by Elisa Privitera (Lizzy), C. M. Lerici Foundation Fellow
My story with Sweden started around two years ago. It was a scorching and sunny summer. I had just gotten my Masters Degree that explored the creation of a community laboratory that sought to regenerate a historical and neglected district in Catania—my hometown in Sicily—when my supervisor said to me, “What do you think about Sweden?”
“Sweden, hmmm…” I hesitated, trying to take time in order to dig into my memory and knowledge, to collect ideas for a right answer.
Waiting patiently, my supervisor prompted me again, “So?”
I sighed, “Actually, not too much. Why do you ask?”
Two years later, at the end of January 2019, I landed in the evening at Stockholm’s Skavsta Airport in order to accomplish about 6 months of research as a visiting scholar at the Environmental Humanities Lab at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment here at KTH. Oh yeah, I was in Sweden!
But why did I come here? Tracing back the story, during the two years in between my masters degree and my arrival, I continued to work and do fieldwork concerning environmental and urban planning. I collaborated with some grassroots associations, which furthered my interests in the processes of reactivation of derelict spaces. And I started a PhD program where I’ve continued to explore the link between environmental issues and urban planning as a member of LabPEAT– an action-research lab of ecological and environmental design. Working on my PhD, “Evaluation and mitigation of urban and land risks”—begun in 2018 at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Catania—I began to investigate the issues of community empowerment with environmental risks and the planning and regeneration of derelict areas.
Locations of LabPEAT in Catania and EHL in Stockholm
My thesis explores risky landscapes, such as all those post-industrial or in transition landscapes that have been deeply modified and contaminated due to the heavy human footprint. If the landscape can be conceived as the place of people and people’ point of view (Pizziolo and Micarelli, 2003), how can the local knowledge collected by the people’ stories influence the planning field? Or more generally, what can be the role of subaltern communities in the production of knowledge about risk in order to co-design neglected and contaminated areas? Starting from these research questions, my aim is to experiment an alternative approach to risk landscapes by investigating the issue of environmental risk from a qualitative and environmental justice point of view and by putting particular emphasis on storytelling. Since I believe that the industrial and contaminated areas represent a melting-pot of the inequalities as well as a prime example for debate on how to plan current and future risk landscapes, I have chosen to focus on Gela, a fishing village in the South of Sicily that has been converted into one of the main Italian petrochemical poles. In Gela, I had already started to collect stories about daily life from some inhabitants. But I understood that I still needed to deepen the theme of the potential role of the narrative.
That is why I came to the Environmental Humanities Lab (EHL) on a C. M. Lerici Foundation fellowship. Understanding the roles of narratives in order to tell the right story (Barca S., 2014) or to portray a more complex story of landscapes (Gravagno F., 2008) is an expertise of the EHL. It combines research, training, and outreach to tackle crucial societal challenges, such as climate justice, migrations, environmental justice, and rights to the city. The EHL has driven several projects on environmental justice over the years, such as Toxic Bios.
This public environmental humanities project has assisted my research through its aims to co-produce, gather, and make visible stories of contamination and resistance, by using the methodology of storytelling, as also explained in a published article. The collection of oral stories can be a useful tool for many purposes:
for uncovering toxic narratives centered on structural environmental injustice;
for co-producing knowledge;
for increasing the empowerment and collective capabilities of local communities (community building);
and for triggering an action-research path in contaminated territories in order to co-design a different future.
So, by having in mind the purpose of deepening the potential role of the toxic biographies in the planning of contaminated areas, I landed in the darkness at the airport of Skavsta, covered by layers of white snow during that January night. The day after my arrival I moved to live into one of the student dormitories on KTH Campus—a newly erected building with an amazing view on the cityscape of Stockholm. The following months have been an intense flurry of learning, experiences, and challenges!
View from KTH dormitory
Upon my arrival, I began a literature review about environmental justice, political ecology, and environmental history, as suggested by my KTH supervisor: Prof. Marco Armiero. Stockholm was so cold, with iced lakes and fascinating snowscapes sprinkled with nightlights in front of windows to face the darkness. February passed in a jiffy, and in March I started to attend a course for the Ph.D. candidates in “Theory and Method in Historical Research” and a course for master students in “Environmental History.” Both the courses have been challenging. In the first course, “Theory and Method in Historical Research,” I had the possibility to study and debate on many current issues, from Bruno Latour’s books to the epistemological research of feminist theory, from materiality to STS studies. The array of themes has been quite varied and helped me to frame and address my own research questions from time to time in a new way, by enriching certain points of view about it. Meanwhile, thanks to the “Environmental History” course, I investigated the historical connections between migration flows and environmental pull and push factors. These experiences gave me some insights on how to frame my topic as well.
Until then, I have collaborated with the EHL on two running projects. Also, I have collaborated and participated in the lab meetings that take place more or less once a week. On the 21st of March, I also had the opportunity to present the activities and research carried out by LabPEAT of Catania during one of these lab meetings. Over the months, I got fully involved in Division life, for instance, by attending the Higher Seminars in which other scholars come from everywhere about present on current research topics.
Lizzy at the Lab. From left to right: Roberta Biasillo, Lizzy Privitera, and Marco Armiero
Also, frankly speaking, I have fallen in love with fika, an on-purpose-organized break with the aim of socialising among colleagues. The fika is sweetened by tea, coffee and a lot of sweets, typical from Sweden. Some of the main sweets are the “Princess cake,” the “kanelbullar” or “kardemummabulle”, and so on. In particular, the cinnamon bun can be considered the queen of Swedish cuisine! Thereby, in my opinion, among the key-words regarding Sweden, I would suggest FIKA! Between fika, readings, assignments and interesting discussions with colleagues, April arrived. It brought lighter hours, warmer weather, Easter and Walpurgis night, or Valborg. If the days of Easter have been characterised by the blooming of the trees at Kungsträdgården that attracted locals and tourists during several days, Valborg is one of these things about which I did not know about but that is a quite important event for Swedish society. In fact, it is a custom coming from northern Europe, and it consists of lighting bonfires in public spaces in order to celebrate the arrival of spring collectively. All throughout Sweden, there are bonfires with family and groups of friends who enjoy the flames. I got to enjoy Valborg from the seaside of Stockholm!
In the middle of May, the two courses ended. I started to draft a summary of the concepts learned about toxic autobiographies and environmental justice. In the meanwhile, nicer days came. When the sun arrives, it is a bursting event, a kind of explosion of joy and chilling out, and all Swedish (and not only!) people begin to scatter among the public places of the city: picnic on the parks, walks on the city, beers in terraces and gardens, events in the squares. A festive spirit rises. I started to stroll around the city in order to explore it. I visited Skansen park which gives lots of information about the history of Sweden and typical Nordic animals, some museums, such as the Nobel Prize Museum, and the park behind the KTH campus which is full of deer and forest animals.
