Human and nature’s entanglements explored

Human and nature’s entanglements explored

Humans depend on nature, yet continue to exploit and abuse it – this paradox is at the heart of a conference exploring our relationship with the natural world from critically humanist, political and social sciences perspectives.

Titled Working with Nature, the April 10-11 conference will focus on a range of “environmental entanglement” issues in regard to how humans interact with nature in the 21st century – from materialist, aesthetic, political and media angles. Organiser Dr Sy Taffel, a lecturer in the School of English and Media Studies, says the issue of climate change impacts and increasing environmental destruction needs to be examined and understood through new frameworks offered by the humanities and social sciences. It's a first for the University to host a conference on a topic usually reserved for climate scientists, policy makers, conservationists and environmental activists.

He says new thinking is vital given the “new language of the Anthropocene” – a new era of history that recognises the ability of humans to intervene and alter the non-human world. “Even as recognition of climate change and man-made extinction become commonplace, and concepts such as sustainability and resilience enter into the conversations of state and corporate actors, it remains unclear how those ideas might speak to our everyday practices and behaviour,” he says. The conference will bring together lead researchers and thinkers from New Zealand and overseas in areas such as media representations of climate change.

One of these is guest speaker Sean Cubitt, a professor of film and television at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of EcoMedia (an inquiry into popular constructions of environmental debates in film and television). In his public keynote address, Nuclear Aesthetics, Media Politics, he will examine the complexities, contradictions and myths of modern life in the context of “eco political aesthetics”. The concept relates to dilemmas such as the deployment of natural resources for the manufacture of digital devices that are seen as laudable tree-saving alternatives, yet which create new environmental hazards when they become obsolete.

“On a global scale, we’re witnessing an increasing concern with the different ways in which human behaviour works to shape nature,” Dr Taffel says. ”From climate change to drives towards sustainable communities and ongoing concerns with waste and pollution, the interaction between human and non- human worlds looks set to be a central concern of the twenty-first century."

Co-organiser Dr Nick Holm says such concerns have particular resonance in New Zealand, “where there is a long history of direct and directed human interaction with nature, from the introduction of flora and fauna by European colonists, to contemporary efforts to conserve and re-establish threatened ecosystems and, just as importantly, to the role of farming and other primary industries as cornerstones of the national economy and culture."

A series of panel discussions throughout the two-day event will explore diverse topics under several key themes including Mediating Nature: Representation and Engagement; Art and/in/as Nature; Animals in Nature; Governing Nature: Policy and Management; Writing with Nature; Communities and Rivers; Eating Nature: Food and Agriculture, and Colonising Nature: Settler and Indigenous Perspectives.

Working with Nature is sponsored by the School of English and Media Studies and the W H Oliver Humanities Research Academy. It is being held in the Boardroom, Wharerata, Manawatū campus.

ENDS

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