Activities
Workshop · Oriental Institute, CAS · KITLV
Food, Nourishment, and Metabolic Justice in the Extractive Frontiers
- Dates
- –
- Venue
- Czech Academy of Sciences · Praha
The Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies invites scholars with a solid fieldwork background, primarily in the Indo-Pacific but not limited to it, to present research examining contemporary issues in food, nourishment, and extractivism. The extractive imperative (Jacka 2018: 22), stemming from the necessity of self-consuming capitalist growth, has increasingly devoured nourishing ecologies (forests, rivers, swamps, coastal areas, mountains, lakes, and small islands etc.) and transformed them into mining concessions, plantation zones, large-scale agricultural production which, ironically, are often justified by the global narrative of energy transition, food insecurity, and climate change mitigation.
Seminar
Rethinking Resilience: Climate Justice and Decolonial Perspectives
Darmanto speaks at this seminar · 29 November 2024
- Date
- Venue
- Academy Conference Centre Praha
- Organiser
- Dr. Meenakshi Abunjam
- Format
- Multi-speaker seminar
Darmanto was invited to present his paper entitled “Climatic Politics From Below: The Mentawai’s Resiliency in the Shadow of Climate Change and Decarbonization Projects.” The seminar asks: how can a profound engagement with critical climate justice and climate coloniality help reformulate our conceptualisation of resilience? It has an exciting lineup of speakers from Czechia and abroad who will delve into this question, drawing on their long-term research from various parts of the world.
The seminar is organized by Dr. Meenakshi Abunjam and will take place at the Academy Conference Centre Praha.
Darmanto’s Paper
“Climatic Politics From Below: The Mentawai’s Resiliency in the Shadow of Climate Change and Decarbonization Projects”
Seminar Series · No. 5
“Crocodiles Are Watching”
Seminar with Darmanto · Tuesday, September 17, 2024
- Date
- Time
- 14:00 (CET)
- Venue
- IE CAS, Prague · 5th floor
- Mode
- In person & online
The Department of Ecological Anthropology invites you to the fifth seminar of the new seminar series. Our next talk, by Darmanto, is entitled ‘Crocodiles are watching’ (see the abstract below). The event will take place in Prague on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, commencing at 14:00 (CET) in the conference room on the fifth floor at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. You are invited to attend in person at the IE CAS, or online via Microsoft Teams. To register for the seminar, please click here.
Abstract
Frequent accidental drownings have provoked the indigenous Mentawai on Siberut Island (West Sumatra, Indonesia) to connect the recent reappearance of the ever-elusive salt-water crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) with ongoing ecological and social crises. The animal is a special creature, traditionally seen as the embodiment and the companion of the autochthonous spirit of the water (sikoinan) and the custodian of the underworld, a divine arbiter guarding moral order and manifesting social unity. These drowning incidents have led to a resurgence in the old belief that sikoinan is warning and punishing society due to a lack of sharing and the emergence of social inequality inseparable from ongoing development projects. The Mentawai understand that the rampant development activities have altered their cosmological world, caused the depletion of natural resources, and generated new social insecurity. Yet, they are actively engaged and voluntarily aspire to participate in these activities. I argue that the contemporary anxiety over crocodiles and drowning accidents signals an ongoing (re)consideration of what it means to be a Mentawai person and society in the context of rapid social disruption and environmental transformation.
Darmanto is an environmental anthropologist at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. For more information about Darmanto, have a look here.
We hope to see you in Prague or online!
Events
Environmental Humanities Masterclass with Dr. Sophie Chao
- Date
- Venue
- Prague
- Language
- English
- Slots
- Max. 12 participants
The Environmental Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that engages with contemporary environmental issues and examines life’s cultural and political dimensions in a more-than-human world. In an epoch of ecological crisis, this field is of timely and critical importance, challenging human exceptionalism and nature-culture divides, examining our embroilment with and ethical obligations to more-than-human beings, and attuning us to emerging lively connections and alternate socio-ecological futures.
This Masterclass hopes to deepen engagement with the concerns of the Environmental Humanities in the Czech Republic and the broader region. We invite interested students to a one-day program to foster a community of like-minded researchers and offer an interactive session with Dr. Sophie Chao, an accomplished and prominent scholar from the University of Sydney. Dr. Chao will guide the participants and provide feedback on doing empirical and theoretical work.
We invite early career researchers (masters, doctoral and postdoctoral) interested in the environmental humanities to attend a one-day masterclass with Sophie Chao on May 22nd in Prague. To register your interest, an abstract of 250 words and a short bio must be submitted by 15.04.2024 (for more details, see below). The masterclass will be held in English.
There is a maximum of 12 slots available for the masterclass. To register your interest, we ask potential participants to submit an abstract of no more than 250 words for a 5 to 8-minute presentation. The abstract can be about something the participants find challenging, puzzling or interesting, but it can also be a question they would like to share and develop. It could develop around an ethnographic observation, an incident, an interview, a material object, or anything else you think would be a relevant point of departure for your current work.
Call for Abstracts
Accompanying the abstract should be a short 100–150-word bio and institutional affiliation. Please submit your abstract and other details by 15.04.2024 to:
Darmanto — [email protected]
Paul Keil — [email protected]
This event is organised by the Oriental Institute and the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the School of Social Science, Charles University. The masterclass is funded by the Strategy AV21, the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR, Grant no. 24-13058S), and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant agreement no. 866350).
For further information, please send your questions to [email protected] or [email protected].
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