We are very excited to have Dr. Rebecca Olive as guest presenter for our April NM SIG!
Sport as encounter: Making kin with ocean and coastal ecologies
Rebecca Olive is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Human Movement & Nutrition Sciences at UQ.
Her project, Moving Oceans, examines the role of sport (surfing and ocean swimming) in shaping peoples’ relationships to coastal and ocean ecologies.
See more of Rebecca’s publications here.
This session: Key to addressing human impacts on climate change is changing human demands on ecologies. My project is exploring how participating in ocean sports shapes peoples’ relationships to and knowledge of ecologies, and their ways of thinking about our responsibilities for environmental care (Olive). In particular, this project is aimed at challenging white-settler relationships to place (Kimmerer, Kwaymullina), and the ontologies that underpin how we understand ourselves in relation to the world.
Swimming and surfing remind us in deeply personal ways that we are part of ecologies, not separate from them. This includes learning to make kin (Haraway) with threatening aspects of place and space, such as sharks and various forms of pollution (Tsing).
For this discussion, I have suggested a lot of quite short readings, often from much longer texts. I have also set a recent essay that gives a good overview of my current work. You might not get to them all, but reading across at least a few of them will be helpful.
As part of this meeting, we dicussed: How can we better communicate knowledge with relevant communities and the public?
My session notes and thoughts
Below are two worldings I wrote about this session to give sense of what emerged.
Nature returns revisited
We’re discussing nature revisited and tainted returns. I’m traversing Ecofeminisms and thinking in habit(at)s. ‘Proper’ places. Sarah Jaquette posits climate anxiety is a white-person’s phenomenon. A culture of denial. Our vulnerability offsets our humility. Confusion about Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin’s more-than-pleasurable interspecies relations. People actively speaking about creative connections and kinships beyond family and humanness. Healing traditions. Tsing’s challenge of ‘living in the precarious ruins’. Reassuring exclusionary ethical participation. Hydrofeminisms. Definitions and distinctions between ‘locals’ and ‘imports’. PolesApart. Activists, stewards, custodians, collectors. Val Plumwood resituates humans in ecological terms. Putting humans back on the inside of nature.
Surfing ontological waves
I’m considering Rebecca Olive’s work. Surfing intensities. Reflecting on human impacted climate change and changing human demands on ecologies. Briny netroot polemics. Explorations of environs question peoples’ relationships, knowledge and responsibilities of ecologies and environmental care. Transnatural perspectives. Much needed challenges of white-settler relationships to place and the ontologies of how we understand ourselves and our actions in relation to the world. Moving Oceans. Natural environments affect us in deeply personal ways. Making kin. We are ecologies-with, not ecologies-from. Facing fears. Choices that either support or threaten ourselves, each other, creatures, plants and environments. The benefits of swimming with sharks.
Readings
Olive, R. (2020). Living with sharks, White Horses, 34, available at: https://movingoceans.com/2020/11/26/living-with-sharks/
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
- Making kin: Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene (pp. 99-103).
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
- The gift of strawberries, (pp. 22-32).
Kwaymullina, A. (2018). You are on Indigenous land: Ecofeminism, Indigenous peoples and land justice. In L. Stevens, P. Tait, & D. Varney (Eds.) Feminist Ecologies (pp. 193-208). Palgrave Macmillan.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
- Prologue: Autumn Aroma (p. 1-9)
- Arts of noticing (p. 17-25)