Padini Nirmal

In times of devastating ecological crisis, where can we find a route map to collectively halt current trends of destruction? In this review, we exam- ine feminist studies’ recent contributions to activism and theorizing regard- ing extraction, emerging ecologies, and multispecies justice. By bringing in salient research from the fields of feminist political ecology, ecofeminism, and decolonial/anticolonial feminisms, we point to the ways in which femi- nist thought and action has opened up spaces for recognizing, envisioning, and making life-affirming ecologies rather than extractive systems of de- struction. We refer to the former as emergent and emancipatory ecologies, that is, ecologies always in the process of becoming and capable of defying and subverting oppression based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, caste, ability, species and other forms of discrimination—and, thus, capable of protecting and defending life and living worlds.

We propose a feminist research agenda for animal geographies informed by critical race, decolonial, ecofeminist, and other radical theories. We set four intertwined questions: why and how are those oppressions that produce inequity and injustice interlinked? How do we define and enact a multispecies justice without privileging or ranking oppressions? What would be the terms of a non-hierarchical relationship between humans and other animals? How might we conceive the terms of the process of multispecies flourishing and justice? After briefly considering this “template” for moving toward a multispecies justice, we apply the template to an important area of human-animal relations: food systems. Finally, speaking as feminist scholar-activists concerned with realizing multispecies justice to effectively address the complex socio-ecological emergency wrought by global capitalism, we propose future research focus centrally on policy change, targeting the systemic core of oppressive institutions and their production of subjectivities.

Rooted networks provide a conceptual framework that embeds network thinking in nature-society geography in order to investigate socio-ecological relations, while emphasizing the place-specific materiality of these relations. This progress report examines how geographers have put the framework into scholarly practice. The conceptual approach has enabled researchers to: 1) articulate the territoriality and materiality of networks as assemblages, which may be simultaneously rooted and mobile; 2) discern diverse types of power that flow through network connections; and 3) conduct analyses that unearth multiply-situated knowledges within networks. Challenges emerge as we seek to integrate the approach more fully with disciplinary traditions, including organizing complex relationships into bounded scholarly formats; choosing which aspects of the network are most salient to analyze; and illustrating networks for effective communication. We describe the ways in which rooted networks can be used as a tool for action, as a pedagogical guide, and to strengthen collective capacity to imagine and negotiate alternative futures based on ‘seeing multiple.’ Finally, we call for geographers and other scholars, researchers and activists to build upon a rooted networks framework as a tool for design, analysis, understanding and communication in the search for more socially just and ecologically viable futures.

In this (the first part of a) two-part workspace, a collective of interdisciplinary scholars will come together to deliberate on and practice new modes of communicative praxis in academic conference/workshops. This workspace builds upon energies to decolonize university spaces, including during a previous workshop, Setting Forth At Dawn: A Workshop on the Geopolitics and Practices of Academic Writing, held in May 2016 at Jimma University in Jimma, Ethiopia.

In traditional academic conferences, scholars are subject to rigid time and space controls that often privilege more positivist and axiomatic research topics and knowledge(s). These academic spaces often reaffirm a spatial and metaphysical distancing between the “audience” (learners) and the “presenter” (the knower). This enforced distancing can re-privilege and re-center the “presenter.” This re-privileging can be particularly problematic for scholars whose works contribute to projects of decolonizing and/or are critical of the relationship(s) between knowledge and power. Moreover, traditional conference modes of communicative praxis can de-privilege (a) hesitancy, (b) the expression of multiple subjectivities, and (c) highly transdisciplinary scholarships. This is perhaps more acute for emerging, independent, and non-affiliated scholars, whom have yet to achieve the renown, prestige, and/or job security of tenured and highly published scholars. In such settings, scholars attempt transformative expressions through clandestine and often dis-unified formulas, oftentimes at the fringes of academic conferences.

Through guided discussions, interactive and embodied sessions, we will address the structural and epistemological legacies of colonialism within our universities as we continue to foster the energies of decolonization, with an attention to concrete practices of decolonization.