Ecosystems, Ecology, and the Boundaries of Life

Abstract

This panel interrogates the boundaries drawn around what counts as “life” by the ecosystem concept and the science of ecology. What human histories and forms of life are considered constitutive of desirable ecologies in an era of large-scale ecosystem management, conservation, and restoration? The environmental sciences are increasingly recognized as a site productive of regimes of governance and jurisdiction, especially when ecosystems are imagined to be producers of economic value, symbolic of global environmental change, defenders of aging industrial infrastructure, or mediators of toxicity or climate change. How and when do the history and practice of ecology accommodate such capacious claims? And what kinds of materials, processes, and relationships are drawn together in order to do so? We take our cue from scholars who investigate the settler/colonial and anti-black histories of the environmental sciences and from places like the southern United States, where the ecosystem concept is flourishing as a result of histories of contamination and large-scale restoration projects. Our aim is to elucidate moments in which ecosystems are reformulated in order to support particular regimes of life, implicitly or explicitly excluding others.

Discussant

• Valerie Olson, UC Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Translating Fiery Landscapes: Boundary-Work, Discourse and Economies of Attention in the Work of Fire Ecologists - Aadita Chaudhury, York University

• Making Mud Matter: Blue Carbon and the Financialization of South Korea’s Coastline - Gebby Keny, Rice University

• River Protection as Bloodwork: The Afterlife of Patagonia’s Anti-Dam Movement - James J. A. Blair, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

• Metallic Ecologies and Toxic Forms of Life - Stefanie Graeter, UC Irvine

• Ecology and Intervention in Coastal Louisiana - Hannah Burnett, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology

Session Organizer

• Hannah Burnett, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology