Karin Reisinger "What can those dealing with spatial practices learn from Feminist Political Ecology? " (Higher seminar Friday 2 December 2016)

Ingrid L. Nelson will act as "opponent" from the perspective of feminist political ecology - via skype. 
She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Vermont (UVM). Her work focuses on feminist and queer political ecologies of intense sites of environmental intervention that deploy narrow ideas of nature for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Specifically, she explores the work of different forms of rumor and financial speculation in forests and agricultural lands in Mozambique, the use of new media and online platforms for environmental conservation and the ‘greening’ of higher education campuses. Her recent work examines masculinities, class, and gender dynamics in forest conservation; afforestation “land grabs;” and illegal timber trade contexts in Mozambique. She co-edited the book Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy,’ (Zed Books 2015) with Dr. Wendy Harcourt (ISS) and she is part of an ongoing collaborative project titled, Nature 2.0: New Media, Online Activism and the Cyberpolitics of Environmental Conservation with colleagues in the Netherlands (led by Dr. Bram Büscher) (see Nelson, In Press). 

Workshop keywords:  Feminist political ecology, preservation & exploitation, naturecultures, landscape & power, assemblages of micro-narratives and spatial practices (large and small-scale, and in compound)

Workshop questions: 

How can we connect knowledge on the (built and un-built) environment from different perspectives with methods of Feminist Political Ecology? 
How do we combine rootedness in place and history on the one hand, and migrating practices on the other hand? 

How can we sense the new violence created by queer ecologies, or by spatial shifts such as environmental protection programs? How can we communicate a critical understanding, and which set of voices do we want to bring forth? What can stories and narratives contribute to understanding the larger scales (or its effects)? How to connect the large and the small scale and what are the benefits and work loads of that? 

What role can architecture play as mediator between or destroyer of narratives and located histories? 
What is the common aim of Feminist Political Ecology and Queer Ecology?

How do we deal with our own cracks and fissures, and our own identities as researchers? How to bear the discomfort, and how to protect ourselves? 

How open do we want to be and how much openness can we expect from the heroes of preservation/exploitation/planning? 

Are specific sets of voices capable of decolonizing certain environments? Dealing with space, do we have/want to enter into complicities with (resilience) planners and their programs? What do we have to oppose?

These questions are based on a reading of Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the Green Economy, edited by Wendy Harcourt and Ingrid L. Nelson, 2015.

If you would like to read the intro of Practising Feminist Political Ecologies AND/OR Ingrid Nelson´s essay Feminist Political Ecology and the (un)making of `Heroes`: Encounters in Mozambique AND/OR the draft of the paper Architectures between the devil and the deep blue sea which Karin presented at "Architecture & Feminisms", let her know: