I hope I am not taking advantage of my position as the president of our society to write what might seem to be a quite personal text. Feminist practices and scholarship have taught me that the personal is never only personal but also political. In my own work I have always blended – someone less sympathetic would say mixed up – the personal, the scientific and the political, convinced, as I am, that we know the world not only through concepts and words but also through emotions and political passions. So, please bear with me in my perhaps inappropriate trespassing of those various realms.
I would like to start by thanking all of you for your caring and warm support during these difficult times. As many of you may already know, I have been seriously ill with COVID-19. I was hospitalised for almost one month, spending ten days in the Intensive Care Unit. My condition was critical. During that time, and in my convalescence, I felt the privilege of being part of such a loving community; my family and I never felt alone. In this weird time of quarantine, colleagues and friends unleashed their creativity, overcoming geographical distance, my difficulties in speaking, and the physical distancing that the virus has imposed upon us. I happily run the risk of sounding cheesy but I wish to say that so much love was an amazing therapy – together with all the antiviral drugs and assisted breathing tools I received from the hospital. An academic society is not a group of friends, I realise this very well. But friendship, caring, and love can make a difference also in an academic society.
I have often campaigned for a scholarship that has the ambition to contribute to changing the world; perhaps this experience has taught me that we need to also change the ecologies of our relationships and feelings, starting from where and who we are.
Someone told me, trying to cheer me up, that it must have been my obsession with bottom-up research and empirical fieldwork that brought me into the eye of this epidemic: ‘It was not enough to read about COVID-19, you had to experience it first-hand.’ Jokes aside, I wonder what I have learned from that unplanned fieldwork. I should immediately confess that it is not easy for me to reflect on my experience because it is painful and very emotional. While writing these few lines, I feel inadequate for the task and I am struggling with myself over whether I have actually something to say that might be of general interest. Perhaps, this is lesson number one: being humble and not pretending always to have something smart to say.
When I arrived at the local hospital here in Sweden, nurses and doctors were sure I was coming from Italy, perhaps after a short visit to family or friends. Indeed, I am from Italy – if you have ever heard me speaking in English, you would have no doubt about it – but I was not coming from Italy. The need to track the contagion is often a relevant tool in the control of epidemics like the current one. In Italy, at least at the beginning of the pandemic, there was an attempt to follow the movement of the virus from one subject to another, aiming to stop the spread of the contagion. Even now, regional governments have the authority to declare a ‘red zone’ – that is, to lock down a specific area (a town, a neighbourhood or perhaps a hospital) where the virus is especially prevalent in order to end the contagion. I was also asking myself – at least when I was still conscious – how and where I got infected, revising in my mind the last two weeks of my existence. Isn’t this lesson number two?
I believe that, in general, people in the Global North do not think of their daily lives in those terms. We move in antiseptic, immunised environments, assuming that the world around us is not affecting our bodies, at least not with such immediate consequences. Even fewer of us would routinely see other human beings as biological threats. COVID-19 reminds us of what Stacy Alaimo has defined as trans-corporeality– that is, the interconnectedness of all beings with the material world in a dialectic relationship which transforms both of them simultaneously.
Although not employing this post-humanist lexicon, Alfred Crosby was arguing something very similar to trans-corporeality in his volume on the history of the Hispanic Flu: ‘The human body is a collocation of wonders, and none is more wondrous than the lungs. Here, quite literally, the line dividing the body from its environment is thinnest. The embodied experience of trans-corporeality in the dramatic form of COVID-19 calls for rethinking our understanding of the daily, familiar environment and its invisible/invisibilised relationships to the wider world. Several scholars have stressed that the present pandemic is the result of the expansion of intensive animal farming and the impingement of market-oriented agriculture on the wild. The organisation of production and consumption makes invisible the links connecting our daily environments with these wider networks of exploitation, but the body is the middle ground where those connections can become visible again, sometimes in a spectacular form as with COVID-19. The illusion that we live in a completely isolated and immunised environment is shattered.
However, while revealing the interconnections of the world and the impossibility of preserving indefinitely the safety of a small portion of it alongside the ruin of the rest, my experience of COVID-19 also goes almost in the opposite direction, and here we come to lesson number three. I got the virus in its aggressive form, as did many others around the world, but this does not make all of us equal. Rob Nixon once wrote that we might all be in the Anthropocene but in different ways. Similarly, Robert Bullard wrote that not all communities are created equal. COVID-19 is not the biological equaliser reducing our socio-ecological structure to the bare strength of our bodies. Race, class, gender and history matter in this pandemic. Many countries impoverished by colonial and neoliberal extractivism and exploitation have extremely weak health infrastructures; plus, as Mike Davis has noted, epidemics do not occur in a void, acting instead in combination with lack of food, inefficient sanitisation and poverty. Several studies are pointing at the unequal distribution of the virus, which seems to hit already vulnerable people more severely, including ethnic minorities, migrants and prison inmates. Obviously, this is not because of inappropriate behaviours – blaming the victims is always an easy toxic narrative – but rather because the virus is completely embodied into the current socio-ecological relationships which reproduce inequalities and privileges.
Something I have learned from COVID-19 is that I survived because I live in the ‘right’ part of the world, I belong to the ‘right’ class and I am not an illegal immigrant. Even now, going through my convalescence/quarantine, it is clear to me that my privilege makes my experience bearable. The appeal to social distancing and washing hands frequently are fantasies – perhaps insults – for most people who live in overcrowded environments, without services or are homeless. The very idea of home as a safe place denies the reality of domestic violence against women – and in fact several sources mention an increase of gender-based violence during the quarantine. And apart from violence, for many women the pandemic has brought even more care work. No, through COVID-19 I have not discovered how much we are all the same, but, on the contrary, the extent to which inequalities are inscribed in our lives and deaths.
But the truth is that I did not think of any of those issues when I was in the hospital, when I was intubated or when I was struggling to breathe. I was instead thinking of my family, I was afraid of not seeing them again; I was wondering whether I would see my daughter getting older, if I had been a good father and partner. I was afraid to die and I did not think about the many deadlines I was missing, the grants I did not get and the books I did not write.
Perhaps, this is lesson number 4, but this lesson might be just for me.
MARCO ARMIERO
President of the European Society for Environmental History
Division researcher Fredrik Bertilsson is published in the scientific journal the Journal of Transport History. In the article Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway Fredrik focus on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s to examine how the Blue Highway was conceptualized. The Highway runs from Mo i Rana on the Norwegian Atlantic coast through Västerbotten in Sweden, Ostrobothnia in Finland and to Pudozh near Petrozavodsk (Petroskoj) in Russia. Today seen upon as a tourist attraction, but the highway played a role in both political and industrial agendas in the mid-twentieth century. Please find the abstract and link to the publication as well as a blog post (in Swedish) from Fredrik below.
Fredrik Bertilsson came to the Division of History of Technology, Science, and Environment in 2018. His main research focus is within the area of knowledge management and research policy.
Abstract
This article contributes to the research on the expansion of the Swedish post-war road network by illuminating the role of tourism in addition to political and industrial agendas. Specifically, it examines the “conceptual construction” of the Blue Highway, which currently stretches from the Atlantic Coast of Norway, traverses through Sweden and Finland, and enters into Russia. The focus is on Swedish governmental reports and national press between the 1950s and the 1970s. The article identifies three overlapping meanings attached to the Blue Highway: a political agenda of improving the relationships between the Nordic countries, industrial interests, and tourism. Political ambitions of Nordic community building were clearly pronounced at the onset of the project. Industrial actors depended on the road for the building of power plants and dams. The road became gradually more connected with the view of tourism as the motor of regional development.
