Thom van Dooren

Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities

Welcome to the first volume of this new, international, open-access journal. Environmental Humanities aims to support and further a wide range of conversations on environmental issues in this time of growing awareness of the ecological and social challenges facing all life on earth. The field of environmental humanities is growing rapidly, both in research and teaching. In just the past few years, a number of research centres and undergraduate and postgraduate programs have emerged at universities all around the world: in the USA, the UK, Scandinavia, Taiwan and Australia, to name just a few places. In each area, this broad domain of scholarship is being taken up and developed in a distinct way. In general, however, the environmental humanities can be understood to be a wide ranging response to the environmental challenges of our time. Drawing on humanities and social science disciplines that have brought qualitative analysis to bear on environmental issues, the environmental humanities engages with fundamental questions of meaning, value, responsibility and purpose in a time of rapid, and escalating, change. The emergence of the environmental humanities is part of a growing willingness to engage with the environment from within the humanities and social sciences. While historically both fields have focused on ‘the human’ in a way that has often excluded or backgrounded the non-human world, since the 1960s, interest in environmental issues has gradually gained pace within disciplines, giving us, for example, strong research agendas in environmental history, environmental philosophy, environmental anthropology and sociology, political ecology, posthuman geographies and ecocriticism (among others). Indeed, in many of these fields, what have traditionally been termed ‘environmental issues’ have been shown to be inescapably entangled with human ways of being in the world, and broader questions of politics and social justice. But recent interest in the environmental humanities, as a field and a label, is a result of something more than the growth of work within a range of distinct disciplinary areas. Rather, the emergence of the environmental humanities indicates a renewed emphasis on bringing 1 Some of this diversity is showcased in the profiles of members of our editorial board, available at: http://environmentalhumanities.org/about/profiles

Banking Seed: Use and Value in the Conservation of Agricultural Diversity

Since the 1930s it has been widely acknowledged that agricultural crop diversity is being lost at an alarming rate. The international response to this genetic erosion has principally taken the form of ex situ genebanks. In these facilities and in the international regulatory frameworks that now surround them, it is genetic diversity that is the focus of conservation efforts. This focus, however, passes over the many other important diversities—both biological and social (or ‘biosocial’)—that exist in, and depend on, agricultural environments. These diversities cannot be conserved in genebanks. In addition to failing to actually conserve agricultural diversity (in any full sense of the term), ex situ banking projects also produce important potential inequalities—in terms of which material is banked and who has access to it. If, however, we refuse to accept an exclusive focus on the genetic components of plants, and instead insist on a brand of conservation that includes whole biosocial, more-than-human com...Since the 1930s it has been widely acknowledged that agricultural crop diversity is being lost at an alarming rate. The international response to this genetic erosion has principally taken the form of ex situ genebanks. In these facilities and in the international regulatory frameworks that now surround them, it is genetic diversity that is the focus of conservation efforts. This focus, however, passes over the many other important diversities—both biological and social (or ‘biosocial’)—that exist in, and depend on, agricultural environments. These diversities cannot be conserved in genebanks. In addition to failing to actually conserve agricultural diversity (in any full sense of the term), ex situ banking projects also produce important potential inequalities—in terms of which material is banked and who has access to it. If, however, we refuse to accept an exclusive focus on the genetic components of plants, and instead insist on a brand of conservation that includes whole biosocial, more-than-human communities, then the role of banked resources must be radically rethought. Genebanks might instead take the place of central nodes in networks of diversity sharing, helping to keep plant varieties growing and circulating. This focus, in turn, requires that we also pay more critical attention to the various economic, legal and other mechanisms that prevent or stifle the flow and development of plant genetic resources in/to agricultural communities—especially those of peasant and indigenous farmers that play such a crucial role in conserving the worlds (agro)biodiversity.

Inventing Seed: The Nature(s) of Intellectual Property in Plants

This paper explores some of the inequities in the ways in which intellectual property has been applied to agricultural plant genetic resources, focusing primarily on patents. In particular, it is concerned with the importance of what counts as ‘nature’ in making the distinction between something that is ‘invented’ and something that is merely ‘discovered’—a distinction that is at the heart of patent law (although not always made in these terms). While discoveries are understood to be mere revealings of nature, genuine inventions are considered to be human products, and therefore eligible for patent protection. What counts as nature in this discourse, and which kinds of human labour are taken to be genuinely inventive, is, therefore, a highly consequential issue. Ultimately, I argue for both the exposure of the noninnocent and highly political way in which ‘nature’ is formed, and the importance of more honest ways of characterising the coming-into-being of new plant varieties. The final section points to some existing proposals and projects that might help us to build systems of property in this area that are both more equitable and that acknowledge the contributions and needs of all of the diverse actors—human and not—involved in the ‘emergence’ of agricultural biodiversity.