At the beginning of June, I went back to Italy for a conference where I presented work I developed based on what I learned in the “Theory and Method in Historical Research” course. The title of the work is “Contaminated Entanglements,” and it will be soon part of a publication. “Contaminated Entanglements” concerns the complex set of connections between environmental components. Things, matters, bodies, humans and not, all are part of this entanglement. Especially, according to Stacy Alaimo (2010) in the contamination of the human and non- (more than) human bodies can be read the transcorporeality of the toxicity.
Another first output of this period of research at the EHL has been the paper titled “The Toxic Biographies and the “Small Data” from an Italian petrochemical town (Gela, Sicily)” that I have presented at the City Futures IV Conference in Dublin. This paper is a first and embryonic fruit of the collaborative work between the two research laboratories, LabPEAT and the EHL. This collaboration has brought us to experiment and propose an ecological and relational community design that uses toxic biographies as tools for converting the personal stories of life into collective knowledge. In fact, through the collection of stories a shift occurs from an individual tragedy to a self-aware community which can embark upon the quest for justice. By doing so, toxic auto-biographies become also a way to re-politicize the embodied experience of injustice. Once a community—formed as the result of a struggle—becomes aware of the diffused injustices, an ecological community design path can be triggered.
As July arrived, the end of my experience drew near, and I returned home. A second intense year of Ph.D. is now in front of me. The future goals for this year will be to continue to carry out a full-immersion and fieldwork in Gela (Sicily). More and more auto-biographies will be collected, and I will try to trigger an action-research path by engaging inhabitants and grassroots movements in order to map the risk landscapes as they are perceived by citizens and also in order to co-design alternative futures for this contaminated area. For sure I will have to deal with doubts, readings, editing and so on, but I am also optimistic about the decisive turning points. I do believe that future meetings with some of the scholars I have met at this division during these past few months will be fruitful and inspiring for my ongoing research!
That’s why I am really looking forward to coming back to Sweden one day again, and at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in particular!
25 meters below Stockholm’s solid bedrock, HBO’s Chernobyl is being screened inside a decommissioned reactor for nuclear weapons. It is dark, a little bit chilly, and the atmosphere is tense. The thrilling music ends, the screen goes black, and the crowd spontaneously starts applauding. Afterwards, the reactor hall became a place of discussion. Can we learn from this show? We, three nuclear historians, think we can. Even more so, we all should. Roughly 451 civil nuclear reactors are online world-wide and 54 are in construction. This concerns everybody.
Drama or reality?
Let’s be clear about one thing: Chernobyl is a cinematographical masterpiece. Yet, apart from the brilliant acting, production, and music, the merits for the show’s success might ultimately go to reality itself. The show depicts everything; from the apocalyptic specifics of the nuclear disaster to the everyday life in former state-socialist countries. And in the end, even the best screenwriters in the world could not have been able to invent such a tragic and unbelievable story like the Chernobyl disaster.
That being said, entertaining historical fiction does not necessarily mean ‘correct’ historical drama. Is the series realistic? Craig Mazin, the writer of the series, has done a lot of research on the catastrophe. His bibliography provides a sufficient overview of the ever-growing state of the art on Chernobyl. Many of the scenes also correspond to real testimonies.
Yet, the series is and remains a dramatisation of real events. Some characters are made up and act as compilations of different real-life actors. The character of Ulana Khomyuk, for instance, embodies and symbolises a whole army of scientists that travelled to the exclusion zone and surrounding areas. The trial scenes also did not happen in the way depicted. Neither Legasov nor Shcherbina were there, and they certainly did not give heroic, truth-revealing speeches there.
The series’ creators are conscious and honest about these dramatisations. Not only in the podcast, but also in the final scene of the final episode, they reveal honestly how they altered history for dramaturgical effects. But maybe the question of correctness of historical drama is not relevant. The question is rather whether the Chernobyl catastrophe is represented correctly. Or to be more specific, whether the analysis of the disaster is correct.
Unfortunately, the answer is: yes.
What is it about?
The main message of the Chernobyl series seems to be that the catastrophe was a human disaster. It was not only caused by defective technology or operator’s mistakes, but by society, politics and technocratic culture. Hence, Chernobyl was entrenched in the deeper societal structures and safety culture of the Soviet Union.
This renders the show’s message the same as the message we, as historians of (nuclear) technology, try to convey every day: technology is human. Both its benefits and flaws are created by humans and their organisations. And this, in turn, creates risks to human beings.
Managing nuclear risks is then not solved by mere “technofixes.” An extra pipe or another safety procedure may be necessary, but are in themselves not sufficient. If we want to prevent nuclear catastrophes in those plants, we have to look at the human beings operating them. We have to look at how they think, behave and perceive things. We have to look at how they organise, interact, and share information. The causes of nuclear accidents do not stop at the gated fence of a nuclear power plant. If we really want to understand a nuclear accident, we have to look at society in all its facets.
“What is the cost of lies?”
It is both the first and the last sentence in the series, articulated by Valery Legasov on his audiotapes in the series. “The cost of lies” is also Craig Mazin’s explanation for the Chernobyl catastrophe. When people start lying, when transparency is lacking, and when the political system hinders the prevention of risks, then catastrophes happen. Mazin also indicated multiple times that it was not his intention to tell an anti-Soviet story nor an anti-nuclear story. He simply wanted to show the specific contexts in which huge catastrophes happen. And those contexts are profoundly human.
A useful show?
Pro-nuclear voices have already criticised the HBO series. It would overdramatise the accident and overemphasise the dangers of radiation. However, their arguments do not seem to be sound. Furthermore, downplaying the seriousness of Chernobyl or radiation does not help pro-nuclear voices in any way. In fact, every proponent of nuclear energy should talk about the tragic events at Chernobyl and be utmost open about it. It is the demonstration of what happens when a powerful and promising technology gets mismanaged. If there is a lasting future for nuclear energy, then its experts need to speak about, even promote, also the legacy of its mishaps. That’s why we should all talk about Chernobyl.
However, anti-nuclear voices have also taken the opportunity to refer to the series as an argument against nuclear power. Even if Chernobyl shows the enormous risks that nuclear technologies entail, generalising the Soviet situation for the entire world would not be correct. Indeed, the Soviet-bashing claim that accidents like Chernobyl can only occur in state-socialist countries has become redundant after Fukushima-Daiichi in 2011. Once again, it became clear that the social, cultural and political contexts constitute as the true causes of a nuclear accident.
In fact, every national nuclear programme is different, with different safety cultures and contexts but also common characteristics, such as secrecy, dual-use possibilities and a sense of being at the helm of technological progress. A lot of safety standards are now produced on an international level, but countries can still decide on how they implement them. Nuclear accidents can happen and have happened elsewhere as well, also in the West. Why? Because, again, nuclear accidents are protracted by humans. And humans do not only live in the Soviet Union or Japan.
The verdict
Chernobyl is a series that everyone should watch. It teaches us the strong connection between technologies and humans and how that connection can backfire in the form of a catastrophe. It’s a series that teaches us not to make the same mistakes as in 1986.
In fact, it teaches us that Chernobyl is not yet finished. If our discussions in the reactor hall in Sweden have taught us one thing, then it is that the story of Chernobyl is still incomplete. There are still so many things that are unclear or left for debate. Yet, although incomplete, it remains a powerful story. And a story that has been told by HBO in a powerful way.
Today, the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. That much is clear in this new planetary era of uncertainty some call the Anthropocene. This new geological period, the environmental Age of Man, is often defined by unparalleled human disturbance of the earth’s ecosystems, climate, and biological systems. For instance, half of the wildlife on Earth has been lost in the past forty years, but we have also soon perhaps made more lab-created species, synthetic biologies or artificial intelligences than we asked for. It seems, philosophically, that in the age of the Anthropocene, humans have become a ‘force of nature’, making nature in its classical sense over. Yet, then so is also the notion of the human reaching its limits. Actually, both in terms of planetary sustainability and in terms of how we have gotten used to thinking the human as some kind of Universal Man, a bounded individual, safely zipped up in a white skin of his own, guided by only rational thought (rather than desires) and, so to speak, living on top of things—as the world (nature/the planet) seems to be his oyster.
Emerging now in Anthropocene discourse and in diverse planetary struggles are the many embodied subjects we thought were less-than-human, nonhuman, or ahuman. They range from subalterns living (and dying) on wastelands of richer people’s making, insects subject to mass extinction rates, whole new media ecologies, to the crip and the queer in all of us discovered by biologists, or to, for instance, CRISPR Cas9 technologies, or everyday algorithms that reproduce and multiply our cultural biases on a global scale. They all call for attention. The “death of nature” (a notion from the trail-blazing feminist environmental historian Carolyn Merchant) mirrors the “death of Man” (a poststructuralist theory notion) in the Anthropocene, in eerie and unsettling ways. It also evokes curiosity over the postnatural and the posthuman forms of life now available to us, in these days of need to rethink our categories and our options for the present and the future as the past comes back to haunt us. In such a dire situation, what are now the available arts “of living on a damaged planet” for us? (See Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, Nils Bubandt 2017).
If the humanities and the arts can be said to be broadly concerned with the self-reflection and understanding of the human species, the posthumanities comes about when we recognise the relationships between the multiple planetary alterations that go sometimes under the name the Anthropocene. We have drastic ecological changes to air, soil and biological reproduction, we have rapid species extinction rates, ubiquitous toxic embodiment and environmental health concerns, and non-sustainable climate changes ahead. Posthumanities also comes about with growing computational systems, security terrors, new biomedical ways of life, re-arranged life forms and synthetic biologies, amongst many many many things. All this impel us to recognise the wider forms and constituents of the condition that is no longer nameable simply as humanity. The world is not the same, now more humanised than ever (perhaps even all too human?), so why should the thinking habits and concepts we live our life by be the same? In fact, especially as it seems those old categories or thinking habits have not done us justice or any good in the past.
The troublesome “universalisation of humanity” into the figure of Universal Man, denying sexual differences and social inequities following along the lines of race, gender, bodily ability, age and other historical norms have long been a pinnacle of feminist critique. Longstanding feminist theory-practices of decolonizing the domains of the Universal Man-idea thus mark a particularly critical and creative source for the planetary forms of posthumanities we claim is needed now. Feminist analytics deal with changes, with what constitutive relations make a specific society or situated formation possible. It basically ask who gets to suffer, prosper or die, who gets to live and play, and to the benefit of whom (cui bono)? Furthermore, recent feminist theory is drawing attention not only to creativity and potentiality of bodies, but also to that which delimits or wounds conditions of life on earth at large—especially within hybrid fields such as feminist environmental humanities. And importantly, it asks how we may learn to live with those wounds and limitations with some grace together. Mutualism and symbiont ethics, biophilosophy and eco-humanities, companion species or cyborg connections for earthly survival (following Donna J. Haraway’s rich oeuvre) are keywords for such feminist posthumanities.
Postdisciplinary practices and situated knowledges (Haraway again!) are of course especially salient in this regard: a brute necessity. The planet knows no disciplinary borders, it does not separate between nature and culture. Our planetary issues can not be solved by demarcations where sciences do nature and humanities do culture. In truth, our Anthropocene predicament belies the whole classical distinction between nature and culture! The needed efficacy of such postdisciplinary work is evidenced in many new, old and déja vu fields like feminist science studies and networked new materialisms, in bio-art and eco-art, in somatechnics, new media studies, post-continental philosophy, in anthropocene studies or transcorporeal theory, in multispecies- and medical humanities, in transgender studies, xenofeminism, cyborg- or techno-humanities, ecological or environmental humanities, queer death studies, critical veganism, and a mounting range of posthumanisms, inhumanisms and ahumanisms. Yes, critical and creative scholars in and around the humanities have not been lazy in the face of the many issues that face us today. Feminist posthumanities cover or converse with such postdisciplinary practices. It labels a wide-spread, multi-sited, evolving and growing effort to rework the role of the humanities and their relation to science, technology, art and contemporary society on the basis that our idea of the human is fundamentally reaching its limits, and changing. Feminist posthumanities thus responds to the need for more-than-human humanities.
Accordingly, the feminist posthumanities of the postconventional research group The Posthumanities Hub at the Division for History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Institute of Technology in Stockholm (and Linköping University), focuses on critique and creativity of such planetary arts, on issues of technological and environmental embodiment, on relational ecologies of death and environmental health, on infrastructures of waste and deep time ethics of sustainability, on contemporary technocultures, science communication and popular media cultures but, especially, also on multispecies relations as crucial points of empirical interventions, methodological inventions and theoretical innovations.
The assumption behind this bold mission is that feminist and other kindred forms of the posthumanities are in fact already creating institutional changes, providing novel insights for researchers and civic society, and new sets of post- or trans-disciplinary practices. Take the environmental humanities as a case in point! The research we do has already changed narratives about, for instance, the role of gender and climate change, the importance of thinking with the nonhumans of the planet, and the extent of toxic embodiment in daily life, along with the impact of science, communication as well as digital mediation on our social practices and ideas of ourselves (and others) in society. Luckily, we have been able to convince research funding bodies in Sweden, the North, Europe and Canada, in spite of (or thanks to?) our postdisciplinarity and our use of the f-word. Moreover, new research in our international networks and in our own ranks explores the global infrastructures of technological surveillance and security issues of today; the multiplex processes of translation characteristic of new media; and, last but not least, process ontologies (“world-makings”) at work in both the life sciences, in the creative arts, and in philosophies of subjectivity.
