Date: 22 February, 2022, 5:00 p.m. Lithuanian time
Abstract:
Climate crisis has been in the making for several decades now. As such climate crisis extends beyond an ethnographic object and – due to its all-encompassing nature – is a backdrop of any and all (research) activity we are undertaking at present.
Once starting my doctoral research project in an Alpine storm struck valley, I focused on what role relationships we cultivate have in shaping the understanding of climate crisis as well as action in the context thereof. I was and still am interested in relationships between the humans and their non-human kin, which, for me, means non-human-species, landscapes and various agents within them. The storm of a magnitude previously unseen, according to the field participants, in the valley I am currently based, was a point of departure for the exchanges with the inhabitants of the valley. As expected, the question I came with proved to be rather vast and I soon found myself at a loss in the entanglements of beings and things, power and history, all of which transgress the physical boundaries of a series of valleys and canyons etched into ancient rock. However, while I am redesigning, rethinking and reevaluating my steps in the mountains, a question I am asking myself and my colleagues – those in the field as well as those in the discipline of anthropology is – how can the knowledge we are entrusted with through encounters and experiences be feedforwarded to make our research practice useful.
