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Lindeka´s Book : Provincializing Malfeasance
- 2021
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Konstnärligt arbete (film/video)abstract
- Synopsis: In eThekwini (formerly named Durban), the young woman Lindeka begins reading Malfeasance (2011). In this essay the French philosopher Michel Serres fleshes out an original take of the modern planetary present, not as something that came about with the advent of agriculture, the industrial revolution or even the postwar “great acceleration.” To Serres this is a story about how humans of every day and age have used tactics and practices of pollution and violence to own and create property for themselves. This is a far cry from conventional justifications of property that can be found in economic theory and the social contracts of Locke and Rousseau. Lindeka is fascinated by the reading, but she also finds Serres´ linear narrative increasingly disturbing for what it omits: Where is Durban, or even Africa in this universalising history of our planet? Striking up a conversation with Michel Serres, Lindeka decides to make her own study of historical difference and global connection in planetary thinking. But not through writing, but through “filmed thought” (Pippin 2020), and by using the possibilities of cinema as a transmodal form for expression. Lindeka engages her filmmaker-friend Vinola and they set about “provincializing” Malfeasance (Chakrabarty 2000) by reading the essay from the locus of eThekwini; thereby allowing Lindeka the reader and her postcolonial port city to kick-back and speak their mind on ownership and environmental concerns to uSerres; now also provincialized through the Zuluization of his name. The result is Lindeka´s Book – an image-book – set in a decolonising moment in South Africa where the registers of film and the city-as-archive play along with, but also trouble the text, the spoken word as the active remains of Eurocentric thought in regards to how we tell stories about our planet and its environments. References:Chakrabarty D. 2000. Provincializing Europe – Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. University of Chicago Press.Serres M. 2011. Malfeasance - Pollution as Appropriation?. Stanford University Press.Pippin. R. 2020. Filmed Thought - Cinema as Reflective Form. University of Chicago Press.
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| 3. |
- Nykvist, Björn, et al.
(författare)
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Social-ecological memory as a source of general and specified resilience
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 19:2, s. 47-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We explored why social-ecological memory (SEM) is a source of inertia and path dependence, as well as a source of renewal and reorganization in social-ecological systems (SESs). We have presented two case studies: the historical case of the Norse settlement on Greenland and an empirical case from contemporary southern Madagascar. The cases illustrate how SEM is linked to specific pathways of development and a particular set of natural resource management practices. We have shown that in each case, a broader diversity of SEM is present in the SESs, but not drawn upon. Instead, SEMs are part of what explains community coherence and the barriers to adoption of more diverse practices. We have elaborated on how specific SEMs are linked to specified resilience, and we have shown that this fits existing notions of resilience, robustness, inertia, and path dependence. We have proposed that to change the dynamics of development pathways that do not produce desired results, it is necessary for managers to shift from specific to general SEM, which would also mirror the shift from specified to general resilience. The challenge lies in the interplay between the specified and the general. In this critical work, it is important to recognize that the valued diversity of SEM necessary for general resilience might actually reside in a different community.
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One Table Two Elephants
- 2018
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Konstnärligt arbete (film/video) (refereegranskat)abstract
- One Table Two Elephants (2018, 84 minutes) is a film about bushmen bboys, a flower kingdom and the ghost of a princess. Entering the city through its plants and wetlands, the many-layered, painful and liberating history of the city emerges as we see how biologists, hip hoppers, and wetland activists each searches for ways to craft symbols of unity and cohesion. But this is a fraught and difficult task. Perhaps not even desirable. Plants, aliens, memories and ghosts keep troubling efforts of weaving stories about this place called Cape Town.Situated and grounded in lived experiences across a range of groups, this film follows different ways of knowing and tries to be a vehicle toward difficult yet urgently needed conversations about how race, nature and the city are intertwined in our postcolonial world where history is ever present in subtle and direct ways.This ‘cinematic ethnography’ is directed towards a wide audience, from the general public, to students and scholars, as it brings texture to understand a city like Cape Town, while providing ample possibilities to translate what is happening “there” to conversations about other cities and surroundings. It is based on years of research in Cape Town and was filmed in 2015 as part of a longer-term research and film-project on ontological politics and urban political ecology.
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Ruptured Times : Advances in Visual Environmental Humanities
- 2021
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (refereegranskat)abstract
- This first issue of Annals of Crosscuts includes eleven richly textured films that speak from the growing environmental humanities with strong intent and originality. The films speaks to the theme of "Ruptured Times" and forms a testimony to the integrative ambitions of the environmental humanities. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, schools and practices including artistic research, urban and architectural studies, social movements of the urban south, political ecologies of water, studies of mining legacies, decolonial performance aesthetics, science studies and ethnographies of conservation, toxicity and more-than-human relations. Made in ten countries, at four continents, the films are the final outcomes of a collaborative peer-review process that started in the first half of 2019, screened at the Crosscuts festival in late 2019 and published as a film-based special issue at Zenodo, CERN, in 2021 with a reflection from chief editor Jacob von Heland.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- von Heland, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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A social contract with the ancestors : Culture and ecosystem services in southern Madagascar
- 2014
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Ingår i: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 24, s. 251-264
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We investigate the role of culture in sustaining essential ecosystem services in the arid and erratic climate of an agropastoral landscape in southern Madagascar. Our fieldwork and interviews in Ambovombe subprefecture in Androy addressed land use, agropastoralism, livelihood, institutions and their moral basis. Our analysis points to the interdependence of cultural practices and ecosystem services: sacred forests, crop pollination, subsistence farming, cattle economy and societal transition and purification rituals. We posit a social-ancestral contract that works as a moral attractor structuring and sustaining the agropastoral ecosystem services system. The contract between living and nonliving clan members underpins the cultural practices and rituals that regulate the vulnerable agropastoral system. We conclude that the well-being values of the inhabitants of the south of Madagascar depend upon moralities that lend legitimacy and stability to the management of the social-ecological processes that precondition ecosystem services production. Neither ecosystem nor culture delivers ecosystem services to society. Ecosystem services are generated by an interdependent social-ecological system in which knowledge, practice, and beliefs coevolve: culture is a key factor in their generation and persistence. The study suggests these are significant interdependences to consider in dynamic analyses of ecosystem service production.
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| 9. |
- von Heland, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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One Table Two Elephants : A cinematic ethnography about race, nature and ways of knowing the postcolonial city
- 2018
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Annan publikation (film/video) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- "One Table Two Elephants" is a cinematic ethnography about race, nature and ways of knowing the postcolonial city. SYNOPSIS – This is a film about bushmen bboys, a flower kingdom and the ghost of a princess. Entering the city through its plants and wetlands, the many-layered, painful and liberating history of the city emerges as we see how biologists, hip hoppers, and wetland activists each searches for ways to craft symbols of unity and cohesion. But this is a fraught and difficult task. Perhaps not even desirable. Plants, aliens, memories and ghosts keep troubling efforts of weaving stories about this place called Cape Town.THE PROCESS – Situated and grounded in lived experiences across a range of groups, this film follows different ways of knowing and tries to be a vehicle toward difficult yet urgently needed conversations about how race, nature and the city are intertwined in our postcolonial world where history is ever present in subtle and direct ways. This cinematic ethnography brings texture to understand a city like Cape Town, while providing possibilities to translate what is happening “there” to conversations about any city and its surroundings.CONTEXT – One Table Two Elephants is created in a context of long-term urban research in Cape Town with an environmental and social science orientation. It is part of the projects Ways of Knowing Urban Ecologies and Towards a Visual Environmental Humanities at the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab that produce explorative and artistic forms academic knowledge production beyond writing and text.CREATED BY – Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson. Cinematography: Johan von Reybekiel. Sound: Jonathan Chiles. Editing: Jacob von Heland. Assistant Editing: Henrik Ernstson. Sound Design and Mix: Jakob Oldenburg. Production Coordination: Jessica Rattle and Nceba Mangesi. Color grade: Johan von Reybekiel. Original Music: Louise Becker. Graphic Design: Erik Hartin.PRODUCED BY – Telltales Film, in collaboration with The Situated Ecologies Platform, African Centre for Cities University of Cape Town and the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab. Support by the Swedish Research Council Formas and Stiftelsen Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond.
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| 10. |
- von Heland, Jacob, 1980-
(författare)
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Rowing social-ecological systems: morals, culture and resilience
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The shift from management and governance of ecosystems to relational complex adaptive social-ecological systems (SES) emphasizes a dynamic and integrated humans-in-nature perspective. Such a shift also needs to investigate how diversity and differences in cultures and morals relate to the existence of SES. The papers of this thesis relate these dimensions to SES resilience theory. Paper I analyzes cultural and landscape ecological aspects of trees and tree planting in Androy, Madagascar. Culturally, planting trees serves as a symbol of renewal, purification, agreement and boundary-making. Ecologically, planting trees contributes to the generation of ecosystem services in an otherwise fragmented landscape. Paper II tests the role of forest patches for generating pollination services to local beans that constitute an important protein staple in Androy. The results indicate a significant effect of insect pollination on bean yields and a strong spatial pattern of locating bean plots closer to forests than expected by chance, improving rural food security. Paper III addresses the adaptive capacity of the indigenous forest management in Androy with regard to religious and climatic drivers of change. Paper IV is concerned with cultural analysis of the robustness of provisioning ecosystem services in Androy and the interdependence of morality, cultural practices and generated ecosystem services. Paper V explores how social-ecological memory (SEM) can be seen both as a source of inertia and path dependence and a source of adaptive capacity for renewal and reorganization in the emerging theory about social-ecological systems. Paper VI analyses the film Avatar and discusses ethical–epistemic obligations of researchers as cross-scale knowledge brokers in emerging forms of global environmental politics. The thesis has interdependencies between the social and the ecological and shown that cultural and moral analyses bring important insights and challenges to resilience thinking.
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| 12. |
- von Heland, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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Works of doubt and leaps of faith : An Augustinian challenge to Planetary Boundaries
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. - : Equinox Publishing. - 1749-4907 .- 1749-4915. ; 6:2, s. 151-175
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article discusses recent developments among strands of earth systems science as providers of knowledge and advice in emerging global environmental politics from the vantage point of the screenplay Avatar. The field ‘resilience thinking’, emerging as part of systems ecology in the 1970s, pioneered propositions about the critical role of local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge to understand and manage human–nature relations. In more recent years there have been attempts to address sustainability beyond the local in ‘extended resilience enterprise’ including ideas of ‘social ecological systems’ and ‘planetary boundaries’. However, the leap to argue the case of resilience at larger, even planetary scales ran the risk of rendering the diversity of local cultures and knowledge traditions invisible by devising an epistemic space that privileged conventional Western knowledge. Using insights from the scientist Dr. Augustine in the screenplay Avatar, it is possible to discuss historical and current authority claims in local and planetary science policy. While there are good reasons to apply resilience beyond the ‘local’, this could be done in many ways. We contend that the potential virtues of involving resilience thinking with global environmental policies would be better realized if this also meant developing a careful understanding of its moral and epistemological aspects. This understanding need not only cohere with current ecological understandings of the world as living and complex, but also with humanistic recognition of the human stature as many-fold and situated.
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