Anthropology Matters Seminar with Professor Anna Tsing
A guided academic discussion with Professor Anna Tsing and PhD fellows Fine Brendtner and Lasse Bech Knudsen, organised by the AU Research Program of Anthropology.
Anthropology Matters Seminar with Professor Anna Tsing (UCSC,SEACoast), Fine Brendtner (AU) and Lasse Bech Knudsen (AU)
"An example of geomorphology for anthropologists. Fragmented permeability: how builders have attacked coastal resilience."
Abstract:
Anthropologists of late have become excited about thinking with geomorphology, that is, the shape of earth’s physical features. (See Jerry Zee’s Continent in Dust for one non-coastal example.) This seminar works from the larger question of anthropological geomorphology to consider the shaping of coasts as an important example.
Mangrove swamps and other wet-and-dry ecologies protect coasts from storms while also serving as rich sites of more-than-human livelihoods. Yet governments and corporations have been captured by a frenzy of coastal “hardening,” the separation of land and water. Why?
Separation has been a colonial governance project, suppressing the pirates, rebels, and smugglers that once made use of tiny inlets, swamps, and muddy bays. (See Julius Scott, The Common Wind, 2018, for a Caribbean example. Great books that explore colonial difficulties with shifting coastal mud include Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide, 2004 [India]; Joseph Conrad, Outcast of the Islands, 1896 [Borneo], and David Biggs, Quagmire, 2010 [Vietnam].) Coastal hardening continues today at the intersection of governance and real estate. Land reclamation is an owner’s dream: land devoid of previous claims. Meanwhile, hardening projects have feral effects, including storms that knock down adjacent coastal settlements as well as flooding, erosion, loss of fish stocks, and new disease ecologies.
This seminar explores how anthropologists might address such matters of coastal geomorphology.