Relationality, Reciprocity, and Flourishing in an African Landscape

Hannis, M; Sullivan, Sian

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190456023.003.0018

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Eco psychology, together with ecophilosophy and phenomenology approaches to human experience, specifies that psychological disintegration arising in connection with the commodity form is also ecological in nature (see Evernden, 1985; Roszak, 2002). Psychological integration thereby implies recognition of the virtues of ecological dependence (Hannis, 2016) to extend human relational and reciprocal practices to include natures-beyond-the-human (Hannis and Sullivan, 2018).…”

Section: Accumulation-by-alienation and The Structural Natures Of Ecomentioning

confidence: 99%

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

Dunlap

Sullivan

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This article identifies an emerging faultline in critical geography and political ecology scholarship by reviewing recent debates on three neoliberal environmental governance initiatives: Payments for Ecosystem Services, the United Nations programme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting. These three approaches, we argue, are characterized by varying degrees of contextual and procedural – or superficial – difference, meanwhile exhibiting significant structural similarities that invite critique, perhaps even rejection. Specifically, we identify three largely neglected ‘social engineering’ outcomes as more foundational to Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and carbon-biodiversity offsetting than often acknowledged, suggesting that neoliberal environmental governance approaches warrant greater critical attention for their contributions to advancing processes of colonization, state territorialization and security policy. Examining the structural accumulation strategies accompanying neoliberal environmental governance approaches, we offer the term ‘accumulation-by-alienation’ to highlight both the objective appropriations accompanying Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting and the relational deficiencies accompanying the various commodifying instrumentalizations at the heart of these initiatives. We concur with David Harvey’s recent work proposing that understanding the iterative and consequential connections between objective/material and subjective/psychological dimensions of alienation offers ‘one vital key to unlock the door of a progressive politics for the future’. We conclude (with others) by urging critical geography and political ecology scholars to cultivate research directions that affirm more radical alternatives, rather than reinforcing a narrowing focus on how to improve Payments for Ecosystem Services, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries and offsetting in practice.

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Section: Accumulation-by-alienation and The Structural Natures Of Ecomentioning

confidence: 99%

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

Dunlap

Sullivan

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…While the conflict-laden relationships between ontologies have been productively analyzed (Blaser 2013a;Hannis and Sullivan 2018), it is seldom thematized that worlds increasingly overlap. In Namibia some Damara people are scientists, some are teachers, and many know in multiple ways.…”

Section: Inter-ontological Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Environmental studies is another field in which the many-worlds model has been productively mobilized (De la Cadena and Blaser 2018;Descola 2013;Green 2013;Omura et al 2018;Whatmore 2002). During the last decade, several authors have convincingly demonstrated that thingsincluding rivers and lakes (Mészáros 2020), fires (Verran 2002), landscapes (Hannis and Sullivan 2018;Sullivan 2017), forests (Kohn 2013), and many more entities-can become so different that it makes sense to speak of entirely different entities. This is the case with the winds I study: depending on how one relates to them, they can be either a person or a resource for powering a windmill that pumps water for people and their livestock (Schnegg 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontologies of climate change

Schnegg

2021

American Ethnologist

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In Namibia, both Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) and scientists agree that it rains less frequently than before. To explain their observations, however, scientists refer to carbon dioxide molecules, while the pastoralists point to social tensions, neoliberalism, and failures of the postcolonial state. To understand this discrepancy, I ask whether what scientists call precipitation and what Damara call ǀnanus are really the same thing. Engaging with phenomenological theories, I propose a worldliness continuum that reveals substantial ontological difference between the two. While precipitation occurs independently of humans, ǀnanus encompasses everything—it is life and death. If the two are different things, it is unsurprising that one needs different explanations for them. Acknowledging this creates space to navigate between the recognition of multiple ontologies and the politicization of carbon dioxide emissions. [climate change, ontology, phenomenology, world, knowledge, environment, drought, Namibia]

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“…However, in northwestern Namibia the rain is an all-encompassing phenomenon, and others have offered sophisticated analyses of its additional meanings. These include how the lack of rain is a consequence of social and political change (Sullivan, 2002), rain's personified agency (Hannis and Sullivan, 2018; Schnegg, 2019) and rain's symbolic, medical and ritual role in rock art and people's lives (Low, 2008; Sullivan and Low, 2014). Moreover, I have shown in my previous work how two gendered and animated winds are responsible for the arrival of the rains and how and why the rains have failed to come in recent years with climate change (Schnegg, 2019, 2021).…”

Section: How Different Rains Encapsulate Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Eleven Namibian rains: A phenomenological analysis of experience in time

Schnegg

2021

Anthropological Theory

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The Damara pastoralists ( ǂnūkhoen) in Namibia distinguish a diverse range of rains. Some rains kill livestock, others care for insects and still others wash away the footprints of the deceased, allowing the person to exist in the spirit realm. While anthropologists have documented cultural classifications like the Namibian rains for decades, we still lack a convincing theory to explain how they come to exist. To address this, I develop a phenomenological perspective and theorise how experience contributes to what rain becomes. I argue with Husserl that the present in which we experience the rain is not a discrete moment, but a unity across a succession of ‘nows’. In the process, perceptions, images, memories and expectations about past and future events blend. In other words, a web of meaningful relationships connects the rain we experience ‘now’ with multiple past and future entities, including people, plants, spirits and animals. I refer to this as network formation. Combining the analyses of the people's pastoral being-in-the-world and their historical–political context, including post-colonialism, allows an explanation as to why some of those combinations are singled out and become distinct ontological entities. I refer to this as node selection. Combining the two processes – network formation and node selection – allows for an explanation as to why precipitation becomes discernible and meaningful as eleven different Namibian rains.

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Relationality, Reciprocity, and Flourishing in an African Landscape

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

A faultline in neoliberal environmental governance scholarship? Or, why accumulation-by-alienation matters

Ontologies of climate change

Eleven Namibian rains: A phenomenological analysis of experience in time

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