Article – Part 2: “Durian und die Kolonialität der Macht”

This is the second part of the article originally published in Südostasien: Zeitschrift für Politik, Kultur, Dialog, in German. You can read the full text here.

Nicht nur der Extraktivismus bedroht die Durian. In Nordkalimantan heißt die Bedrohung ‚grüne Energie’. Dort sind, am Kayan und weiteren Flüssen, fünf Staudämme für Wasserkraftwerke mit einer Gesamtkapazität von 9000 Megawatt geplant. Rund 70 Prozent des Stroms sollen in das Industriegebiet und den internationalen Hafen Tanah Kuning-Mangkupadi (Kawasan Industri dan Pelabuhan Internasional, KIPI) fließen. Der Rest wird zum Teil nach Malaysia exportiert, zum Teil fließt er in andere Gebiete Kalimantans.

Der Kayan-Fluss ist mit seinen 576 Kilometern Länge die wichtigste Transportader ins Binnenland. Der Fluss bietet traditionelle Fischgründe für die lokalen Dayak. An seinen Ufern liegen Obstgärten und Felder. Von den Feldern bekommen die Menschen Kohlenhydrate, Mineralien und Vitamine; die Fische sind ihre Proteinquelle. Am Oberlauf wird mit Netzen oder Angeln gefischt, am Unterlauf haben die Anwohner*innen Farmen für Garnelen, Krabben und Fische mit einer Gesamtfläche von 149.000 Hektar angelegt. Der geplante Staudamm, der als größter in Südostasien gilt, wird zwei Dörfer mit ihren Feldern und Gärten verschlucken. Außerdem wird damit gerechnet, dass sich Strömung und Sedimentbewegung verändern. Schon seit 2012, als das zuvor zu Ostkalimantan gehörende Nordkalimantan eine eigenständige Provinz wurde, hat die Dezimierung der Durian stark zugenommen. Seitdem hat sich die Zahl der Konzessionen für Steinkohleförderung versechsfacht, dazu kommen noch Konzessionen für Palmölplantagen und entsprechende Waldrodung.

You can read the full text here.

New article: “Durian und die Kolonialität der Macht”

This article was originally published in Südostasien: Zeitschrift für Politik, Kultur, Dialog, in German. You can read the full text here.

Die Kulturen Südostasiens beeinflusst sie seit Jahrtausenden, doch in der westlichen Welt kennt man sie erst seit rund 600 Jahren: Die Durian-Frucht. Die in Südostasien und Südasien mit spezieller Verehrung bedachte ‚Königsfrucht’ wurde in der Kolonialzeit zum Objekt der Phantasien westlicher Forscher*innen und Abenteurer*innen. Ihre Aufzeichnungen zeigen, wie der ‚ferne Osten’ seinerzeit als gefährliches, wildes und primitives Gebiet wahrgenommen wurde, welches bezwungen, gezähmt und modernisiert werden musste. Der außergewöhnliche Reichtum seiner Natur machte den ‚fernen Osten’ zur kolonialen Frontlinie in einem Kampf, dessen Ziel die Unterwerfung von Natur und Kultur darstellte.

Zwar endete die Kolonialherrschaft Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Doch der Traum von der Modernität verschwand nicht aus den ehemaligen Kolonien. Die neuen Nationalstaaten setzten die westliche Betrachtungsweise und Praxis fort, in der Fortschritt in Form von Wirtschaftswachstum gemessen wurde. Der peruanische Soziologe Anibal Quijano bezeichnete die Tatsache, dass auch nach dem Verschwinden der Bürokratie der Besatzer eine koloniale Logik das Regierungshandeln prägt, als „Kolonialität der Macht“.

Entsprechend René Descartes Leitspruch „Cogito, ergo sum“, stellt sich der Mensch als denkendes und sprechendes Wesen ins Zentrum der Schöpfung und verneint alle anderen Wesen, die nicht denken und nicht sprechen. Dieser Artikel versucht, die Kolonialität der Macht in Indonesien am Beispiel der Durian aufzuzeigen und damit einen Ansatz der Dekolonisierung anzubieten, der zu einem sozialen und ökologischen Handeln führen kann, das auf Gerechtigkeit basiert.

You can read the full text here.