Authentic Crows: Identity, Captivity and Emergent Forms of Life:

For over a decade the Hawaiian crow (Corvus hawaiiensis), or ‘alalā, has been extinct in the wild, the only remaining birds living their lives in captivity. As the time for possible release approaches, questions of species identity – in particular focused on how birds have been changed by captivity – have become increasingly pressing. This article explores how identity is imagined and managed in this programme to produce ‘authentic’ crows. In particular, it asks what possibilities might be opened up by a move beyond relatively static notions of how these birds ought to be, towards more performative understandings of species identity. This shift in focus prompts us to ask how we might take up the task of learning to be part of these birds’ own experiments in emergent forms of ‘crow-ness’, so that we might begin to craft vital new forms of ‘polite’ conservation in this era of incredible biodiversity loss.For over a decade the Hawaiian crow (Corvus hawaiiensis), or ‘alalā, has been extinct in the wild, the only remaining birds living their lives in captivity. As the time for possible release approaches, questions of species identity – in particular focused on how birds have been changed by captivity – have become increasingly pressing. This article explores how identity is imagined and managed in this programme to produce ‘authentic’ crows. In particular, it asks what possibilities might be opened up by a move beyond relatively static notions of how these birds ought to be, towards more performative understandings of species identity. This shift in focus prompts us to ask how we might take up the task of learning to be part of these birds’ own experiments in emergent forms of ‘crow-ness’, so that we might begin to craft vital new forms of ‘polite’ conservation in this era of incredible biodiversity loss.

Terminated Seed: Death, Proprietary Kinship and the Production of (Bio)Wealth

The wealth of living things on the earth is the product of hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history. Since the emergence of Homo sapiens from the ranks of humanoid primates, biodiversity and humanity have become inextricably linked. Human cultures have adapted to many diverse habitats. They have used, altered and nurtured biological resources to meet countless needs. As a result of plant and animal domestication, and resource harvesting, a tremendous interdependence has evolved between ‘natural’ and ‘human-induced’ biodiversity (Shand, 1993).

Rethinking the Final Frontier: Cosmo-Logics and an Ethic of Interstellar Flourishing

In recent years a range of corporate and governmental entities have made increasingly strident moves toward the establishment of an off-Earth mining industry, often touting an imminent “gold rush in space.” For many proponents these proposals are thoroughly entangled with an even more ambitious set of possibilities for a new age of human history in space that will include the exploration and eventual colonization of extraterrestrial environments. This article takes off-Earth mining as an entry point into this complex terrain, exploring the way in which problematically homogenous notions of humanity and an open and available space are being deployed to do a kind of regulatory ethical work that simultaneously imposes and overcomes any limits to off-Earth expansion. In contrast to such an approach, this article aims to develop an ethics of interstellar flourishing grounded in an attentiveness to the consequential processes of worlding that are already linking up and remaking possibilities for everyone, both on and off-world.

The Unwelcome Crows

AbstractThis article focuses on a small population of house crows in the town of Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands, likely descendants of two birds that arrived by ship in the mid-1990s. In 2014, after twenty years of peaceful co-existence, the government began the process of eradicating this population. Just across the water from Hoek van Holland is the Port of Rotterdam – Europe’s largest port – and an “engine” for the global patterns of production, trade and consumption that are today remaking our world, ushering in what many are calling “the Anthropocene.” Focusing on these crows and this port – in a way that is attuned to the broader placetimes that constitute our present – this paper explores the possibilities and limitations of hospitality as a basis for crafting shared worlds in difficult times.Abstract This article focuses on a small population of house crows in the town of Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands, likely descendants of two birds that arrived by ship in the mid-1990s. In 2014, after twenty years of peaceful co-existence, the government began the process of eradicating this population. Just across the water from Hoek van Holland is the Port of Rotterdam – Europe’s largest port – and an “engine” for the global patterns of production, trade and consumption that are today remaking our world, ushering in what many are calling “the Anthropocene.” Focusing on these crows and this port – in a way that is attuned to the broader placetimes that constitute our present – this paper explores the possibilities and limitations of hospitality as a basis for crafting shared worlds in difficult times.

Keeping Faith with the Dead: Mourning and De-extinction

ABSTRACT This paper takes a critical perspective on the emerging prospect of ‘de-extinction’ as a response to the current period of massive biodiversity loss. Drawing on our own humanities and soci...

The Promises of Pests: Wildlife in Agricultural Landscapes

ABSTRACT This paper explores the place of pest species in agricultural landscapes in Australia. Drawing on historical, ethnographic and philosophical research, we consider the very particular—reductive, utilitarian, monological—ways of understanding and valuing landscapes that lead to some animals being classified as pests. We propose that paying attention to pests might offer a productive way into challenging these logics and opening up more creative and inclusive agricultural possibilities.

Introduction and Farewell

This issue of the Ecological Humanities is focussed on two of the greatest global phenomena that challenge contemporary social and cultural practice: the Anthropocene and climate change. In the first paper, Ben Dibley offers seven theses on the Anthropocene and ‘attachment’. He takes up questions of time, history, politics, and the human. Nick Mansfield presents an extended review essay that engages with the challenges of climate change. His essay starts with the prophetic words: ‘climate change will also bring with it problems to do with political time and historical time...’. In their contribution to this issue, Alice Robinson and Dan Tout bring their experience of drought into reflections on floods and belonging in the unique climate and culture of settler Australia. They explore what it means to call a place a ‘home’, and the need for settler societies to unsettle their own histories, ideas and relationships to produce more honest and sustainable possibilities for the future. These articles are all situated within an awareness of the far-more-than-human significance of events in this era of rapid change.