Table Of ContentEcological Nostalgias
Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology, University of Kent at Canterbury
Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years, refl ecting national
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Recent volumes:
Volume 26 Volume 21
Ecological Nostalgias Trees, Knots, and Outriggers
Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Ecolog- Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula
ical Upheavals Ring
Edited by Olivia Angé and David Berliner Frederick H. Damon
Volume 25 Volume 20
Birds of Passage Beyond the Lens of Conservation
Hunting and Conservation in Malta Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another
Mark-Anthony Falzon Eva Keller
Volume 24 Volume 19
At Home on the Waves Sustainable Development
Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic An Appraisal from the Gulf Region
to Today Edited by Paul Sillitoe
Edited by Tanya J. King and Gary Robinson
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Volume 23 Things Fall Apart?
Edges, Fringes, Frontiers The Political Ecology of Forest Governance in
Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Southern Nigeria
Sustainability in Guyana Pauline von Hellermann
Thomas B. Henfrey
Volume 17
Volume 22 Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia
Indigeneity and the Sacred Bioregionalism, Permaculture, and Ecovillages
Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Edited by Joshua Lockyer and James R. Veteto
Natural Sites in the Americas
Edited by Fausto Sarmiento and Sarah
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Ecological Nostalgias
Memory, Affect and Creativity
in Times of Ecological Upheavals
Edited by Olivia Angé and David Berliner
berghahn
N E W Y O R K (cid:129) O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2021 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2021 Olivia Angé and David Berliner
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Angé, Olivia, editor. | Berliner, David, editor.
Title: Ecological nostalgias : memory, affect and creativity in times of
ecological upheavals / edited by Olivia Angé and David Berliner.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Series: Studies in
environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; volume 26 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2020017989 (print) | LCCN 2020017990 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781789208931 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789208948 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology—Case studies. | Ethnoecology—
Case studies. | Global environmental change—Social aspects—
Case studies. | Nostalgia—Social aspects—Case studies.
Classifi cation: LCC GF51 .E25 2021 (print) | LCC GF51 (ebook) |
DDC 304.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017989
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017990
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78920-893-1 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-894-8 ebook
Contents
List of Figures and Maps vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
Olivia Angé and David Berliner
Chapter 1. Thinking Through Nostalgia in Anthropologies of the
Environment and Ethnographies of Landscape 17
Roy Ellen
Chapter 2. High Arctic Nostalgia: Thule and the Ecology of Mind 39
Kirsten Hastrup
Chapter 3. Nostalgic Confessions in the French Cévennes:
