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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Exploring Multispecies Assemblages Through Walking Ethnography in Abandoned Landscape

presenters

    Barbara Turk Niskač

    Nationality: Slovenia

    Residence: Finland

    Tampere University

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Keywords:

childhood memories, multispecies assemblages, walking ethnography, abandoned landscape, natural regrowth

Abstract:

Through walking ethnography, this paper explores multispecies assemblages at the intersection of childhood memories related to being and working in/with the land. It also investigates the process of overgrowth reclaiming abandoned land, which was once inhabited and shaped by human and grazing animals´ activity in extensive, small-scale mixed farming. The juxtaposition of childhood memories and the process of overgrowth highlights passage of time and how the past intertwines with the present. On the one hand, the natural regrowth of the forest exemplifies the abilities of reproduction, regeneration, and renewal of the natural world. On the other hand, the emphasis on childhood memories underscores the interweaving of memory, embodied experiences, and more-than-human sociality. Walking ethnography revealed the micro-processes of relational, affective, and material entanglements between human and more-than-human worlds. These processes also manifest in the attachment to place, and the aesthetics attributed to it. Intimate memories of interlocutors transformed overgrown patches of land into meaningful places, revealing also perceptual skills and environmental knowledge acquired by interlocutors through their participation in work since early childhood. By tracing the transformation of the landscape that has occurred within a single generation and by thinking through memories, the paper also troubles the notion of abandoned landscape associated with ruins and points to “slow disturbance” (Tsing 2012), which in this research context fostered multispecies collaboration and biodiversity. Human and animal disturbances, which have altered the landscape in the past, also sustained multispecies life, establishing an equilibrium with vegetation.