Forskning

Ett antal forskningsprojekt drivs och har drivits vid Humanekologiska avdelningen. Här finner du korta presentationer av dessa projekt, inklusive externfinansierade avhandlingsprojekt.

Alf Hornborg: Sustainable Development as a Problem of Global Distribution: Transdisciplinary Theory and Methods for Tracing Environmental Load Displacement (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agriculture and Spatial Planning, 2008-2010)

This project pursues a currently emerging reconceptualization of uneven and unsustainable development in terms of asymmetric flows of material resources between different sectors of national or global economies. It explores the general problem of environmental load displacement, i.e. how the negative consequences of environmental deterioration tend to be shifted to economically more marginalized populations and areas at various geographical scales. This is done by applying transdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and non-monetary metrics to case studies in northern Latin America. Building on recent social science research integrating world-system analysis and ecological economics, it calculates physical trade balances and ecological footprints in case studies of Latin American involvement in international exchange. The two non-monetary metrics are applied to extant trade statistics and the results systematically compared to various data on human development as well as to GIS maps of the distribution of environmental problems such as carbon dioxide emissions, eutrophication, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and soil erosion. The objective is to explore connections between resource flows, development, and environmental degradation, and to strengthen transdisciplinary Swedish competence in the complex conceptual issues and empirical methods for identifying ecologically asymmetric trade and environmental load displacement.

Alf Hornborg, Gunilla A. Olsson, Janken Myrdal, Eric Clark, Mats Mogren, Thomas Håkansson, Mats Widgren, Ulf Jonsson: Power, Land, and Materiality: Global Studies in Historical-Political Ecology as a Framework for Assessing Policies for ”Sustainable Development” (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agriculture and Spatial Planning, 2008-2010)

The project consolidates a coherent, trans-disciplinary theoretical and methodological framework for studying processes of long-term environmental change. Building on previous research as well as six empirical case studies in South America, Africa, and Asia, it brings together a network of Swedish expertise on the subject as the core of a national “think-tank” capable of assessing empirical case studies of long-term sustainability from different parts of the world in the light of a well-founded theoretical framework. The consolidation and elaboration of this theoretical framework – tentatively called “global historical-political ecology” – is thus an important aim of the project, but can only be conducted through continuous interaction and engagement with the empirical case studies. The central analytical perspectives developed in the project emphasize that landscapes must be understood as the cumulative material imprints of historically successive patterns of land use reflecting shifting regional and global relations of economic and political power. The study of how global power structures transform human environments over time is increasingly crucial for the formulation of policies adequate to attain sustainable development.

Thomas Håkansson: Intensive Cultivation without State and Population Pressure: A Comparative Study of Non-capitalist Agrarian Systems in a Political Ecological Perspective (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, 2008-2010)

The relationship between society and agricultural resources has been of central concern to the human sciences since the 18th century when Malthus formulated his famous thesis on how human populations tend to overuse available land. However, the current, dominant frames of analysis of agricultural change are in crisis. For the past three decades, an accumulation of historical, ethnographic and archaeological research on non-industrial agriculture has cast doubt on the explanatory power of the principal theories of agricultural change, which use population pressure, political centralization, or both, as the independent variables. This build-up of information inconsistent with conventional theoretical expectations signals that a paradigm shift is imminent. The main purpose of this comparative project is to identify the driving forces, other than population pressure and political centralization, which are causally linked to agricultural intensification in different parts of the world and during different time periods. The primary hypothesis derives from my research on traditional irrigation systems in East Africa, which developed without the presence of states and population pressure. Intensive cultivation is likely to have emerged and persisted as a result of regional and world-systems processes rather than from population pressure. This project will explore different models for how decentralized social and economic institutions are related to cultivation and exchange.

Pernille Gooch, Nehal Farooquee, Devendra Agrawal and R. K. Maikhuri: Participatory Assessment of Sustainable Scenarios for Himalayan Pastoralism (The Swedish Research Council - SIDA- Swedish Research Links 2007-2009; The Swedish Research Council 2008-2010)

The aim of this project is to provide reliable socioeconomic and environmental information on the pastoral/livestock systems in the Central Indian Himalayas. Although they are highly relevant for the sustainability and biodiversity of the higher mountain ranges as well as for the livelihood of the mountain people they have so far remained under-researched. The project aims to: a) improve scientific understanding of participatory and transdisciplinary approaches to identify the issues related to sustainability of pastoralism b) integrate results within a broader theoretical understanding of the interrelations between society and nature in order to bridge social and natural sciences c) provide reliable socioeconomic and environmental information on the pastoral systems in the region that has so far remained under-researched. For the study two pastoral communities have been selected, the Bhotias and the Van Gujjars of Uttharakand. Both transact right from the foothills to the alpine meadows thus covering the entire altitudinal eco-zones of the Himalayas. The linkages with numerous other stakeholders (sedentary agricultural, traders, tourism, forestry, conservartion etc) of bio-resources will be covered in the project. This is a joint, interdisciplinary project between researchers in Sweden and India developed within the Sida Asian – Swedish Research Partnership Program.

Mats Widgren, Thomas Håkansson, Lowe Börjeson: Tanzania 1850-2000: The Political Ecology of Trade Networks, Food Production and Land Cover Change (The Swedish Research Council and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 2004-2008)

The project aims at analyzing the mechanisms and driving forces behind land use and land cover changes in a regional and historical perspective. It contributes to the research on human resource use and global environmental change through its genuine historic perspective (i.e. not deterministic). Land use and land cover change will be traced in a 150 year perspective and causes for land use change will be sought in the history of population, trade networks, political changes and possibly also climate change. It is an interdisciplinary effort, based on historical geography, historical anthropology and physical geography with remote sensing. We will test the implications of current reversionary approaches to environmental exploitation in Africa, which downplay, or reject, the claim that current economic activities result in a depleted resource base and reduced food production. A range of sources, including historical maps, travel accounts, satellite imagery, census data and archival material will be utilized, and researchers carrying out ongoing local case studies in the region will be engaged as expert consultants. The project is carried out in cooperation between the two geography departments at Stockholm University (Human and Physical) and the Human Ecology Division at Lund University. 

Alf Hornborg, Love Eriksen: The Prehistory of Amazonian Languages: Ecological and Cultural Processes Underlying Linguistic Differentiation (EUROCORES/The Swedish Research Council, 2002-2008)

A point of departure for this project is that historical linguistics in lowland South America would benefit from closer consideration of anthropological theory regarding ethnicity, ethnogenesis, and inter-ethnic relations. The main research task is to create a GIS database comprising all documented archaeological sites in greater Amazonia, including for each site available information on recovered ceramic styles, tempers used, other items of material culture, trade goods, rock art, datings, anthropogenic soils, subsistence practices, earthworks, etc. This database will then be used to explore possible correlations with historical linguistics (including distribution of key loanwords), other historical information (e.g., on trade), ethnography (e.g., material culture, mythological themes, etc.), and biogeography (particularly soil and vegetation). The aim is to explore various hypotheses about connections between linguistic families and specific archaeological features (e.g., ceramic styles, agricultural systems), and between these phenomena and specific ecological zones. It is hoped that the conclusions will add to our knowledge about the cultural development and diversification of prehistoric Amazonia as a systemic process mediated by ecology, exchange, and ethnogenesis. A central concern is thus our understanding of the socio-cultural processes generating ethno-linguistic diversity, considering the roles of ecology, migration, trade, politics, language shifts, demography, marriage patterns, and cultural creativity. The ambition is to transcend notions of bounded and essentialized ethnic identities that have characterized earlier attempts to account for the spatial distribution of, for instance, indigenous languages and ceramic styles. Emphasis will rather be on the various factors that have conditioned active processes of ethnic identity construction, and on the possibilities open to anthropology’s different subfields to identify such conditions and processes at specific points in time and space. Methodological issues include criteria for recognizing expressions of identity in the use of language, material culture, and other ethnic markers, acknowledging that such use may be context-specific, as well as the feasibility of using new forms of cartography to trace correlations between conditioning factors and ethnic expressions. The project builds on established anthropological understandings of ethnicity as a means of communicating distinctness, but focuses on the specific ways in which Amazonian experiences of distinctness and difference have been shaped by spatially distributed circumstances largely defined by the logic of economic and political structures at the macro-scale level of the South American continent or even the world system. In relating local or regional processes of ethnic identity construction to macro-scale conditions such as ecological diversity, trade routes, and conquests, an integrated understanding of long-term patterns of ethnogenesis will thus also contribute to current discussions of stratification, demography, and intensification of resource use in indigenous Amazonia.

Alf Hornborg, Per Johansson, Ebba Lisberg Jensen: Identity and security in time and space: Existential aspects of nuclear waste storage (The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, 2004-2006) 

The aim of the project is to investigate the implicit, symbolic and experiential aspects of the debate concerning storage of nuclear waste. A fundamental point of departure is that the issue of nuclear waste disposal engages much more profound questions than the technicalities of physical security. Technological hazards are generally experienced as more diffusely threatening and contaminating than natural catastrophes precisely because they are essentially social: they are inflicted on specific categories of people who tend to experience themselves as the stigmatized victims of the strategies of other social groups. The siting of waste disposal facilities, whether conventional or nuclear, is easily experienced as abuse against the socio-spatial margins of the social order. The issue raises general questions regarding the creation and reproduction of technological systems that appear to presuppose such intrinsic and inevitable dilemmas of social distribution. The project focuses specifically on how dimensions of time and space are constructed and represented in the narratives and opinions of various actors. How far in time and space do their experiences of identity, risk, and trust tend to extend? How are the immense time spans and global contexts implicated by nuclear waste constructed? What is the significance of tradition and long-term attachment to place for the differences in individual attitudes to waste storage in the proximity? How are experiences of the landscape and its history, and not least experiences of one’s own identity, transformed by the prospects of nuclear waste storage? With respect to both time and space, it is important to examine discrepancies between different levels of scale. To the extent that nuclear waste is experienced as a threat or as a contaminating ingredient in the landscape, how far in space do these experiences extend, horizontally as well as vertically? How have such experiences been influenced, for instance, by media coverage of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster? What do 100 meters of granite signify in this context? Local perceptions of place, security, and identity can be assumed to build on temporal and spatial frameworks that are quite distinct from those of economists or nuclear physicists. Common to all, however, are the very existence of underlying (albeit diverse) assumptions about the meaning of life and the passage of time. The project will examine how such “cosmological” (symbolic, mythological, spiritual) assumptions relate to concrete, practical deliberations on nuclear waste storage. A fundamental anthropological point of departure for this project is that human practical reason is always embedded in cultural symbolic systems. Which kinds of cosmological associations are mobilized by thoughts of obscure dangers in the underworld or invisible threats travelling through the ether? How is local history used in envisaging the future? Is it possible to feel ethically or emotionally engaged in the well-being of abstract descendants beyond one’s great-grandchildren? How do economists and nuclear physicists imagine the future of humankind in a historical perspective? Which societal or geological upheavals are allowed to enter into their scenarios?

Alf Hornborg, Thomas Malm: Women of the Coral Gardens (The Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, 2000-2002)

This is en ethnobiological and anthropological study of indigenous knowledge and marine tenure systems in five groups of Pacific Islands, where women's gathering of marine organisms is important and where there is an entire spectrum between marine commons with strongly restricted and totally open access. Themes in focus are how the rights to use nearshore resources are regulated by customary and modern law, how subsistence roles are related to gender and the zone where the tasks are performed, and how indigenous knowledge is reflected in the gathering, uses and naming of organisms obtained by women. A comparative perspective, based on anthropological fieldwork, can be valuable for the discussion on gender roles and sustainable development in coastal zones, and for understanding historical processes which often have resulted in overexploitation and destruction of marine environments.

