Memory, Ignorance, and Forgetting: Recent Environmental Histories of Romania and Former Yugoslavia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Memory, both personal and collective, is constantly produced and reproduced by both human interactions and human interactions with the environment. Recent historical events (war, the expansion of the European Union, ill-advised neoliberal policies) have dramatically reshaped the environment in Romania and former Yugoslavia.
In this panel, we interrogate recent environmental histories to uncover the political, cultural, and affective dimensions of relationships between humans and their environment.
As social processes of meaning-making, forgetting and ignorance illuminate interactions between humans and the environment that permit, sustain, or resist ongoing environmental violence. Working from a decolonial perspective, we zero in on case studies of waste disposal in former Yugoslavia, plunder and pollution in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Neretva River Basin, and deforestation in Romania. While pointing out the mechanisms that sustain ecological violence, these studies also provide examples of grassroots activism, solidarity, and creative use of local knowledge in the struggles for ecological justice, as local activists challenge power relationships and reimagine solidarities.

Sub Unit

• Geography, Environmental Studies

Chair

• Ileana Nachescu, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey

Papers

• Waste, Memory, and the Environment in Former Yugoslavia: A Historical Perspective - Hanna Stein, U of Graz (Austria)

• Ecological Violence in Post-Conflict Landscapes: Examples from Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Neretva River Basin - Azra Tanovic, The New School

• The Politics of Ignorance: Greenwashing and Extractivism in the Continuing Destruction of Romania’s Old-Growth Forests - Ileana Nachescu, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey

Discussant

• Elena Kochetkova, U of Bergen (Norway)