Full article: Politics, industry, and tourism: The conceptual construction of the blue highway
Sininen tie sign by Santeri Viinamäki . https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sininen_tie_sign_20190603.jpg
Blå vägen: Politik, industri och turism
Fredrik Bertilsson
Många av samhällets grundläggande funktioner bygger på vägtransporter. Utbyggnaden av det svenska vägnätet under efterkrigstiden spelade stor roll för samhällets utveckling. Vägar är inte bara materiella konstruktioner. Meningsskapandet kring vägar pågår i förhållande till bredare sociala, ekonomiska, politiska och kulturella förändringsprocesser. I historien om det moderna vägnätets expansion under andra halvan av 1900-talet står ofta den tekniska expertisen eller betydelsen av personbilen i centrum. Turismens inflytande har väckt mindre intresse i den historiska forskningen. Blå vägen är ett exempel på hur politiska initiativ, den industriella utvecklingen och turistnäringen samverkade.
Blå vägen går nu från Mo i Rana vid den norska atlantkusten genom Västerbotten i Sverige, Österbotten i Finland och till Pudozj nära Petrozavodsk (Petroskoj) i Ryssland. Numer betraktas vägen vanligen som en turistväg men flera intressen låg bakom dess tillkomst. Initiativet till att bygga vad som senare blev Blå vägen togs på 1950-talet men det fanns färdvägar och marknadsplatser längs sträckan långt tidigare. Vägen mellan Umeå och Lycksele byggdes under första delen av 1800-talet. Blå vägen invigdes 1964 och blev i början av 1970-talet en europaväg. Namnet Blå vägen anspelar på att vägen går längs med Umeälven i Sverige men det lär i själva verket ha tillkommit efter att vägen markerats ut på en karta med en blåfärgad penna.
Blå vägen förankrades i ett politiskt arbete med att förbättra relationerna mellan Sverige och Norge efter andra världskriget. Det skapades en större rörelsefrihet mellan de nordiska länderna. Från 1952 kunde skandinaver resa utan pass mellan Sverige, Norge och Danmark. Passfriheten sträckte sig till Finland 1953 och Island 1955. Passkontrollen för samtliga resande flyttades till Nordens yttre gränser 1958. Det fanns under mitten av 1960-talet förhoppningar om att Blå vägen skulle dras ända in i dåvarande Sovjetunionen, vilket skulle bidra till att öppna upp de rigida gränserna mellan Öst och Väst under kalla kriget. Det dröjde till slutet av 1990-talet innan den vägsträckningen blev verklighet.
Den stora statliga planen för utbyggnaden av svenska vägnätet som presenterades i slutet av 1950-talet utgjorde en grundplåt för moderniseringen av de svenska vägarna. Bättre vägar skulle lösa dels ett kapacitetsproblem som skulle uppstå när fler fordon måste trängas på vägarna, dels ett säkerhetsproblem: trafikolyckorna befarades öka om vägarna inte förbättrades. Blå vägen inrymdes inte i den ambitiösa vägplanen. Vägen finansierades istället av Vattenfall och genom kommunala insatser.
Aerial view of Umeå Arts Campus. Wikimedia Commons.
Industriella aktörer hade tydliga intressen i en ny väg. En väg till en isfri norsk hamn skulle gynna den omfattande transporten och exporten av trä och virke. Viktiga delar av den väg som fanns var stängd vintertid. Skogsindustrins intresse i en moderniserad väg förstärktes av att flottningen alltmer ersattes av lastbilstransporter. Det fanns också ett tydligt intresse av att rusta upp den befintliga vägen för att klara av den trafik som uppstod i samband med att vattenkraftverken i Umeälven byggdes.
Fler intressenter involverades successivt. Den så kallade Blå Vägen-föreningen bildades i början av 1960-talet för att påskynda vägbygget. Föreningen bestod av representanter från politiken, näringslivet och turistnäringen. Det fanns representanter även från Norge och Finland. Kommersiella intressen stod ofta i fokus. Blå vägen-föreningen fick draghjälp av den svenska pressen där den kunde föra ut sitt budskap och stärka intresset för vägen både lokalt, regionalt och nationellt. Det gjordes även program i radio.
Blå vägen betraktades som en lösning på flera stora problem som Västerbottens inland ansågs stå inför, inte minst vad gällde avfolkning och arbetslöshet. Byggandet av vägar hade varit ett sätt att skapa arbetstillfällen under lågkonjunkturerna under 1920- och 1930 talen. Vägarbetet var ett säsongsbetonat komplement till övriga inkomster men det genomfördes vanligen under svåra omständigheter och ersättningen var ofta låg. Från ett längre perspektiv var det ett led i en omställning från ett jordbruksbaserat samhälle till ett där industrier och servicenäringar har större betydelse.
The Blue Highway, Kattisavan Västerbotten. Wikimedia Commons.
Vägens betydelse för turistnäringen betonades allt tydligare. Västerbotten låg länge efter andra områden vad gällde turismen. Redan i slutet av 1800-talet fanns turistförbindelser till fjällvärlden i Abisko. Turistnäringen i Jämtland var också utvecklad. När Västerbottens turism drog igång på allvar var det inte längre aktuellt att satsa på järnvägar. Bilen betraktades dessutom som ”folkligare” än järnvägen.
Blå vägen laddades med stora förväntningar. I riksmedia målades en bild upp av en omfattande turisttrafik. Enligt en uppskattning i Expressen (26/7 1963) skulle hundratusentals turister åka längs Blå vägen under det första året och sedan väntades trafiken öka. Dagens Nyheter (7/12 1963) påpekade att Hemavans fjällhotell kunde byggas ut i samband med Blå vägens expansion. Turismen till skidanläggningarna i Västerbottensfjällen är en viktig inkomstkälla. Det går att spekulera i vilken betydelse turistekonomin fått för utvecklingen av skidnäringen i stort. Från Tärna kommer flera av Sveriges mest kända skidåkare, bland andra Anja Pärsson, Ingmar Stenmark och Stig Strand.
Marknadsföringen av Blå vägen spelade på stereotyper eller fantasier om norra Sverige. Det talades om en omvandling av landskapet, ett slags återanvändning av det gamla jordbrukssamhället som skulle bli till pittoreska vyer för moderna turister. Enligt Göteborgs-Tidningen (21/6 1964) gav en resa längs Blå vägen ”hela skalan av det svenska landskapets olika nyanser”, dvs. en modern universitetsstad i Umeå, bördig jordbruksbygd i kustlandet, gles bebyggelse i inlandet, ”milsvida skogar” och en ”fascinerande fjällvärld där snön ligger kvar året runt”. Samtidigt skulle turisterna få ta del av det moderna samhällets alla bekvämligheter.
Korpberget, Raven mountain, in Lycksele, with the E12 Blue Highway crossing the Ume river. Photo by Mikael Lindmark, WikiCommons
I många nutida sammanhang beskrivs Blå vägen främst som en turistväg utan att kopplingarna görs till det industriella arvet. De politiska betydelser som satte igång vägbygget träder också i bakgrunden. Den berättelsen ska ses i ljuset av de historiska narrativ som nu etableras om norra Sverige där turismen snarare än den industriella produktionen och utvinningen samt förädlingen av råvaror står i fokus. Blå vägens historia ger en inblick i hur politiska ambitioner, den industriella utvecklingen och efterkrigstidens turistnäring hängde ihop. Det skapades nya former av samverkan men det fanns också slitningar mellan olika intressen.
*
Texten bygger på en artikel som publicerats i Journal of Transport History, ”Politics, Industry and Tourism: The Conceptual Construction of the Blue Highway” (https://doi.org/10.1177/0022526620979506). Forskningen har finansierats av Brandförsäkringsverkets stiftelse för bebyggelsehistorisk forskning.
The week before Christmas, a number of colleagues at the Division gathered for a workshop where we discussed flying habits. It was part of the research project Decreased CO2-emissions in flight-intensive organisations: from data to practice at the EECS school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, led by Daniel Pargman with funding from the Swedish Energy Agency. Elina Eriksson led the workshop with support from Daniel and Aksel Bjørn-Hansen.
The aim of the project is to see how we might reduce the carbon footprint of KTH that stems from flying. Since flying is a large part of KTH emissions and totally dominates those of travel, it could be seen as low hanging fruit. At the same time, travel is nowadays also part and parcel of academic culture. Thus, there are interesting obstacles to change behaviour.
Academic flying has interested us at the Division for many years and as a response to a discussion at our kick-off in 2015, the blog The travelling scientist was launched and Johan Gärdebo had a small project with workshops of similar kind.
In the workshop we received information on our flight patterns, data that the project has collected after great work. It was not easy for Pargman and his colleagues to get a full picture of the flying at KTH, and not even now do they know for certain the sources of KTH flying emissions. This data is of course crucial since the government has required that public agencies work with their emissions. And if we do not have data, we cannot report and reduce.
It turned out that flying at our Division, perhaps not so surprisingly, was not evenly distributed among our colleagues for the year 2019. Of 47 employees, 12 did not fly at all, whereas some made about a dozen flights. Moreover, the type of flights varied, and this is particularly interesting since the focus is CO2 emissions. Based on our division’s data a medium-range flight to Europe emits 3,4 times as much as a Scandinavian flight. And an intercontinental flight emits 20 times as much. Not surprisingly, Division emissions from intercontinental flights make up almost 80 percent. (See figure below.)
In the workshop we were encouraged to think about travelling and if and how to change it. This we did in small groups (everything on zoom of course) and with feedback through Menti. The first question regarded what flights could be avoided and common suggestions were intercontinental ones, very brief conference trips and those of committee work. On the other hand, field trips and archival work was hard to avoid.
This was most likely connected also to the insights of the pandemic, where we have realised that some things can indeed be done differently. The second question in the workshop focused on precisely this: what did we learn from the pandemic that we can use in the future. Here answers varied from the longing for real meetings with colleagues to realising that many meetings work fine digitally. Some digital conferences that we have experienced also shows that this was of meeting can be more inclusive.
About a dozen people joined the workshop, and hopefully it can still help the Division in contributing to a constructive change. KTH has environmental and emission targets and if we do not want to see hard regulation from above, we need to work from below. The workshop participants were in agreement that we have a responsibility to reach the climate objectives and most also believed that flying less is possible.
Covid-19 has profoundly changed the way we work as scholars of the humanities. Teaching is no exception to this. The digitisation of university education was abruptly maximised and teachers were to a big extent forced to adapt to the new reality of online teaching on their own.
Kati Lindström has written about her experiences during the autumn term. She is a researcher with a lot of know-how both in teaching in general and in digital education in particular. In her opinion, the systems we use can be majorly improved. Canvas as a teaching platform is limited under these new conditions and needs a drastic makeover or at least generous supplementation to make education more efficient. As a result of inefficient software, teachers need to spend a lot of time on tedious clicking-work, which easily could be made obsolete. During the last term, this got out of hand.
The stress, which is put upon teachers, manifests in different forms. For Kati, it took the form of severe arm pain, which under the given circumstances is hard to mitigate. Therefore, the question needs to be asked:
What can we improve in the field of digital education during the upcoming terms?
In the face of the surging Covid-19 pandemic, we will most likely not be able to go back to normal any time soon. So if we have to do online teaching to this extent for the foreseeable future, it should be in the interest of everyone to enable the conduction of education within the boundaries of (professional) sustainability.
Please check out the original blog post by Kati Lindström here. The link directs you to Kati’s home page.
Our division has a very international setup, which is also reflected in the diversity of languages we publish in. Our colleague Dmitry Arzyutov (Candidate of Sciences in the field of anthropology, Kunstkamera St. Petersburg, and PhD-student at KTH in History of Science/ Environmental History) has just now published an article in the Russian journal “Siberian Historical Investigations” (Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniya). In this article Arzyutov uncovers the difficult archival situation one encounters while doing research on the life of one of the most prominent Soviet ethnographers of the inter-war period.
Andrej Grigor’evich Danilin (1896-1942) was a leading Russian scholar conducting ethnographic research on the people living in the Altaj region. In their article, Arzyutov reconstructs the archival situation concerning Danilin’s life and creates a map, of how Danilin archived his documents in his personal archive. The co-author of this article is Lidiya Danilina, the daughter of ethnographer Andrej Danilin. Together, they propose what they call an “ethnography of the ethnographer”, which turns the investigator-investigated matrix of earlier times upside down.
How did Danilin correspond with different people? How were bureaucratic situations dealt with? How can one find Danilin’s personal voice in his papers? If you want to find out more, check out the publications entry in DiVA.
Anusha Batool Sherazi has finished a master thesis with a pressing topic this fall. Under the supervision of Ethemcan Turhan, researcher of our division and new Assistant Professor of Environmental Planning at the University of Groningen, our master student has produced a valuable contribution for the study of climate change, under the challenging conditions of the global pandemic.
While the effects of the current climate crisis are being felt everywhere, the global south has to mitigate its consequences under austere conditions. Sherazi investigates in this study the political dimensions of the pressing need to adapt to a rapidly changing climate in Pakistan. Struck by several severe disasters, this country deserves special attention to learn how adaptations can be framed, financed and realised to the benefit of people affected in a southern Asian context.
How has the relation between humans and Earth developed over the centuries? How have colonial and capitalist agendas operated globally, while the view of the planetary environment was shaped by the media?
Wickberg and Gärdebo see this relation as a “profound renegotiation” which continuously is reshaped, but which definitely encountered a “fundamental shift” after 1500 with the acceleration of human globalisation. The concept of environing media shall contribute to the scientific understanding of the role of media as a mediator to how the world is being seen on the basis of an ever-increasing collection of data in an age of digitisation. This can be used to understand the internal and ideological mechanics of colonial empires in a historical perspective. It also allows to understand today’s discourses on international flow of commodities and the movements of people on the background of the influence of modern mass media.
Check out this innovative approach in the journal Humanities!
“Water is everywhere in our economy, in nature and culture. Billions of years ago our planet had cooled down enough for the surrounding gas clouds to condense, fall down to Earth’s surface, and form the oceans. Everything started with water and water is still a precondition to all life. No wonder that World Economic Forum in 2016 listed water as the largest risk factor for sustained well-being on the planet.” https://www.kth.se/water/about
With the focus on water, one thing led to another a few years ago and in 2017 the WaterCentre was initiated at KTH Royal Institute of Technology – linked to our Division through center director David Nilsson, and research coordinator, Timos Karpouzoglou, both researchers with us. The Centre is a collaboration with a “mission to bring about water innovations for a sustainable future of the Earth”.
In line with their own motto “expect the unexpected”, the WaterCentre managed to sum up their four first year in a covid-19 safe conference last week. Read all about it in their blog, and visit their homepage for more news, research and other interesting pieces:
The WaterCentre@KTH has already existed for four years. Wow, time flies! To mark the ending of our first mandate period, we had decided to organise a water conference showcasing research, water inn…
Covid-19 profoundly changes the way we work. What luckily has not changed, is that new people join us at the division. Marta has recently taken up the position of a post-doc, while we are mostly working from home. Thus we asked her the following questions to introduce Marta’s work, show potential for collaboration and to get to know her a little bit better.
Could you please tell us about yourself and the fields you are working on?
My name is Marta Musso and I am the new post-doc in energy history at the department, working together with Per Högselius. My research follows two main strands: the first one is linked to energy policy history, and it focusses on the international economic policy of resource exploitation, and the relations between state and enterprises in negotiations for resource exploitation in the post-colonial years. The second strand of research refers to the development of digital archives, and the usage of digital-born documents on behalf of historians. I am involved in preservation projects to allow historians to make the best out of digitisation and digital technologies, such as Archives Portal Europe (www.archivesportaleurope.net). At the same time, I am an advocate of digital preservation, particularly for what concerns energy archives. Currently I am the president of Eogan, the network of energy archives.
What do you work on right now? Do you feel an impact by the current pandemic on your work?
My current research project at KTH is an extension of my PhD, which focussed on the development of the Algerian oil industry and on the nationalisation of oil resources in the post-colonial years. I am now looking at the claims of the G-77 and OPEC countries in particular with regards to the international commodity market in the years leading to and following the 1973 oil crisis. Luckily so far I have found a lot of material online (thumbs up to the UN archives which have a very good digitisation strategy!), and I have much material from my PhD years that I did not get to properly study (particular from the OPEC archives). However, I would like to also visit the OECD archives in Paris and not only are they closed, but on their website they state clearly that they do not do digitisation on demand. Hopefully the situation will change between now and Autumn 2021. Other than that, it is bad that I cannot get to meet my new colleagues and get a better feeling of the spirit of the department; on the other hand, there are a lot of interesting things happening online and I don’t feel like I am missing out. As a matter of fact, having a toddler in the house, some things are easier to do online than in person, so I also appreciate the good side of this difficult situation.
What do you aim for in the near future in terms of research, projects, or public outreach?
I hope to have a book manuscript by end of 2021, and 2/3 papers out in the meantime. I also really like to engage in public history projects, and I would like to be more involved in making documentaries or to communicate my research in other ways than academic papers – but it is difficult to find the time and the opportunities! I also hope that my research could be of interest to current energy policies, particularly with regards to international coordination in the fight against climate change. One of the aims of my current research is to show how many lost opportunities there were in the 1970s to develop a more balance global economy
In the very near future, I am presenting a volume I have recently co-edited, which is being published by the Journal of Energy History as open access, on the 11th December, at 2pm. (Registration here)
Both EHL director Marco Armiero and Division guest professor Cecilia Åsberg was published in the 2020 summer issue of Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities. Ecocene is a digital, open-access, peer-reviewed, international, and transdisciplinary journal of the Environmental Humanities.The June issue of the journal wrapped sixteen articles from different authors under the title Environmental Humanists Respond to the World. Read the abstracts and find links to the open access articles below.
Abstracts
Beyond Nonpartisan Discourses: Radical Knowledge for Extreme Times
by Marco Armiero
The majority of scientists agree on climate change and on the most daunting environmental problems humans are facing today. Moved by a commendable desire to contribute to the solution of these problems, several scientists have decided to speak up, telling the scientific truth about climate change to decision-makers and the public. Although appreciating the commitment to intervene in the public arena, I discuss some limits of these interventions. I argue that stating the reality of climate change does not prescribe any specific solution and sometimes it seems faint in distributing responsibilities. I ask whether unveiling/knowing the truth can be enough to foster radical transformations. Can knowledge move people towards transformative actions if power relationships do not change?Various environmental justice controversies prove that even when science is certain—and this is rarely the case in that kind of controversies—knowing might be not enough in the face of power structures preventing free choices and radical changes. In the end of my article, I state that it is fair to recognize that scientists have done their parts, and it is now up to social movements to foster the radical changes in power relationships that are needed for transforming societies.
A Sea Change in the Environmental Humanities
by Cecilia Åsberg
As we are living through a transformative response to a viral pandemic, this think piece suggests a reimagining of the environmental humanities in the open-ended inventories of feminist posthumanities and the low trophic registers of the oceanic. Sea farming of low trophic species such as seaweeds and bivalves is still underexplored option for the mitigation of climate change and diminishing species diversity in the warming oceans of the world. The affordances of low trophic mariculture for coastal life and for contributing to society’s transition into climate aware practices of eating, socializing and thinking is here considered, and showcased as an example of the practical uses of feminist environmental posthumanities.
Author
I hope I am not taking advantage of my position as the president of our society to write what might seem to be a quite personal text. Feminist practices and scholarship have taught me that the personal is never only personal but also political. In my own work I have always blended – someone less sympathetic would say mixed up – the personal, the scientific and the political, convinced, as I am, that we know the world not only through concepts and words but also through emotions and political passions. So, please bear with me in my perhaps inappropriate trespassing of those various realms.
Fredrik Bertilsson came to the Division of History of Technology, Science, and Environment in 2018. His main research focus is within the area of knowledge management and research policy.