 
Alf Hornborg, Per Johansson: Subproject within the "Coast to Coast" project on the Swedish Neolithic (subproject: The Lure of Origins: An Inquiry into Human-Environmental Relations, Focused on the “Neolithization”of Sweden) (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, 1999-2002)

The purpose of this project is to contribute to the discussion of the deeper meaning, in our contemporary context, of the “Neolithization” of Sweden. The basis for the investigation is twofold, (1) a critical examination of recent research reports dealing mostly with the Early Neolithic of (Middle) Sweden which shows, inter alia, that “agriculture” was of marginal importance for a very long time from about 4000 BC onwards, while, at the same time, the idea of “the transition to farming” dominates discourse. This paradox is the confronted with (2) a critical and constructive study of certain ideas (notably those of Tim Ingold, Jakob von Uexküll, and so-called activity theory) on the nature of human-environmental relations, focusing on three kinds of human-environmental relationships: human organisms and biological environments, human persons and artefacts, and human beings and other beings in the context of symbolism. The project is conducted from the point of view of how the archaeological discussion can be read outside of the direct purview of archaeology itself. The “Neolithization” issue, in other words, is not primarily discussed in the terms of its regular (specialized) disciplinary context, but rather in terms of a discussion on the nature of human beings in various environmental contexts. This work is, consequently, largely philosophical and theoretical.

Pernilla Ouis, Anne Sofie Roald: Modernity and Modernism in the Muslim Gulf (subproject: Power, Person, and Place: Tradition, Modernity, and Environment in the United Arab Emirates) (The Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, 1998-2002)

This project investigates human-environmental relations in the rapidly modernizing United Arab Emirates. Since its establishment in 1971, the UAE has been transformed from a subsistence society based mainly on pastoralism and maritime activities (fishing, pearling, and trade) into an ultramodern society, with an economy based on the export of fossil fuels. This project examines certain aspects of these processes of change from a social constructivist perspective. The title Power, Person, and Place alludes to the three main themes of the investigation. The Emirati economy has been based on the extraction of natural resources: pearls up to the 1930s, followed by petroleum. The economy is analyzed in terms of dependency and political power, and the notions of value and unequal exchange are discussed. The analysis places Emirati society in a wider global and historical context, acknowledging that natural resources are fundamentally interconnected with social relations. The second theme examines people’s changing relationships to camels as an index of modernity. In the pastoral society, the camels were perceived as persons, and they played an essential role in the traditional lifestyle and folklore. While the economic motivation for keeping camels has vanished for today’s Bedouins, camel races, accompanied by a new camel science, have been introduced. The new approach to the animals is understood in terms of an increasing objectification and distancing. The final theme is nature as an arena of identity and politics. An altered relationship to the environment, it is argued, introduces a modern reflexivity about “nature” as an abstract category distinct from the immediate lifeworld. The process of “greening the emirates” involves an emerging environmentalism here analyzed in terms of ideology and the “glocal” construction of place.

Alf Hornborg, Carina Borgström Hansson: Subproject within the Research School for Ecological Land Use (subproject: Misplaced Concreteness and Concrete Places: Critical Analyses of Divergent Discourses on Sustainability) (Swedish Council for Forestry and Agricultural Research, 1998-2002)

This project critically examines the tension between mainstream and counterpoint perspectives on sustainability on the basis of analyses of four approaches to this issue: environmental economics, ecological economics, adaptive management, and bioregionalism, which are presented as successive attempts to challenge mainstream, modernist perspectives on socio-ecological relationships. The different worldviews and identity constructions associated with the two extremes in this spectrum of approaches are examined on the basis of interviews with environmental economists and bioregionalists in California. The study analyzes the efforts by environmental economists to “internalize” sustainability issues into economic theory, building on a weak sustainability criterion. It proceeds with a presentation on the alternative academic approach of ecological economists, with special emphasis on Ecological Footprint Analysis, based on a strong sustainability criterion. The study reveals how the attempts of ecological economists to introduce alternative models and concerns into dominant arenas of the sustainability debate are resisted and sometimes co-opted by the modern discourse of development. It then investigates an extreme counterpoint to mainstream discourse as represented by the bioregional movement in the remote Mattole valley in northern California, which emphasizes the value of concrete, personal involvement. The bioregionally inspired but scientific approach of adaptive management is also discussed as a possible alternative or complement to this struggle. The concluding discussion focuses on the role of abstract versus concrete reference points in the struggle for socio-ecological sustainability and justice.