Politics of Longings in the Neo-Peasants Initiatives 60
Madeleine Sallustio
Chapter 4. The Nature of Loss: Ecological Nostalgia
and Cultural Politics in Amazonia 84
Casey High
Chapter 5. Ecological Nostalgias and Interspecies Affect
in the Highland Potato Fields of Cuzco (Peru) 107
Olivia Angé
Chapter 6. The Village and the Hamlet in the Mixe Highlands
of Oaxaca, Mexico: Nostalgic Commitments to Working and
Living Together 126
Perig Pitrou
Chapter 7. Peaceful Countryside: Ecologies of Longing
and the Temporality of Flux in Contemporary Mongolia 145
Richard D.G. Irvine
Chapter 8. Melt in the Future Subjunctive 166
Cymene Howe
Afterword 178
Dominic Boyer
Index 183
Figures and Maps
Figures
1.1. Dusun part-time farmers sowing seed rice in a
recently cleared swidden, Tutong District, Brunei, 1991. 26
1.2. Sonohue Matoke surveying his land: Sama (looking
north) from headwaters of Sune Ukune near Rouhua,
South Seram, February 1996. 29
2.1. Meeting on the sea ice – still the most important
infrastructure. The anthropologist to the left. 40
2.2. Drying strips of narwhal meat on the island of Qeqertat;
a composition of non-scalable elements. 44
2.3. Remnants of the Thule Station, with the emblematic
‘heart-shaped’ mountain at back. 48
2.4. Narwhal hunter in his kayak, silently waiting for his prey. 52
3.1. ‘The land doesn’t lie’, Limoges, 1942. Propaganda Épinal
image under the Régime de Vichy showing the Maréchal
Pétain saluting the hard work of the French peasants. 64
3.2. Practice of animal traction in the case of mound crops.
The trained horse walks between the mounds and works
following the neo-peasant’s commands and movements. 71
4.1. A remote part of wao öme where gardens, fi sh and game
remain plentiful for Waorani residents in the area. 90
4.2. Oil roads, pipelines and drilling installations have become
part of everyday life in the northern and eastern areas of
the Waorani ethnic reserve. 92
4.3. Waponi kiwimonipa: ‘living well’ in everyday household life. 94
4.4. In February 2019, Waorani and other indigenous peoples
of the Ecuadorian Amazon march through the city of Puyo
to protest against the government’s selling of oil concessions
Figures and Maps | vii
on indigenous lands without adequate community
consultation or informed consent. 98
5.1. A meal is made of potatoes from many different varieties. 110
5.2. Papa T’inkay on a barely fl owering fi eld, as rains had come
very late in the agricultural calendar. 117
6.1. Santa María Tlahuitoltepec. Village. 127
6.2. Santa María Tlahuitoltepec. A rancho, outside of the village. 128
7.1. Children at Mungunmorit school lead the way to a vantage
point within the landscape, September 2015. 149
7.2. The gants mod (lone tree) in Mungunmorit sum,
September 2015 151
7.3. G. Mend-Ooyo running a creative writing workshop in
Mungunmorit school, March 2016. 156
8.1. Glacier. Sveitarfélagið Hornafjörð, East Iceland. 167
8.2. Ice. Borgarbyggð, Western Iceland. 171
8.3. Glacial lagoon. Sveitarfélagið Hornafjörð, East Iceland. 174
8.4. Glacial melt beach. Sveitarfélagið Hornafjörð, East Iceland. 175
Maps
1.1. The river systems and state boundaries of Brunei, showing
the locations of the Batu Apoi reserve (a) on the Temburong,
and Tasek Merimbun (b) in Tutong District. The inset
indicates the position of Brunei on the island of Borneo. 23
1.2. Seram, showing boundaries of the recently established
desa of Nuanea (a) and that of Sepa (b), in relation to the
Nuaulu extractive environment as a whole, and the
overlapping area of the Manusela National Park. 27
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the authors of the present book.
We are grateful to Dominic Boyer who later accepted to write an after-
word. We very much appreciated the rich insight provided by two anony-
mous reviewers and we are indebted to them for thoroughly reading and
commenting the manuscript. The cover picture is a courtesy from Alexan-
der Sigutin, we thank him warmly for giving us the permission to use his
art. We have also been fortunate to receive the editorial support of Aron
Ponce. Finally, we address our sincere thanks to Marion Berghahn for her
interest in our work and for making this book happen.
Introduction
Olivia Angé and David Berliner
This book furthers refl ections engaged in a previous collection on the
anthropology of nostalgia (Angé and Berliner 2014), by specifi cally ad-
dressing longings for past forms of life in earthly environments. Ecolog-
ical nostalgias, or as we call them, ‘eco-nostalgias’, are so pervasive in
contemporary societies upset by climate change and the devastation of
ecosystems that we believe it deserves to be approached as a singular
ethnographic object. Within a modern temporality made of radical revo-
lutions and patrimonial desires for the repetition of the past (Latour 1991:
103), it is no surprise that the major ecological destruction that humans are
facing nowadays triggers all sorts of attachments to living organisms that
are jeopardised, or already gone.
Let us begin with an example which encapsulates the questions this
book explores: agrobiodiversity conservation. All over the globe, a sub-
stantial amount of resources and energy is currently being devoted by
farmers, scientists and bureaucrats from institutions at all levels, from
local NGOs to multinational stakeholders, to curate germplasm from crop
plants and their wild relatives. Since the 1970s, Western consortia have
started to support gene banks where genetic and phenotypic material is
examined and hoarded to ensure their protection. Intended to overcome
human hunger in a context of population growth and environmental de-
struction, the practices involved in seed banking are based on the predi-
cate of ‘genetic erosion’ (Plucknett and Smith 1987).
The emergence of scientifi c plant breeding in the 1920s provoked germ-
plasm simplifi cation in many parts of the world (Plucknett and Smith 1987:
8), including centres of domestication. It is ascertained that agricultural
intensifi cation in Europe and North America has produced signifi cant
genetic erosion from the beginning. In these regions pioneering the indus-
trialization of agriculture, maize production instantiates the devastating
effect of crop genetic manipulation in the twentieth century. The diffusion
of hybrid seeds in the USA is infamous in this regard: it is estimated that,
two decades after their introduction, hybrid varieties covered 90 per cent