Commoning and community, a meeting in Eindhoven

On the last day of May, blessed by the weather, WEGO mentor Chizu Sato and I, Nanako Nakamura, visited a farmhouse surrounded by woods and bush in the middle of fields on the outskirts of Eindhoven to discuss the role of surplus in community building and a transformative potential of commoning with a group of food design students from the Design Academy Eindhoven. We were invited by Arne Hendriks, who is an artist, researcher, and founder of the Harahachibu-University. When we got there, the seminar turned out to be in the open air, chickens and dogs running around. Some of the students are living the house and around the area, forming an inspiring permaculture community with their neighbors. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, they opened the farmhouse for collective learning to design food and imagine life in different ways.

The seminar started with eating home-made soup. It was made of ingredients, such as vegetables, fruits, and herbs, brought by students. These ingredients are surplus from their own households and cooking and eating together support the production and reproduction of a food commons. Chizu talked about surplus production, appropriation and distribution in the modern economy and how they are organized differently in capitalist and non-capitalist class processes. The discussions went into prevailing capitalist narratives in relation to planetary boundaries, gendered social relations, social justice, populism, media ethics, all of which influence our consumption choices and decisions in our everyday lives. Commons and its transformative process of commoning were also brought into the discussion as important frameworks to describe the creation of more sustainable and healthy communities.

As an example of commoning, I introduced a case from my research about women’s buckwheat (soba) cultivation on unused rice fields in rural Japan. Due to the political encouragement for rice supply reduction since the 1960s, rice cultivation has been remarkably declined in many rural areas. As a result, increased numbers of unused and abandoned spaces have raised concerns about deteriorating agroecosystem, biodiversity, and rural landscapes. In my case study, these dormant rice fields were utilized by the local women’s for buckwheat cultivation, to make locally produced soba noodles as means of rural revitalization and multi-species survival. This soba commoning demonstrates how these women are interacting with other community members, state actors, consumers, and non-human earth others, e.g., soba plants, rice, fields, surrounding environment, to live well in rural aging and depopulating context. Also, it highlights the process of making a socio-ecologically sustainable community, where physical and emotional struggles are entangled, and challenges are emerging from social, economic, political, climatic, gendered aspects of rural communities.

The seminar closed after sharing insights and challenges, such as finance, shared/unshared ideologies, and harmonization among community members even though we did not come to any conclusion. Sharing my case study and exchanging thoughts was a wonderful experience for me in these difficult times.

Post-credits scene: When we were about to leave, one student came to me and asked me a question whether I have watched Tampopo, the Japanese film. According to her, my talk reminded her of the film. Yes, it is perhaps comparable to my soba case because it depicts relational processes revolving around Ramen noodles in a constellation of relationships, conflicts, emotions of differences with unique human and non-human characters.

An initiative for an Indonesian pluriverse

Indonesia, the world’s largest coal exporting country, is facing critical challenges. After 76 years of declaring independence in 1945 and later turning  economic growth as a measure of welfare, Indonesia has faced three significant challenges: severe economic disparity, socio-ecological crises in most big islands of the country, and its oligarchy, which is hijacking democracy. The economic gap data, provided by the Indonesian Statistic Centre (BPS) in 2011-2015, reveals that the wealth of 40 richest people is equal to 10,3% of the country’s GDP or  60 million of Indonesia’s most impoverished people . While in the last five months industrial catastrophes have continued to increase, big floods occurred in almost every island, including South Kalimantan, as well as a  flood due to collapsed containers of coal mine waste in North Kalimantan and East Kalimantan. Unfortunately, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) leads the disclosure of the state loss by corrupt practices by political elites, hijacked by the oligarchy. 

The course of economic growth and development, in reality, is never free from critique in Indonesia and globally. The story of the development policy with economic growth reinforces a few developed countries, whereas the rest is fighting socio-ecological crises to not fall behind. 

In every part of the world, demand and struggle for alternatives to development are happening. One of the critical references which hold various ideas for alternatives to growth is the book “Pluriverse: A Post Development Dictionary.” For instance, Latin American countries proposed a concept originating from indigenous people movements, such as Sumak Kawsay, Buena Vivier, and The Life Project. In Europe, the academic and activists are bringing “Degrowth” as an initiative that expressed reversal from growth in the economic sector and other social sectors

As in Latin America, one of the critiques on economic growth in Indonesia came from the indigenous people movement. In Timor island, the Indigenous people’s philosophy challenges the development model that depends on the extractives project: “we will not sell what we cannot create,” means they do not sell the land, the water, and the mountains (Maimunah, 2013); it was meant both as a critique and an alternative to development with economic growth. Unfortunately, the state does not recognize the existence of the Indigenous people’s territory. Indonesian government granted the concession of extractive projects on Indigenous people’s land. It’s no wonder that, in 1999,  indigenous people refused to recognize the state if they did not recognize them as well (AMAN, 1999).  

Indonesia has various alternatives to development. One example happens in Mollucas, Sasi, in a ritual for the moratorium of collecting economic benefit from nature (Zerner, 1999). In other places, such as Mollo, in Timor island, there is a ritual called Naketi, a kind of self-reflection ritual to make peace with oneself, humans, and nature (Maimunah, 2005). Sasi and Naketi were just a tiny part of what had been practiced long before the birth of the Republic of Indonesia. Indonesia has many alternatives rooted in the archipelago nation with geohydrological, language, and cultural diversity.

Bringing the spirit of the ‘Pluriverse’ idea, which explores and discusses alternatives to development, is a crucial and urgent effort to respond to the failure of obsolescence of the development model with economic growth today.  This  is the reason behind establishing a collective among Indonesian scholars and activists, to create a group to start the conversation of an “alternative to development in Indonesia.” The first step of the collective  was to organize  a book discussion and an open call for collective translation of the “Pluriverse, A Post Development Dictionary” book launched on 3 July 2021. 

(You can watch the book discussion here)

“The ideas in ‘Pluriverse, A Post Development Dictionary” contain 100+ alternatives to challenging development as it is. This book becomes a reflection tool, a medium of learning and discussing: we reflect and know ourselves and discuss the alternatives. The activities in reflecting and conversing on this subject consist of two parts; first, a collective public translation of “Pluriverse, A Post Development Dictionary” to make it  accessible in  Indonesian. Second, collecting local stories on alternatives to development to discuss them with broader audiences. It might give us a way out of the shackle of development with economic growth and into a transformation model which allows various options to attain welfare, or even for practicing the Pluriverse, as stated by Zapatista as “a world where many worlds fit.”

Gunda, Babe and Val Plumwood: on communicative status, ethical relations with the more-than-human and being food

Is human speech a prerequisite to the ethical recognition of beings? The film about the life of a sow called Gunda, invites us to look beyond speech, into emotional, communicative more-than-human relations.

“My disbelief was not just existential but ethical—this wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. The world was not like that! The creature was breaking the rules, was totally mistaken, utterly wrong to think I could be reduced to food. As a human being, I was so much more than food. It was a denial of, an insult to all I was, to reduce me to food.”  – Val Plumwood, The Eye of the Crocodile, 2012, pg 12

The film Babe, based on the novel entitled Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith, and one of Val Plumwood’s muses in her philosophical writings on what it means to be food, brings to our attention a piglet as an emotional and communicative being. It tells an often dark yet romanticised story of the inner life of a family farm, where an exceptional ‘sheep-pig’ has gained a status as a communicative being in the eyes of the sensitive farmer. However, is the power of communication through speech itself the only marker of value in a ‘communicative model’ of ethical relations? Or as the Australian environmental philosopher Plumwood (2012) suggests in her posthumously published The Eye of the Crocodile: can we recognise the inherent anthropomorphic bias from which the idea of a ‘communicative status’ comes and be “sensitive to communicative capacities within species as well as to their capacities for communication with humans”?

This piece was originally published at the Undisciplined Environments’ blog. You can read the full text here.

Commoning through blogging: Reflections on our “Reimagining, remembering and recommoning water” series

In two webinars at the IASC 2021 Water Commons Virtual Conference (19-21 May 2021), past and future contributors reflected on the joint UndEnv-FLOWs series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning”.

Last week, during the IASC 2021 Water Commons Virtual Conference (19-21 May 2021)  two panels reflected on the blog series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: From extractivism to commoning”, co-hosted by Undisciplined Environments and IHE Delft’s FLOWs. The series builds on emerging discussions and activist practices of re-commoning water, that seek to heal  our relations to this non-human “relative” of ours. These new political ecologies  demand what Orla O’Donovan calls a  “re-membering”, in a double sense: bearing in mind the importance of water and past ways of relating to it, and re-connecting the socio-ecological ‘members’ of our water bodies.

During the first panel, those authors who already published an essay in the series (Jenia Mukherjee and Amrita SenPatrick BresnihanEmilie DupuitsElliot HurstSiti Maimunah and Sarah AgustioriniCleo Woelfle-ErskineKat Taylor and Sheri Longboat) reflected on the contributions so far, on how the series is fertilizing new ideas on re-imagining, re-connecting and re-claiming water commons. The contributors were invited to join an exercise in “active reading”: giving a brief description of  another essay from the series, and answer briefly how that essay 1) fosters “critical thinking on current challenges and possibilities for more just and ecological water presents and futures”  and 2) re-centers the political dimension of water commons and commoning. The diversity of the contributions that made up the series so far demonstrated how the category of the commons and the commons themselves are stretched between,  on the one side, universal understanding and aspirations – for instance to advance a political agenda against neoliberalism or privatisation – and, on the other side, specific, situated, and different local understandings of the commons.

