Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750-2020

The GARDENING THE GLOBE project aims to investigate historical processes through which nature has been conquered, controlled, and turned into a resource. The research focuses on processes, practices, and technologies in Scandinavia from the mid-18th century to the present day. The project examines some of the processes that have led to the planetary situation known as the Anthropocene. By focusing on Scandinavia, the project explores a fundamental tension between the production of environmental problems and the development of welfare in Scandinavian history and politics. Through geological, geographical, ethnographic, and cultural-historical case studies, the project investigates historical, cultural, and history of science factors in relation to specific practices and technologies that have contributed to the Anthropocene. Each of these case studies is rooted in Scandinavia, while also showing how local practices and technologies are part of trans-local networks, phenomena that can be scaled up, and thus have planetary implications at an aggregated level. The case studies include the management of invasive species, the use of rotenone in fish management, forestry, Danish pig farms, Swedish mining landscapes, suburban gardens, the history of hydropower, and the levelling of ravines in agriculture. These case studies highlight three overarching themes: 1) Processes in which animals, plants, and minerals are moved from place to place, 2) practices related to the extinction of organisms, and 3) human production of landscapes. By combining case studies from different disciplines, the project also aims to develop methods for bridging the gap between qualitative, historical studies and Earth system science.

The concept of the Anthropocene was developed within the Earth system sciences, where human interaction with nature is viewed on a large scale, spatially, temporally, and quantitatively. Such a narrative has no room for describing agency, social structures or cultural values, and thus leaves an epistemological gap between the notion of the Anthropocene in Earth system science and notions of nature-culture entanglements in the humanities. GARDENING aims to develop methods for bridging this gap between qualitative, historical studies and Earth system science. GARDENING argues that this requires a common conceptual ground for the humanities and natural sciences regarding issues related to the Anthropocene, and a broader understanding of how practices and technologies that have led to the Anthropocene are historically situated. The historical development in Northern Europe since the mid- 18th century has played a key role in the processes leading to the Anthropocene, and GARDENING will study these processes as an increasing intensification of attempts to conquer, control and utilize nature - the production of “socio-natures”. Through the concept “socio-natural gardening”, GARDENING will examine the relationship between Western modernity and the emergence of the Anthropocene, exploring three themes: 1) processes of moving animals, plants and minerals; 2) practices of eradicating organisms; and 3) the human production of landscapes. GARDENING will do this through ten case studies located in Scandinavia, which cover a range of socio-natural practices. The case studies inform the three themes directly, but also represent phenomena that, on an aggregated level, are of crucial importance for the emergence of the Anthropocene. They throw light on how such practices in Scandinavia are embedded in trans-local and global networks, as well as how these practices and technologies are historically situated and involve certain ideologies, imaginaries, considerations, and ambiguities.