At large, the feminist posthumanities of The Posthumanities Hub aims to map out and chart, but also provide deep insight into, pursue and develop a partly novel and inventive agenda, which stems from, but is not limited to, either humanism or anthropocentrism, feminism or environmentalism. We represent an intervention in contemporary research practices and habits of thought. For our research and for our problems, we need at least a more-than-human approach. At present, there are a plethora of new research initiatives and individual scholars testifying to effervescent activities of a new field coming of age. Just check out the work on biophilosophy and eco-/bioart by Marietta Radomska, or the community building soil art by Janna Holmstedt, or the plant theory put in practice by Lauren LaFauci, the science- and art infused environmental humanities of Vera Weetzel, the Baltic Sea research of Jesse Peterson, the deep time insights and more-than-human sustainability ethics developed by Christina Fredengren and Cecilia Åsberg, or the emerging insights from all the students of the KTH module Gender & Technology (AK2202)! This embarrassment of riches that we are developing from KTH is evidenced all over the academic landscape with new networks and research groups, and art-science communities popping up like mushrooms in the soil on a rainy autumn. The Posthumanities Hub as a postconventional research group anno 2008, one of the first of its kind in the world, supports the establishment of new scholar-activists, new research environments, and explores novel collaborative practices and bold postdisciplinary methodologies, sustainably. For the long run. We believe that it is only through strategic and curious alliances—across differences—that we can survive, in academic settings as on the planet.
Philosophically, the question of the posthuman was pioneered by feminist scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, Donna J. Haraway and Rosi Braidotti. The postnatural and posthuman ideas we use and develop today follow on the realisation that we were never human to begin with in the double sense of a) not part of the Universal Man club of society, and b) not biologically even purely human but rather a multi-species assemblage in ecological relationships with other companion species, like bacteria or other organisms that moderate our embodied and environed existence. These ideas derive from both advanced cultural critique and science. Posthuman theory, explored in wildly diverse empirical studies and projects, as we deploy it within our research, is not an issue of technologically enhancing the human for the future but of realising how vulnerable we are as socio-biological assemblages on an all too humanised planet. Technofixes, history tells us, have a tendency of solving some problems and creating new, bigger ones in turn. Clearly, we take our clues and insights from, and work in close collaborations with, scientists, engineers, artists and social communicators, and we contribute to research fields like environmental humanities, medical humanities, continental philosophy, intersectional gender studies, queer theory, feminist cultural studies, science and technology studies (STS), art and design practices, societal activism and insights for the decolonial option, software studies, cognitive and educational sciences, animal behavior science and epigenetics research as well as critical animal studies. To this effect, we emphasise the multi-species ecology and (somewhat unacademic) kindness of humankind (following on recent work by Timothy Morton). A longstanding concern for us have been how to analytically bridge the arts and sciences, and how to help engineering and natural science and get humanities’ involvement with the aforementioned and other life-sciences recognised. We are currently witnessing a genuine proliferation of new feminist or pro-feminist work on the posthumanities, in art and research in Sweden and all over the world. Perhaps because of this wealth of options (even “embarrassment of riches” as Braidotti would say), there is, however, no consensus either in terms of terminology or key-concepts in the field of posthumanities. That is ok. Different words for a different world. We let a thousand flowers flower, so to make available thoughts and practices (thinking, theory and practice is tightly linked after all in our daily lives) that can be useful for our pressing planetary issues and “thousand tiny anthropocene” situations.
With the critical, creative and curious activities of The Posthumanities Hub, we underline that this situation does not constitute a crisis for the humanities. Quite the contrary. Feminist and other critical posthumanities constitute an opportunity for the arts and humanities. Feminist posthumanities entails really the reinvention of the humanities, making it societally salient. It generates new ideas pointing in the direction of the overcoming of anthropocentrism, eurocentrism, androcentrism, etc, on a planet modestly described as “naturecultural” in character, while reimagining the legacy and sophistication of previous work in the humanities, in history, philosophy, gender studies, science and technology studies, and other fields. Our motto is that it is crucial for the contemporary posthumanities to generate the networked communities, literacies and the methodological schemes needed to establish productive dialogues with these new developments, and with predecessor imperatives of “oppositional consciousness” as Chela Sandoval would call it, within the arts and sciences. Building on the historical emphases of the humanities, we want to keep questions germane to (embodied and environed) subjectivity (personhood) and its sociability. However, we must also always ask what the status of the subject and of subjectivity is today with the change of relations between technology, institutions, and society. After all, the historical context we work in is also one in which now both democracy and human rights are anything but given issues any longer (if they ever were). In our research, questions of knowledge production and world-making fuse with those of power, politics and ethics. Such overarching themes also impel the renewed questions of social responsibility and societal relevance of the arts and the humanities at large. Feminist posthumanities, like art and science, have the ability to expand our much too limited humanist imagination in society, and to explore best-practices of planetary conviviality across societies of both human and nonhuman kinds.
In our empirically diverse research we ask: what (and whom) gets to count as natural, as human, as animal, and to the detriment of benefit of whom? And of course, how could it be different? Such queries drives this postconventional research group but also some seriously humorous feminist creativity and desires to make (for) better connections in the world. The postdisciplinary challenge of the planetary situation today requires simply radical new forms of human and more-than-human humanities. And we are here to meet up.
Follow the seminars and public sessions of The Posthumanities Hub here: https://posthumanities.net/ or on Facebook.
About a decade ago, a handful of humanities and social science scholars joined an international conference to commemorate 50 years since the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. They were part of an Action Group (est. 2006) within the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), delivering papers to a small audience in a windowless basement room in Washington DC. However, this year’s conference, “Antarctic Connections at the End of the World,”—handled by what became the Standing Committee on Humanities and Social Sciences (SC-HASS)—was attended by 130 participants from all seven continents and took place in a large hall with splendid views over the Beagle Channel, in Ushuaia, Argentina. It is clear that this community has not only reached a critical mass but also a critical maturity.
View from Ushuaia
Certainly, this year was a watershed moment. Well-known scholars whose primary work does not usually consider Antarctica chose to attend the conference. There were lively debates between different schools of thought—for example, on cultural heritage in Antarctica, the resilience of the Antarctic Treaty System, and colonial and decolonial perspectives on Antarctic history and literature. The conference empathetically demonstrated that—in addition to their usefulness in multidisciplinary approaches to major research problems—the humanities and social science disciplines are crucial in and of themselves. It is also becoming apparent that scholars can use Antarctica to think through a lot of contemporary outstanding issues in the humanities and social sciences.
Researchers from the Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment made a strong showing at the conference. Kati Lindström’s investigation of Chilean and Japanese perspectives on the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA) negotiations got a special mention in the SCAR newsletter for starting a conversation on the importance of working in different languages. She presented in a session on “Historical Antarctic Strategies” which highlighted how the dominant stories of significant moments, agents and actants in the governance and exploration of Antarctica are coloured by standpoints of those that tell them. Justiina Dahl, who until recently was a postdoc at the division but now works at the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, presented in the same session, using an analysis of the justificatory narratives in the establishment of the Finnish Antarctic Programme. Peder Roberts argued in his presentation that the scale of logistics contracts and research infrastructures from the International Geophysical Year onwards constitute the hidden part of the historical iceberg when it comes to the history of Antarctic research.