You can read the full text on the Undisciplined Environment blog.

Gender and climate change adaptation responses in Kenya

The links between climate change and gender are widely known. However, little research has been done on how men and women respond differently to climate variability and uncertainties. To help respond to this, my ongoing PhD examines the politics of gender in climate change adaptation in the Maasai community of the Mara region in Kenya. So far, I have found many ways in which gender, class and age intersect with responses to climate variability, among diverse pastoralist men and women.

Extreme weather events

The Mara region of Kenya has experienced increasingly unpredictable extreme weather events like frequent prolonged droughts and floods that plague the area. This has led to a loss of key resources for livestock pastures, water, and salts, that are crucial for livestock production. The region has also faced tremendous ecological and social economic changes in the last couple of decades in the form of land fragmentation and dispossession, urbanization, and an influx of immigrants. These changes, coupled with the erratic weather events, have compromised the communities traditional coping strategies. In response, changes in processes, livelihood activities, and sources of income have emerged, along gendered lines.

Responses to climate variability occur in the confines of society that is laced with social inequalities along the lines of gender, class, age, race etc. These in-equalities pose barriers to access, control, and ownership of resources, perpetuate unequal distribution of labour, and excludes certain segments of society from meaningful decision making. Thus, shaping how diverse men and women, avoid, prepare for, respond, and recover from extreme weather events that threaten their lives and livelihoods.

You can read the full text at the Institute for Development Studies.

“Care within Time”, a poetic contribution

This poem was originally published here as part of ‘Care as Method’ workshop, organised by University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

 

Care without time
Shown disfigured through old glass
The kind that greens over time
It shudders through bodies, places
At speed

Care for a shared body
Of space(s)
Of knowledge(s)
Of love that knows only curiosity
When fear and uncertainty paint the surrounding trees
Making the forest inaudible to the touch

The violence of caring moves
Beyond harms way
Flowing through old, gnarled and tangled roots of intimacy
Known and unknown
Smelling of grassy, mossy interdependency

 

About the poem

I started to write a short essay for this workshop but found that my words couldn’t express the tensions I felt about my research, particularly the entanglement of care and time, and the contradictions inherent to caring relations. This poem is therefore about my attempt to think through the ethics and politics of care in relation to my research methodologies specifically. Through the poem I tried to untangle my thoughts through evoking different senses, to feel rather than (only) think with care. I try to depict my anxieties around what it means to care in research that is time-bound – limited to timescales, funding limitations, and often shaped by institutional ethical frameworks, which do not always produce ethical relations in situated research encounters. I try to speak to the care of shared labours, spaces and knowledges as liberating, stimulating but also extractive and oppressive. The quick shift to ‘fear and uncertainty’ in the poem, tries to emulate that sense of how unseen such inequalities and unevenness can be, often only revealed in intimate moments. I try to visualise these relations between care, violence and intimacy which occupy my thoughts.

 

 

When honesty is not the best policy: the ethical dilemma of sharing research findings

Two hours had just flown by. We were in the backyard of a local shopkeeper’s house that doubled as an electronic repair shop. But business was closed today. The heavy wooden doors and windows had been bolted shut so no one could interrupt the interview.

The conversation was about two communities entrenched in a bitter battle over ethnic hierarchy in the village. Engrossed by the interview, I had deliberately been doing very little talking when my speaker, a local schoolteacher and youth activist, asked me:

“I have told you everything I know. And I am sure you have interviewed them too, right? Now tell me, honestly… do you think we are telling the truth, or do you believe in their story?”

I suddenly realized at that moment that I had lost my grip over the interview. In a quick turn of events, we had switched roles. And I was now being asked to pick a side.

How should a researcher respond to such a question? Should she answer honestly, knowing that she will be showing researcher bias? Or should she refrain, and explain to her research participant why she must remain impartial? 

No matter which way you go, your ethical responsibility as a researcher is challenged. 

You can read the full text at Undisciplined Environment.

“Women who inspire us”: a March 8th campaign

WEGO-ITN promoted a special Twitter campaign on International Women’s Day. Partners, researchers and activists were invited to share with us their list of inspiring women for March 8th 2021. The list included artists, professors, academics and local activists. Take a look: