Biocultural Origins of Rural Exodus: New Vistas for Explanation and Problematization
Jeffrey Wall, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and Department of Landscape Studies, University of Turku
Despite the emergence of a critical mass of multi-disciplinary evidence from around the world showing its negative social and ecological consequences, rural exodus has yet to be thoroughly problematized or empirically engaged in research, public discourse or governance. This is because rural to urban migration has enjoyed historic and widespread support from international and national development frameworks for over a century. Consequently, the cultural-ecological conditions which precede, underly and succeed abandonment are not well studied, understood or even acknowledged. The emerging biocultural orientation to environmental protection valorizes the environmental self-determination of those most affected by rural outmigration: Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP & LC’s). It further honors the powerful value of IPLC’s for being and remaining in their historic homelands in the face of numerous contrary global trends. This developing research field is thereby inherently pointing to new vistas for viewing rural exodus in the fullness of time and space. In this paper, I review promising theoretical grounds for explaining, studying and problemetizing rural exodus under conditions of ubiquitous and constant environmental change – drawing together insights from Indigenous Law, Hannah Arendt’s notions of earth alienation and the production of superfluity, as well as negative place attachment. I will further elaborate how an inquiry of this nature into the origins of rural exodus promises new windows for understanding a number of extremely pressing global issues adjacent to rural exodus, including climate migration, the growth of slums, the authoritarian nationalist turn in agrarian politics, and the preconditions for wildfires and epidemics.
Pluriversal waters: Tracing hydro-ontologies across colonial-extractivist assemblages
Iuliia Gataulina, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Tampere University, iuliia.gataulina@tuni.fi
In modern times, water has been separated from its relation to the land, humans, and other species and become a commodity or a resource to manage; this ontology is often connected to capitalist extractivism and colonialism. The paper is based on the research plan of the postdoctoral project which I have started in May 2024 and the first results of the literature review and data collection. The project aims to analyze different ways of being (with), governing, and exploiting water in the contexts of colonial extractivisms. The project enquires into colonial-extractivist practices of water exploitation through case studies of 1) mining and related to it water degradation in Northern Finland and 2) extractivist practices in the Aral Sea in the Karakalpakstan autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Through these cases, the project seeks to understand the relations between different politico-economic systems (liberal democracies vs. authoritarian regimes) and colonial extractivisms and analyze their different or similar modernities.
This research project departed from Latin American studies on decolonizing water and seeks to enrich the scholarship on water ontologies from the contexts of Global North (Northern Europe) and Global East (Central Asia) which have received less scholarly attention on colonial extractivisms. The perspective from the Global East is especially lacking, and the scholars have also called for research which problematize East/West binary by analyzing the multiple relations between them. In order to analyze the ways in which water is governed, exploited, and lived with, this research project utilizes three interconnected concepts for the analysis: assemblage, hydro-ontology, and pluriversality.
Tracing Time and Space: The Biocultural Heritage of Saari Manor
Elisa Lähde, Aalto University
The Saari Manor in Mynämäki, Southwest Finland, is a residency for artists from diverse disciplines and nationalities, embedded within a landscape rich in cultural and historical heritage. This project explores the biocultural heritage of Saari Manor through a series of graphics that depict the interactions between human and more-than-human actors across time. These graphics, including map diagrams and sectional images, reveal the hidden layers of the landscape, both temporally and spatially, by illustrating the “choreographies of care” that have shaped the site. Biocultural heritage, which encompasses the interdependent evolution of biodiversity and cultural heritage, emerges from long-term interactions between humans and nature. To fully grasp this heritage, it is essential to delve deep into the landscape’s temporal and spatial dimensions. Our visual representations aim to uncover the temporalities and phenomena that have influenced the development of Saari’s biocultural heritage. Additionally, a global map is utilized to trace the migration of plant species to Saari, illustrating their origins and the eras of their introduction. These visual aids facilitate more-than-human storytelling, highlighting the collaborative effort required to understand and communicate the complex relationships that have shaped this landscape over time.