Polar Presenters: Dag Avango, Justiina Dahl, Peder Roberts, Kati Lindström, and Lize-Marié van der Watt
A session organised by the Creating Cultural Heritage in Antarctica project (CHAQ) took critical heritage approaches to historic sites and monuments in an official but also unofficial sense. Lize-Marié van der Watt dug into the history of the procedure by which official heritage in Antarctica is created, asking to what extent it can be seen as part of a pursuit for knowing, and controlling, the Antarctic environment. In his presentation, Dag Avango proposed a theoretical framework for understanding the role of heritage making in international competitions for influence over the polar regions, by placing heritagization processes within the framework of a wider discussion on the relation between humans, things and ecologies in post-humanities scholarship. Kati also presented in this session, tracing the regionalisation of Antarctic Heritage in Chile and Japan.
City streets in Ushuaia
Travelling to the end of the world (or Fin del Mundo as Ushuaia is commonly known), the KTH team used this opportunity to also conduct some fieldwork in the area and en route, including visiting polar-related museums such as the Corbeta Uruguay, the Museo Malvinas e Islas del Atlántico Sur, some military museums in Buenos Aires, and the Museo Marítimo y del Presidio de Ushuaia. Kati also conducted interviews with key actors in Argentine Antarctic environmental and cultural policy. Excitingly, some of us also met with authorities in Argentina to discuss plans for an Argentine-Swedish Antarctic expedition to some key historical sites on the Antarctic peninsula. More will be revealed soon.
The following text has been conceived as an environmental humanities critique to research policy regarding what are considered “research initiatives of excellence”.
Authors: Irma Allen, Jesse Peterson, Daniele Valisena, Anne Gough,
ENHANCE ITN – PhD Students, KTH – Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
What if…? Redefining research impact from an environmental humanities perspective. What if ….? What if….? What if….?
All researchers want their work to have an impact and are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate it. But what does this mean? At present, research impact is largely defined in relation to dominant neoliberal economic frames. The language of excellence, innovation, development, marketability, knowledge economy, and the building of human capital are cornerstones to how funding agencies measure the value of academic outputs. But is this the best way to define impact? Critique of the research impact agenda by now is widespread, and we think that environmental humanities offers insightful ways to rethink what is meant by impact in radically alternative ways that address specifically environmental concerns.
Environmental Humanities (EH) takes as its starting point the idea that humans and nature are radically inseparable and that humanities subjects (literature, history, philosophy, arts, etc.) have the potential to provide key insights into the ways we live, why we do so, and how we can change. Environmental humanities research provides historical perspectives, situates scientific and technological change in cultural context, addresses ethical problems, interprets and provides new narratives, and works with local communities.
Humanities teaches about the power of words to make worlds. Storytelling as a way to generate alternative narratives is therefore at the heart of environmental humanities practice. This collaborative piece by four people undertaking a PhD in EH is a speculative attempt at what it means to redefine research impact through what we have learnt from doing environmental humanities research. Speculating means here supposing, hypothesising, venturing, or simply, imagining – asking ‘what if….’?. We speculate here from an EH perspective about ‘what if’ research impact was thought differently and how? What kinds of impact do we wish to be making? What do environmental humanities teach us about how we might measure research results, outcomes, and processes differently? Together we propose a story about the kind of research worlds we would like to inhabit.
We take four core concepts that are currently central to how research impact is understood – Mobility, Innovation, Employability, and Economic Growth – and rethink these. Instead, we propose that from an emphasis on mobility we shift to support for inhabited movement, that from a focus on innovation we switch to re-valuing innovative teaching that enhances ecological living, that from a concern with employability we highlight the building of ecological ability, and that from an obsession with economic growth we move towards degrowth as central ways that impact is defined. What if this was at the core of how research impact is measured..?
Employability From employability to ecological-ability
Employability–as a modified model of the linear career path model–is a reductive vision of a more ecologically-sound life path. By disregarding non-instrumentalist values within humanities scholarship, making researchers employable ignores different forms of training possibilities and opportunities. Satisfying employability as an impact criteria molds the researchers into marketable, tradable, commodities whom are personally responsible for their failures in employment and career. Because markets change, jobs increase or decrease, “employable” researchers can only find success in the terms of the market. In other words, universities bear little responsibility for providing researchers with jobs while they rely more heavily upon non-institutional funds. And, as a virtue of their employability, researchers are often uprooted, traded like sports players, and disincentivized to form lasting, meaningful relationships with local communities. Though a broader imagining of employability could take individual factors, personal circumstances, and external factors into account, employability negates the justification for actively cultivating skills and talents that do not serve the growth of the market economy. Employability serves globalized economic or political values over social or environmental ones.
From an EH perspective, researchers need ecological-ability. Rather than attempting to develop employability as a diverse set of skills that a researcher can pull out of his or her pocket like a swiss army knife or smartphone, funding could foment values and skills that extend outside economic logic to fulfill non-universalized ethical and ecological obligations. Impact could be measured by providing researchers with habits that contribute to the flourishing of lives and worlds, with an eye towards human health and well-being (an EU Environmental Policy objective). Training, therefore, ought to be provide researchers with life skills that enable them to improve the quality of life for themselves and other communities, including animals and environments. Qualities like reflexivity, community engagement, supporting alternative cosmologies, ethical action along with practical skills including gardening, holding an activist rally, foraging and hunting, writing a poem become as meaningful as one’s ability to publish an academic paper, plan a conference, or manage project finances.
Mobility From mobility culture to inhabited movement
Scholars’ mobility is considered to be one of the key factors in defining the quality of a research project. Internationalization of research, network-building, and human capital exchange all contribute to demonstrating the successfulness of an academic project. For example, in 2012 Swedish funding agency Vinnova launched the “Mobility for Growth” program, whose “overall objective is to support career development for individuals through mobility” (p. 2). Horizon 2020’s funding document underlines that in order to improve Europe’s “attractiveness for researchers […] research projects should encourage them to move between countries, sectors and disciplines to enhance their creativity and innovative potential” (p. 984). EU funded research programs also value the enhancing of mobility among academics as a concrete way of shaping European citizenship. But what kind of European citizenship does this produce? Although it is true that mobility of ideas and researchers has long been a fundamental component in the construction of an international scientific community – both for hard sciences as well as for human sciences – engaging with environmental humanities implies questioning the simplistic equation that mobility = good research and, more specifically, that increased mobility (hypermobility) = positive impact. Moving scholars’ bodies across borders and cultures entails moving and mixing cultures, habits, family and relational ties, ways of dwelling and ways of being together with other people, other environments and different ecologies of life.
Our carbon and ecological footprint should be considered when evaluating the impact of research projects. According to KTH’s Travelling Scientist, “researchers who want to contribute to a more sustainable world are on average emitting two tons of CO2-equivalents per year”. Imagine the increases in carbon usage for researchers required to be mobile. It’s counterintuitive for researchers aiming to reduce a local or global carbon footprint by increasing their own. Being hyper-mobile has its impacts; it boosts international connections — but perhaps at the expense of slower forms of engagement more locally, and also often to the detriment or risk to the researcher’s own wellbeing, sense of place, and capacity to build an ecological life. The very action of continuously moving between one country and another — be it to take part in training activities, perform multi-sited fieldwork, build a network, or participate in international conferences — contradicts basic knowledge about environmental harm.Thus, hyper-mobility cannot be part of any environmentalist agenda.
