Environmental Temporalities: A Dialogue between NAoH & EnviroAnt (EASA)

This workshop between EASA networks EnviroAnt and NAoH explores collaborative possibilities of conversations between our research questions and approaches. Our guiding theme is temporalities. We consider the differences and synergies on how we engage with imaginaries and intersections of the present, the future and the past? What do we need to consider in our relations to the present and future as well as the past?

Our preliminary questions include:

• What are the temporal imaginaries inherent in conservation? Do these vary between nature and heritage conservation?
• How we understand ruins and/or how might ruins help us to understand futures?
• How nonhuman actors complicate the idea of “history”? Or, how might historical perspectives complicate the nonhuman?

We are delighted to host the following speakers to kick off this discussion:

• Lanoi Maloiy (University of Nairobi & Durham University, honorary fellow)
• Mario Krämer (Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne)
• Katarzyna Puzon (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Nature and landscape conservation from a diachronic perspective: comparing the resistance against dam building and wind power in rural Germany

Mario Krämer (Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne)

I currently work with nature and landscape conservationists in rural areas of Germany who engage in registering the occurrence and movement of endangered bird species and in mobilizing for the establishment and expansion of nature conservation areas, amongst others. Part of them are also active in protesting against the extension of wind turbines in rural areas and particularly in forests because they claim that species such as the red kite and black stork will be severely affected and that what they perceive as the aesthetic value of the landscape will be destroyed. In my brief “provocation”, I compare the contemporary commitment of conservationists to ‘the nature’ and ‘the landscape’ with a controversy that flared up between nature conservationists and the German state in the first decades of the 20th century. The building of dams (mainly for the supply of drinking water and the shipping of industrial goods) started in the late 19th century and what plagued nature conservationists of the day was that the landscape of the low-mountain regions, which they perceived as beautiful and edifying, would be irretrievably destroyed. A diachronic perspective on the trajectories of the past and current debates produces interesting food for thought: whereas the construction of wind turbines is increasingly contested these days, the resistance against dam building projects faded away after some time and even turned into what David Blackbourn (2008) named ‘dam romance’ (Talsperrenromantik), that is, rural citizens maintained that dams would even increase the aesthetic value of the landscape and moreover contribute to bird species protection.

An African feminist historical perspective on African women and the environment

Lanoi Maloiy (University of Nairobi & Durham University, honorary fellow)

It is acknowledged that environmental issues are women’s issues. Due to their domestic and gender roles, environmental concerns often affect women more than men. With this said, it is mostly western feminist perspectives which have explored the interaction of women and the environment. Little attention has been paid to African women’s interaction with the environment, in particular using an African feminist lens. This paper will examine African women’s interaction with the environment across the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras. Given this focus, case studies will be employed to discuss this interaction across the eras. Starting with indigenous women’s interaction with the environment, followed by examination of the colonial administration disruption of Anlu women’s interaction with land in Cameroon. The last case study will be of Wangari Maathai of Kenya and the environmental challenges she tried to resolve during the post-colonial regime of President Moi. The overall aim of this paper is to provide insight of African women’s interaction with the environment over time and through an African feminist lens.

Reflections on the Record - and on Environment and Time

Katarzyna Puzon (Humbolt University, Berlin)

In looking at the shellac record, an object that was key to the emergence of scientific sound archives, my contribution discusses the paradoxes, especially in relation to temporality, that the story of this sound carrier reveals. Its arrival is inextricably linked with the invention of the gramophone, which was used by scientists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, to record and study sounds and then store them in the newly established scientific archives. As well as having been employed for this purpose, the production of the shellac record – and other devices – involved the extraction of natural resources and thus enabled the provision of materials that were used to develop the technology and infrastructure on which scientific sound archives were based. To generate new possibilities and perspectives towards environmental temporalities, my contribution will discuss the ways in which the legacy of scientific sound archives challenges temporal imaginaries implicated in the production of environmental knowledge and historymaking, and will reflect on how the story of such devices as the shellac record problematises these practices