[Xmca-l] CFP: "The 'pluriverse in practice': What can ethnographic cases teach us about alternatives to development?"

Fri May 1 11:28:21 PDT 2020

This CFP seemed relevant to some conversations we've been having here, so I thought I'd send it along.
Best,
Elizabeth
***
Dear friends, dear colleagues,

Greetings during these surreal times. We welcome you to submit a paper to the interdisciplinary special issue "The 'pluriverse in practice': What can ethnographic cases teach us about alternatives to development?"

The call for contributions, including a description of the topic and practical information, is available below and in the attached document.

A timeline:

  *   Short abstracts (300 words) due May 31st, 2020
  *   Long abstracts (1000 words) due July 15th, 2020
  *   Full articles due by the end of 2020
  *   Publication by the end of 2021

Please circulate widely!

wishing you well,
Shivani

Shivani Kaul (Royal University of Bhutan/University of Amsterdam), with Bengi Akbulut (Concordia University, Montreal), Federico Demaria (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Julien-François Gerber (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague)

The 'pluriverse in practice': What can ethnographic cases teach us about alternatives to development?
Editors: Bengi Akbulut (Concordia University), Federico Demaria (ICTA-UAB), Julien-François Gerber (ISS) and Shivani Kaul (RUB-RTC, UvA)

DESCRIPTION
"Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters."
(Audre Lorde, 1984, p. 90-91)

A range of interrelated crises face the planet today, rooted in historical and entangled processes of exploitation based on race, class, gender, and species. But can upheavals in the 'Anthropocene', like the COVID-19 pandemic, provide an opportunity to slow down and make time to consider existing alternatives to development? What are the generative - not only destructive - practices to be observed in ethnographic cases in and around us? In this special issue, we seek to bridge academic communities across contexts, career stages, and disciplines to learn from the 'pluriverse in practice'.

Heterodox ecological economists over the last decade have increasingly mobilized the term 'degrowth' as an alternative to capitalist development, seeking to decolonize dominant imaginaries centered on GDP, growthism and acceleration (Demaria et al., 2013; Latouche, 2009). But 'degrowth' is not alone. It is one among many alternatives to hegemonic development discourses (Kothari et al., 2019). These alternative worldviews and practices compose the 'pluriverse' - "a world where many worlds fit" - in the words of the Zapatistas. Along with this emerging global tapestry of new or resurrected concepts and practices studied primarily as narrative and discourse (Escobar, 2018), many questions remain open. What is a transformative alternative in practice? Alternative to what? What do these cases have in common, and how are they (unc)common? How are they distinct from techno-managerial proposals for sustainability?

Political ecologists in turn report on the radical potentials but also pitfalls of activist projects that push through the contradictions of capitalist relations and metabolisms (e.g. ejatlas.org). They warn against the 'agrarian myth' (Gerber, 2020) and cultural essentialisms in a one-world built on the tendency not to homogenize but exaggerate differences into caricatures of racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983, Dengler & Seebacher, 2019). How do people with different power relations and intersectional interests work together to design alternatives to capitalist development? How can radical projects avoid reproducing patriarchal and colonial continuities?

Anthropologists potentially regenerate both of these efforts through their emphasis on participant observation and praxis. They can present stories from non-capitalist societies, from countries and cities that have adapted to stalled growth, and from emerging intentional communities (Kallis et al., 2018). The broader aim is to unsettle myths and values of 'self-devouring growth', encourage dialogue between pathways of change, and nourish science-activist links across the north and south (Livingston, 2019; Paulson, 2017; 2018). Building on existing 'arts of living together' (Tsing et al., 2017) and redistributive policies could move the damaged planet closer to sustaining a good life for all within planetary boundaries (Hickel, 2019).

Anthropologists themselves increasingly use their creative capacities to not only negate what emerges beyond the power of their discipline and its colonial knowledge forms, but to work with/in difference to disrupt nature-culture divides. Recent dialogue between indigenous collectives and feminist science studies propose the pluriverse as analytic, as "heterogeneous worldings coming together as a political ecology of practices, negotiating their difficult being together in heterogeneity" (Blaser & de la Cadena, 2018, p. 13). Echoing Audre Lorde: difference need not remain threatening - it is the generative spark of creativity and result of radical interdependence (1984). Towards this end, the ethnographic case can be a particularly rich mode of analysis to illustrate exceptions, and also potentially situate the macro in the micro (Yates-Doerr & Labuski, 2015). To at once unsettle the coloniality of 'Man' (Wynter 2003), and to 'make kin' in regenerative ways (Haraway 2016). What might we learn about alternatives to development from ethnographic cases of the 'pluriverse in practice'?