Environmental humanities research studies and supports experiences, livelihoods and research practices that promote a transnational and translocal sense of place without losing sight of the social and ecological relationships in various communities.
We need to be able to have the possibility to inhabit places as much move in and between spaces as scholars engaged in genuine transformative, environmental humanities work. Inhabiting takes time.
Environmental humanities as a research practice can and should contribute to preventing globalization from displacing de-rooted professionals across the globe, as well as criticizing the neo-liberal project (the flexibilization and causalization of academic laborers on the job market) behind the creation of intellectual placeless reservoirs.
Against economic value-producing and placeless citizenship fostered by hyper-mobility, environmental humanities promote community-based research practices, built around slow mobility, place, as well as human and more-than-human relations. As Ursula Heise framed it, environmental humanities helps retracing the sense of place (2008), while the hyper-mobility that informs many research agendas ends up loosening place-based ties. Trans-locality as an open form of dwelling should be a constituent of both research subjects as well as researchers’ lives. All those characteristics shape a form of ecological citizenship and awareness that should be the core mission of any environmental humanities projects.
Innovation From Innovation towards valuing innovative teaching inclusive of more-than-human worlds
The need to prove impact through innovation is a standard part of many research grant applications. But ‘innovation’ in this context most often means new products, services or technologies. Innovation can also be measured through publication output. But one area that has the biggest potential to create innovative impact within academic work is grossly undervalued or marginalized – that is, teaching. One reason for its low status in academia may be that teaching is a gendered practice – often treated as ‘women’s work’ because of its deployment of emotional labour and care. We propose that the concept of research innovation expands to include teaching, and innovations in teaching, as a central measure of impact on the kinds of students, or citizens, universities and research influences. ‘Students’ in this case should mean both those within the traditional boundaries of the university, but also, and more critically, those beyond.
Environmental humanities seeks to develop more equitable relationships among human and non-human communities. Rather than technology being the one-bullet answer to societal challenges, pedagogy allows for researchers to actively participate in shaping societal values, relations and responses to change, including building human-non-human engagement and the embedding of persons within an ecological world. Teaching is often the space where students can critique and imagine approaches to ways of living, justice, and environmental crisis, and learn to de-centre the human individual. Teaching changes the innovative product model to one where innovation is internalized in active subjects as students.
In particular, EH rests on the requirement that we participate in the world as we find it through learning and practice. It becomes about being ‘an effort to inhabit the difficult space of simultaneous critique and action’ (Rose, et al. 2012). Thus teaching should be understood ‘as action and the classroom as ‘the field’’ (Tripp, Muzzin, 2005; Hutchins 2012). Innovative teaching points towards the development of practice- and field-based learning particularly within the environmental humanities where experiential learning must be a central component if we are to apply our knowledge towards change.
Growth From growth to degrowth
Research impact is often defined in relation to its contribution to economic growth measured in GDP. Yet the agenda of environmental humanities is at the very least critical of, if not outright oppositional to, economic growth as an overarching societal goal, since unfettered growth lies at the heart of the environmental crisis, including biodiversity loss, climate change, and resource depletion. So should the value of our research be measured in relation to it? Since, as economist Tim Jackson states, ‘Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries’, such a query is often deemed ridiculous. Particularly for researchers who must comply with the economistic boundaries of grant awarding bodies and funding agencies. Yet taking environmental humanities seriously points to the need to articulate this very question. The concept of ‘degrowth’ is emerging as one of the key modes by which environmental humanities is expressing this call for alternative practices (see Emmett and Nye 2017 and Nelson and Schneider 2018). This should apply to ways that research impact is defined too.
Our exercise in speculative engagement with the notion of research impact leaves us feeling hopeful and also alert to how things stand today. We recognise that currently we have to work within the boundaries of possibility which we inhabit. But as environmental humanities teaches us – imagination, wondering, posing the ‘what if…?’ question is the beginning of narrating new worlds into being. We look forward to a time where inhabited movement, ecological ability, innovative teaching, and degrowth – with their combined attention to wellbeing, care, relationality, and ethics – are core aspects of how we think about and measure the impacts researchers make on the world.
Post written by Karl Bruno, postdoc at the Division.
The Division’s kickoff at Skansen this year gave opportunities to reflect on the institutional combination of open-air museum and zoological park that this location embodies. The keeping of Nordic animals can be understood historically as part of the same identity-building project as Skansen as a whole, representing Swedish nature similar to how the collected buildings represent Swedish culture. However, other animals are there too, and have been almost since Skansen opened. From monkeys to turtles, penguins, and walruses, exotic animals have always been big attractions, important to the economy and strategy of the park. The presence of a range of animals in the center of the capital also means that Skansen has long been a site for the creation and mediation of animal-related knowledge. Only a few days after the kickoff, I stumbled on a curious account in the archives that highlight both these aspects of Skansen’s history. We might call it “The Illness and Death of Lunkentuss the Elephant.”
Lunkentuss (née Rani) was an Indian female elephant born in the 1920s and bought by Skansen in 1931. She was the first elephant Skansen owned—following a highly successful experiment with a borrowed one—and became a very popular exhibit. She drew large crowds, particularly in the warm season when children were able to ride the compliant and docile animal around the grounds. But already in 1938, when still very young by elephant standards, Lunkentuss began to show slightly impaired movement in her right hind leg. Fearing for the future of its crowd-pleaser, Skansen brought in its consulting veterinarian Vilhelm Sahlstedt, professor of chemistry and physiology at the Royal Veterinary College.
Postcard of Lunkentuss with riding children. Date and photographer unknown; from Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Skansen_lunkentuss_dansbanan_galejan.jpg)
Confronted with Lunkentuss, Sahlstedt faced several problems that required the adaptation of established practices and the development of new knowledge. He initially knew little of elephants from a clinical perspective. The detailed leg examination that would be carried out on horses with similar symptoms could not be performed on Lunkentuss, as her leg was too big. Resorting to observation and extending what he knew of the movement of horses and other big mammals, Sahlstedt nevertheless was able to conclude that she was suffering from an inflammation of her knee joint and proceeded to treat her accordingly, with local and internal application of salicylates. At first Lunkentuss refused the medication, but Sahlstedt found that by placing it in a “piece of bread or some suitable root vegetable” she would eat it. The therapy took effect; Lunkentuss could once again carry children around. The leg problems periodically reoccurred, but repeated treatments ensured that she continued to serve as a central attraction at Skansen.
