/newleftreview.org\/issues\/ii21\/articles\/fredric-jameson-future-city<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McKnight, H. (2020). \u2018Chaos and Hope: nano-utopian moments of activist self-organisation’ Excursions, vol. 10, no. 1, pp.33-60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tsing, A, L., Mathews, A. S., and Bubandt, N. (2019) \u2018Patchy Anthropocene: landscape structure, multispecies history, and the retooling of anthropology\u2019 Current Anthropology, vol. 60 (S20), pp.186-197. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Audrey Verma\u00a0is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow whose research revolves around the connections and frictions between humans, nature and technology. Her current research asks what it\u00a0means to be human and a citizen in the digital\u00a0Anthropocene, and the next project she … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9279,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pgrsociology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}