POTENTIAL TOPICS
For this special session, we particularly invite papers presenting ethnographic case studies, especially if using experimental ethnographic methods. We intend to move beyond critique and resistance movements, and understand how alternative practices might flourish in practice - frictions and all. We particularly encourage contributions on these issues that are part of the post-development research agenda. Possible topics include:

  *   Contemporary regional experiences such as Rojava, Chiapas, Cuba, Kerala, Bhutan, indigenous societies, and any other relevant larger-scale initiatives;
  *   Historical regional experiences and exilic spaces (Grubačić & O'Hearn, 2016) like Maroon territories, Zomia (Scott, 2009) or Makhnovia;
  *   Municipal alternatives (e.g. Marinaleda, Mendha Lekha, Longo Maï or Auroville), anarchist experiments (Graeber, 2004), and ethnographic cases of community/solidarity economies and intentional communities;
  *   Various conceptions of the 'good life' as a basis for building concrete alternatives (e.g. Buen vivir, mino-mnaamodzawin, bamtaare or tri hita karana);
  *   Ethnographic cases of post-growth and well-being policy initiatives (e.g. New Zealand, Wales or Scotland);
  *   Contradictions within and among alternatives: e.g. pluriversality and universality. For instance, how can we deal with those worlds that do not want to relate - ethno-nationalist and imperializing worlds - without going against the principles of the pluriverse? Is it possible to do so without resorting to new universalisms?
  *   Convergences and alliances of alternatives: What potential for tensions and complementarities is there? At local, national, regional or global scales (e.g. Pam a Pam, Crianza mutua, Vikalp Sangam and Global Tapestry of Alternatives).
  *   Ethnographic cases engaging with the challenges of ontological politics in practice (Stengers, 2018)
  *   ...

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Authors interested to join the special issue are welcome to submit a proposal in the form of an abstract (maximum 300 words), with title, authors and affiliations, via e-mail to Shivani Kaul (s.kaul@uva.nl) by May 31st, 2020. Shortlisted authors would submit an extended abstract of 1000 words by July 15th, 2020.  We are working on a special issue to be prospectively published in a journal such as Development and Change or World Development. Tentatively, articles will be submitted at the end of 2020, with publication at the end of 2021.

REFERENCES

Blaser, M., & de la Cadena, M. (2018). Pluriverse: Proposals for a world of many worlds. In: M. de la Cadena and M. Blaser (Eds), A World of Many Worlds, pp. 1-22. Durham: Duke University Press.

Demaria, F., F. Schneider, F. Sekulova and J. Martinez-Alier (2013) What is degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement. Environmental Values, 22(2): 191-215.

Dengler, C. and L.M. Seebacher (2019) What about the Global South? Towards a feminist decolonial degrowth approach. Ecological Economics, 157: 246-252.

Escobar, A. (2018) Design for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.

Gerber, J.-F. (2020) Degrowth and critical agrarian studies. Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(2): 235-264.

Gerber, J.-F. and R. S. Raina (Eds) (2018) Post-Growth Thinking in India. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Graeber, D. (2004) Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Grubačić, A. and D. O'Hearn (2016) Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid. Oakland: University of California Press.

Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Hickel, J. (2019) Is it possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary boundaries? Third World Quarterly, 40(1): 18-35.

Kallis, G., V. Kostakis, S. Lange, B. Muraca, S. Paulson and M. Schmelzer (2018) Research on degrowth. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 43(1): 291-316.

Kothari, A., A. Salleh, A. Escobar, F. Demaria and A. Acosta (Eds) (2019) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. New Delhi: Tulika Books.

Latouche, S. (2009) Farewell to growth. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Lorde, A. (1984) Sister Outsider.  Berkeley: Crossing Press.

Livingston, J. (2019) Self-Devouring Growth A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa. Durham: Duke University Press.

Paulson, S. (2017) Degrowth: Culture, power and change. Introduction to a Special Issue. Journal of Political Ecology, 24(1): 425-448.

Paulson, S. (2019) Pluriversal learning: pathways toward a world of many worlds. Nordia Geographical Publications, 47(5): 85-109.

Robinson, C. J. (1983). Black Marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. London: Zed Press.

Scott, J. C. (2009) The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Stengers, I. (2018) The challenge of ontological politics. In: M. de la Cadena and M. Blaser (Eds), A World of Many Worlds, pp. 83-111. Durham: Duke University Press.

Tsing, A. L., N. Bubandt, H. A. Swanson and E. Gan (2017) Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Wynter, S. (2003) Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation-An argument. CR: The new centennial review, 3(3), 257-337.

Yates-Doerr, E., and C. Labuski (2017) The Ethnographic Case. Manchester: Mattering Press.

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Shivani Kaul
Lecturer | Anthropology | Royal Thimphu College | Royal University of Bhutan | skaul@rtc.bt
PhD Candidate | Global Future Health Project | Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body | University of Amsterdam | s.kaul@uva.nl
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