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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam

Ecological Globalisation; Domestication beyond control

Alternative title: Økologisk globalisering; Domestisering ute av kontroll

Awarded: NOK 1.3 mill.

This proposed project is part of a long-term strategy at the Department of Social Anthropology to strengthen and develop the existing research groups ‘Domestication’ and ‘Overheating’, and to enhance collaborative and joined efforts between these research groups. This includes measures to tighten the integration and collaboration between senior and junior scholars, and international scholars, focusing in particular on training and career development through a series of PhD courses that will be open to PhD candidates nationally and internationally. The proposal seeks to do so through a focus on current global challenges related to (and resulting from) industrial food production, i.e. current regimes of agri- and aquaculture. Research on domestication concluded that conventional approaches to domestication fail to appreciate the rich plethora of relational practices that are unpredictable and beyond control, and that the impact of domestication practices reach far beyond a spatially bounded ‘domus’. Instead, ecological transformations are in fact transcontinental and transoceanic. The standardisation and scaling-up of economic activities, including food production, is also a key concern within the Overheating perspective. The project will combine these insights and focus on how decisions about food and feed have global repercussions, including rampant destruction of rainforests, loss of human livelihoods as well as more subtle species extinctions as land is dispossessed, and habitats are transformed mobilized as a resource for global agricultural industry investors.

This project has been part of a long-term strategy at the Department of Social Anthropology to strengthen and develop the existing research groups ‘Domestication’ and ‘Overheating’, to enhance collaborative and joined efforts between these research groups, and to tighten the integration and collaboration between senior and junior scholars, such as through input from international scholars on research training and career development. A key component is a series of four international PhD courses, with intensive research training, incorporating field-sites and practical excercises. Topically the research project addresses current global challenges related to industrial regimes of agri- and aquaculture, and especially their ecological and economic impact, including long-distance effects known as ‘shadow ecologies’. Decisions about how to feed ourselves and how to feed husbandry animals (including fish) are indeed political, with global repercussions. Thus, we focus on both human food and animal feed, and the ways in which both are entangled with various environmental challenges and financial and corporate interests. Environmental impacts of food production, such as soil degradation, pollution, carbon emissions, habitat loss and species extinctions are key understanding current global dispossession of common resources. Hence, environmental transformations related to global food production call for renewed attention to future commons and how to care for the resources that we all share, as well as the need to better understand the links between biodiversity and cultural diversity. The project seeks to make an impact through teaching, scientific publications and through policy, including research policy in the EU and in Norway.

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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam