Dear all,


Please consider answering the call for this panel. Deadline for proposals
is this Friday, 15 December 2017.


*Intricacies of* *Prefiguration: Experiments in Human-Environment Relations
in Eco-Projects*
<https://politicalecologynetwork.com/2017/12/11/cfp-pollen18-intricacies-of-prefiguration-experiments-in-human-environment-relations-in-eco-projects/>

Organizer: Elvira Wepfer (University of Manchester)

Eco-projects are civil society initiatives that consciously experiment with
human-environment relations alternative to capitalist discourses of
optimized utility and maximised resource extraction. Instead, they explore
ways of relating to the natural environment along concepts of holistic
sustainability, reciprocity, and regeneration, which extend to
interpersonal human relations. Eco-projects thereby prioritize non-harmful,
replenishing nature-culture relations and function as places of
prefiguration for harmonious multispecies cohabitation. However, their
positionality amidst and within a global capitalist system entails both
ideological and practical intricacies.

Eco-projects encompass a diverse and creative array of initiatives ranging
from eco-villages to food forests, and from leaning centres of
sustainability to organic homesteading farms. Their commonalities lie in
the conceptualization of sustainability as a holistic approach to human
action encompassing social, cultural, ecological and economic aspects; and
in the (partial) application and promotion of agricultural self-sufficiency
through regenerative farming practices that include permaculture,
biodynamic or natural farming methods. As such, eco-projects creatively
critique capitalist exchange relations as they experiment with alternative
forms of subsistence, labour, and relationality. Case studies of such
initiatives, their outlook and their everyday practices, as well as their
outreach and impact on the wider community form the basis of this panel’s
enquiry.

At the same time, however, eco-projects’ endeavours are complicated by
their embeddedness in and partial dependence on the very system whose
exploitative relations these initiatives attempt to foreclose. Voluntary
labour relations, struggles for integrity and the limits of sociability
highlight some of the socio-cultural issues, while dependency on
exploitative supply chains, debates over levels and meaning of
environmental sustainability and the grappling with financial feasibility
flag the ecological-economic intricacies that surround and permeate
eco-projects in the global North and South. The interfaces on which these
obstructions occur, the ways in which they are dealt with by eco-project
members and participants, and the implications this has for the viability,
relevance and performativity of eco-projects form the core of the panel’s
focus.

More concretely, the panel invites the following considerations:

   - What are the ways in which eco-projects suggest, experiment with, and
   prefigure alternative human-environment relations, and how are the limits
   of these confronted?
   - What environmental strategies, financial solutions and social tools do
   eco-projects apply to balance the various demands posed by their
   embeddedness in an exploitative capitalist system?
   - How can we constructively theorize the intentions, everyday
   complexities, and limits of prefigurative attempts for socio-environmental
   change, and where do we locate their relevance for social sciences?

And, extending the scale of enquiry:

   - How can we as academics productively utilize the tensions between
   personal convictions and our scholarly critique as we observe eco-projects’
   contradictions and limitations?

Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words to Elvira Wepfer
([log in to unmask]) by 15 December 2017.

*************************************************************
*           Anthropology-Matters Mailing List
*  http://www.anthropologymatters.com            *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal,    *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources  *
* and international contacts directory.               *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous       *
* messages visit:                                             *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML   *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all    *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to:   *
*        [log in to unmask]                  *
*                                                             *
*       Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new        *
*       CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com        *
*    an international directory of anthropology researchers
*
* To unsubscribe: please log on to jiscmail.ac.uk, and            *
* go to the 'Subscriber's corner' page.                                  *
*
***************************************************************