In the fall of 1939, Lunkentuss’ general condition worsened. She would eat less, now showed symptoms of pain in both hind legs, and resisted her normal exercise. Sahlstedt was recalled but again the body of the elephant resisted the application of normal clinical techniques. Auscultation was possible, but revealed nothing remarkable; palpation was not—the skin was too thick and the animal simply too voluminous. Though at a loss for a diagnosis, Sahlstedt tested a pharmaceutical treatment based on small doses of arsenic. This stimulated Lunkentuss’ appetite, but her condition did not improve and she grew increasingly thinner. She continued to draw crowds, but after the spring of 1940 could no longer be used for rides. In early 1941, conceding that she was unlikely to improve and with the state of her legs deteriorated to the point that it was impossible to exhibit Lunkentuss outside of her stables, Sahlstedt finally proposed to put the animal down.
With that, however, another significant problem arose. No one knew how to best dispatch an elephant. It seemed clear that a rifle had to be used, but since elephants have very large skulls but not very large brains, it was difficult to determine where to place the shot. The veterinary literature Sahlstedt consulted provided only vague hints, and a search for big-game hunters (who were presumably knowledgeable in such matters) failed to locate one in Stockholm. Rash experiments were out of the question, not only for humanitarian reasons but also because Lunkentuss was a well-known and charismatic animal that many people had a relation to. A botched killing might thus end up in the press, which would be a public relations nightmare. Eventually, however, Sahlstedt came up with an innovative approach: he approached the Museum of Natural History and, together with one of its curators, made measurements on elephant skulls from the museum collections. From these, Sahlstedt concluded that the killing shot should be placed in the fossa temporalis at the side of the skull from a certain distance and angle. A special hunting rifle was then acquired from the Huskvarna works and its penetrative power with different kinds of ammunition was tested by firing on sets of pinewood planks. When sufficiently satisfied both with his anatomical investigations and with the weapon, Sahlstedt had Lunkentuss immobilized and marked the aimpoint with paint on her head. Chief Animal Handler Johansson, known to be a good shot, was tasked with carrying out the killing. On February 17, 1941, he proved Sahlstedt’s calculations correct. Squarely hitting the intended point, Lunkentuss died instantaneously.
Sketches by Vilhelm Sahlstedt illustrating his method of killing elephants. Top left: profile view of elephant skull with the approximate position and size of the cranial cavity indicated. Bottom left: Frontal view of elephant skull with the correct firing angle indicated. Top right: Drawing of elephant head with the aimpoint used to kill Lunkentuss indicated. From Sahlstedt’s account of the affair, cited below.
The story of Lunkentuss points to a history of Skansen in which exotic animals were important actors playing active parts in making the park what it was, even as the park made them what they were. While healthy, Lunkentuss generated much publicity and revenue. She became something of a symbol of the park, who, as she trudged around the pathways with kids on her back, acted out a defining experience of a Skansen visit. As a sick animal, her victimization and commodification becomes clearer, in a way that highlights how the story is also of the construction and nature of veterinary expertise.
Riding Lunkentuss was a cherished experience for many children. Here the memory of a Skansen visit is drawn by a seven-year old boy (printed in Dagens nyheter, October 27, 1940).
Because Sahlstedt had little theoretical or practical experience of elephants, his encounter with Lunkentuss triggered experimental and investigative work that created new knowledge of their lives and deaths. He learned how to treat their knee joints, how to feed them medicine, how they could and could not be examined clinically, and ultimately also—by enrolling the Museum of Natural History and its collection of already-dead elephants—how to kill them. He published an account of these findings in a veterinary journal, arguing that they might be useful for his colleagues if, for example, they were consulted by elephant-keeping circuses. Part of the motivation was perhaps also pride in his innovative application of anatomical expertise to the skulls from the Museum of Natural History, generating new knowledge of clear practical value.
But Sahlstedt’s expertise only took him so far. The final nature of Lunkentuss’ illness eluded him. He was then faced with a tension central to all veterinary practice, emerging from the fact that patients and clients are not only distinct, but the former are also the property of the latter and their interests need not overlap. In the case of Lunkentuss, Skansen’s interest in keeping a key attraction alive had to be balanced against the fact that Lunkentuss was in pain but could not be diagnosed nor efficiently treated. Sahlstedt’s own account of the affair—which is also the basis of my narrative—can in part be read as a defense of his management of this tension, particularly his decision to wait a rather long time before finally having the animal put down. Though Lunkentuss was not healthy, he argued that she still retained some appetite and seemed “lively and interested in her surroundings,” a behavior that did not suggest great suffering. Balancing her value for Skansen against the perhaps only light pain she was experiencing, Sahlstedt thought his wait-and-see approach justified until there really was no more hope for improvement. This medical judgement was to Skansen’s advantage. It did not make Lunkentuss’ condition public and the ailing elephant continued to be used for publicity and in advertisements through 1940. When announcing her death, Skansen suggested that she had acutely taken ill, a claim that was reproduced by the press and has also shaped later accounts of Lunkentuss’ life (these sometimes include the claim that the cause of her illness was the accidental ingestion of broken glass, a theory not mentioned by Sahlstedt nor, apparently, supported by the autopsy performed at the Veterinary College). This obscured and obscures the fact that the animal was in fact chronically ill and under veterinary care for three years before she was killed.
Advertisement for Skansen printed in Svenska dagbladet, May 27, 1940, offering rides on Lunkentuss. She was already unwell by then and lost the ability to perform this task soon after.
It is understandable that Skansen preferred to keep quiet about Lunkentuss’ long illness, since being a very public animal, the way she was treated had the potential to impact strongly on the public appreciation of the park. The veterinary expertise involved was likewise at risk of public scrutiny. Sahlstedt, who had been the vice-chancellor of the Veterinary College and was in some respects a professional leader, was not insensitive to this. In his account, he reflected that fair or not, a veterinarian had “to be prepared to be asked almost anything that has to do with animals,” no matter the particular animal’s prevalence in Swedish veterinary practice. This goes some way to explain the care he took in giving Lunkentuss a painless death: Sahlstedt noted twice in his account that it was instantaneous, a wording that also recurs in the press coverage (presumably reflecting a Skansen statement). It suggests something of how the fate of Lunkentuss was not only closely bound up with the construction and nature of veterinary expertise, but also with its mediation and how it self-consciously dealt with an unusually public patient.
Finally, Lunkentuss also highlights the importance of historical attention to the agency of animals and to human–animal interactions. Lunkentuss’ own behavior and actions were constitutive of the role she came to play at Skansen, as well as of the development of veterinary knowledge of and around her. It was her compliance with her handlers’ instructions and her docile nature when interacting with visiting children that created the position she acquired in the zoo and thus also many people’s image of Skansen. When she began resisting certain interactions (feeding, exercise), veterinary expertise was brought in, creating new forms of interaction that enabled new knowledge development. This is not to say that there was symmetry of power: Lunkentuss was subject to human action over which she had limited control. But she retained her ability to express experiences and act in a range of ways that all influenced the dynamics of interaction between herself, her handlers, riding children, and the veterinarian—and by extension she thus also shaped the interaction between Sahlstedt, Skansen, and the general public. In this respect, Lunkentuss illustrates the importance of exploring the past lives of animals, as we might find that the way in which these lives were lived impacted on a wide range of developments otherwise thought of as human-driven.
Even Lunkentuss’ final interaction with Chief Animal Handler Johansson is of historical significance. The immobilized and marked elephant had little influence left by then—but the successful killing validated the expertise that had been created around Lunkentuss’ illness and death. Unlike a botched attempt, Sahlstedt’s aimpoint and Johansson’s shot served to confirm that Skansen could take responsibility for elephants in life and in death. Consequently, another young elephant, Bambina, could simply take Lunkentuss’ place, and elephants would continue to draw crowds to the park until 1992.
The account is primarily based on, and all quotes (translations by me) are from, A. V. Sahlstedt, “Från Skansens zoologiska trädgård: En elefants sjukdom och död,” Svensk veterinärtidskrift 46, no. 4 (1941). I have also reviewed press material from 1939, 1940, and 1941 in the Royal Library.
This blog post hints at perspectives and approaches I will work with—albeit in an agricultural rather than an exhibition context—in my new project at the division. Entitled “Clinical Breeding: Cattle Reproduction and Veterinary Expertise in Sweden, 1922–1975,” the project will examine the co-production of human–animal relations, veterinary expertise, and reproductive technologies in the context of mid-twentieth century Swedish dairy farming. I will spend two years of the project as a visiting researcher at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, King’s College London.
Further reading:
An excellent book on elephants as actors in the context of American circus is Susan Nance, Entertaining Elephants: Animal Agency and the Business of the American Circus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013)
The longer history of Skansen’s elephants is detailed in Ingvar Svanberg, “Indian Elephants at Skansen Zoo,” The Bartlett Society Journal 21 (2010).
For a brief overview of the “animal turn” in history (including a short bibliography), see Dan Vandersommers, “The ‘Animal Turn’ in History,” https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/november-2016/the-animal-turn-in-history
A number of the division’s researchers use the platform Academia to promote and circulate their research. Currently, some 555 (and counting) documents can be downloaded for free by clicking on this link.
This was a summer to remember! Swedes are normally not spoilt with sunshine and we know how to complain about too much rain and too many mosquitoes. But this year most of us got more than we bargai…
Travelling by train should not be understood as an inferior alternative to the plane. Trains should not even try to compete with planes. Trains can offer something different, something unique, something which is sorely needed among professionals: time for yourself. This is the value of slow motion.
Am I nuts? So, I am travelling to London from Stockholm for a three-day work session… by train? It takes two days there and two days back, including an over-night hotel stay in Hamburg both ways. It costs my employer around €1,200 or at least three times the cost of a flight ticket. Seriously?
This incident of economic insanity of course has its background. It is called climate change. Our failure to meet the necessary reductions of GHG emissions is out in the open. We’re heading full speed towards 2 or 3 degrees of global warming. We know this; still the polluters keep polluting. Air travel is increasing fast on a global scale and I just don’t want to be part of that trend.
Air travel might only be contributing a few percent of the greenhouse effect. But our flying is emblematic of the carbon-fuelled lifestyles that are really the problem. After all, it is the most carbon-intensive activity (per time unit) you can undertake as a human being. A particularly sad state of affairs is that the scientific community that brought us all the undisputable facts about global warming, is at the same time one of the biggest emitters. Being a successful scholar means jetting all over the world between conferences, guest appearances, exchange visits and field work. This undermines our legitimacy badly. If scientists don’t follow their own advice, why should anyone else?
Climate friendly – an European solar park
Trains instead of planes. Some say that the train is not so much better for the climate than the aeroplane. This may be true in some exceptional cases, e.g. if planes running on renewable fuels are compared with coal-powered trains. But in the majority of cases, with current technology, the train is far better. No need for additional proof here, let’s just work with this fact for now. The question is then: is it possible to be a successful scholar without using the aeroplane? Or to succeed in any kind of international career for that matter?
Obviously, many physical meetings can be replaced with virtual meetings. Skype, Hangout and WhatsApp are examples of tools that already have changed how we interact and collaborate over distance. In preparing for this trip I have already used two of them. But they did not replace my trip. We will have more digital interaction, but there will still be instances we need to travel. Can the train really be an alternative for others than green fanatics? Simply put: what is the business case for attracting professionals to do long-distance travel by train?
Hamburg Hauptbanhof
Capturing the value of slow motion. In a recent doctoral thesis at KTH, Stefan Tongur showed that when new technology enters the market, commercial actors often try to exploit them through already established business models. The problem is that the value offered by new technology– in Tongur’s case electrical road systems – cannot be captured using the old business models. On the other hand, commercial actors can pack existing technologies into new business models, thus capturing value brought about by changed value perception among the users. Netflix, Uber and RyanAir are well-known examples of this.
Railway technology is as old as industrial society itself. Today’s high-speed trains with air-conditioned coaches equipped with wi-fi and espresso machines are really just incremental innovations, mimicking both airplanes and the urban cafe. But the new and untapped value lies elsewhere. It lies in our insatiable desire for more time. In a world where we live our lives constantly online, surrounded by more and more time-saving devices, having enough time to do things slowly has become a luxury. The lack of time for reflection stands out as a problem every year in staff surveys at KTH. In our quest for organisational efficiency and instant needs fulfilment, the ”click society” offers no time for slow thinking, for concentrated work without distractions, or for just enjoying sensorial experience from our physical surrounding. Train travelling, with its fixed time tables and train changes offers a script for doing precisely this.
Checking out from the click society
The future of professional travel. With the right business models, railway technology doesn’t have to improve one bit to capture the value of slow motion. But today long distance trains seems to be nobody’s business. Large organisations such as universities must demand better services from their travel agencies, in terms of train booking and trip planning, along with personalised accommodation, and why not; suggestions on good restaurants and sights along the way.
Travelling by train should not be understood as an inferior alternative to the plane. Trains should not even try to compete with planes. Trains can offer something different, something unique, something which is sorely needed among professionals: time for yourself. This is the value of slow motion.
Enjoying Hamburg
As I am finishing this text I am on the EuroStar bound for London. The journey so far has not been without its hitches but on the whole it has been incredibly valuable. Two full days of undisturbed slow working, enjoying great scenery, everyday life and curious food at my stops in Copenhagen, Fredericia, Hamburg, Hannover (where I nearly missed the connection), Köln and Brussels. The trip generated a nice suite of photos on my Facebook page, and a string of surprised, envious or supportive comments. This is luxury after all.
This is the second time I travel long-distance by train. I will do it again, because it offers value that other parts of my professional life cannot. Perhaps it can inspire a colleague or two but they have to make their own decisions. The real challenge for me up ahead is that one trip per year I make for field studies in Uganda and Kenya. I managed to cut down from two or three annual trips by engaging local universities instead, which has added a lot of value. I hope one day to travel to Mombasa by cabin hire on a container ship, work for 6 months in the region and then glide back, in slow motion. Imagine the amount of work, and all the thinking I could do, in 6 weeks on a cargo carrier. Is that the future of professional travel? Who knows.
David Nilsson
Researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
Author
David Nilsson