Anthropology, activism and local environmental knowledge


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Tues March 14, 6:30pm we have a panel discussion LIVE @UCLAnthropology LIVE and on ZOOM

How can we live well in our urban, suburban and rural environments facing the climate future? We explore ways that anthropology might inform, foster, and support climate & environmental activism through connection to local knowledge, or TEK (traditional ecological knowledge), with a focus on England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Europe in general. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) 2022 report recognizes Indigenous alternatives to Western models as exemplary curation of biodiversity. How can anthropology support this theoretically and practically through landscape, relationality, storytelling, spirit, and connection? What would be equivalent to Indigenous TEK? How can this be instrumental in enhancing wider community connections to landscape, riverscape, skyscape?  

Panel members include Raj Puri (Kent) environmental anthropologist and ethnobotanist; Paul Powlesland, lawyer, rights of nature activist, Friend of the River Roding; Pauline von Hellermann (Goldsmiths) regenerative anthropology, the Commons; Richard Jones (Leicester) medieval historian, Old English placenames as repository of knowledge about flood control; MagdaBuchczyk (CARMAH Berlin) material culture, museums, history and memory, with facilitators Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths) and Camilla Power