Alf Hornborg, Mikael Kurkiala: Native American Ecocosmologies and Environmental Ethics (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, 2000-2001)

The project has examined the widespread but increasingly contested assumption that pre-modern cosmologies and attitudes have something important to contribute to contemporary discussions on environmental ethics and sustainable resource management. By integrating several different approaches from the human sciences, the project has contributed to theories concerning the cultural phenomenology of human-environmental relations. The empirical material derives primarily from Lakota and Mi’kmaq, two native peoples in North America which have been implicated in modern environmental debate. The central theoretical issue is whether and, if so, how modernity and modernization have tended to transform human-environmental relations. One conclusion is that there may be some truth in the view that “modern” people are more inclined than pre-moderns to experience their environment in terms of objects, rather than subjects. This is illustrated by the historically and ethnographically documented approaches that are usually referred to as “animism” and that are in many ways diametrically opposed to everyday modern experience. The modern shift toward objectivism can be understood theoretically with the aid of complementary analytical tools from, for instance, semiotics, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. The aim of this synthesizing theoretical work is to clarify the recursive relation between socio-economic structures, on one hand, and modes of subjectivity, experience, and personality, on the other. With these basic perspectives as point of departure, the project has approached comparisons between traditional Amerindian cultures and modern society with new insights about the foundations of such observations on differences in cosmology and epistemology. Rather than contribute to essentialist notions of Amerindian spirituality, it concludes that the relations between human persons and their environments are dependent on socio-cultural context. This dependence on context also applies to variations in world view that a single individual can experience over the course of a day, a year, or a life. These observations facilitate a realistic recognition of the environmental engagement of modern Amerindians in terms of identity and politics, while not detracting from a cultural critique of the superficiality of much modern experience. The project does not hesitate to engage these difficult and controversial issues, which could be classified as “existential anthropology”. Its investigation of pre-modern cosmologies raises a number of critical questions about the tendency of post-modern society to disembed human persons from more stable, traditional points of reference such as specific places, kinship relations, animated artefacts, and a sacred landscape.

Alf Hornborg, Pernille Gooch, Folke Günther, Lennart Peterson, Esbjörn Wandt, Susanne Velander: Local Knowledge for Self-Maintaining Agricultural Systems/The Östarp Project (The Swedish Council for Forestry and Agricultural Research 1998-2000, The Crafoord Foundation 1998-1999, The National Heritage Board, 1998-2000)

Homepage of the Östarp project

Alf Hornborg, Gísli Pálsson, Ebba Lisberg Jensen: Negotiating Nature (The Nordic Council of Ministers, 1996-1998, The Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research, 1996-1998)

Whereas social science research on negotiations of environmental policy tends to focus on their institutional, legal, economic, or sociological aspects, the aim of this project is to highlight their symbolic, experiential, and ideological dimensions. How do we identify the metaphors, symbols, or aesthetic ideals that implicitly frame the discourse on the environment? The research team consisted of ten anthropologists and ethnologists from Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. It soon found itself investigating a very diverse set of concerns, from the phenomenology of tourism, landscape conservation, and environmental activism to the practical management of forests, fisheries, and reindeer pastures. What the subprojects have in common, however, is that they all in one way or another deal with how cultural perceptions of nature are generated. Several researchers focus on the tensions and transformations that appear in the discursive interchange between local lifeworlds and abstract authority. Environmental discourse is an arena both for the assertion of local autonomy and for the exercise of centralized power. The arguments mobilized in these negotiations tend to draw on persuasive cultural archetypes that deserve to be scrutinized. It is the formation and the political implications of such environmental arguments that is the primary concern of this project.

Alf Hornborg: Environmentalism and Identity on Cape Breton (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, 1991, 1992-1993)

The project focuses on the involvement of Mi’kmaq Indians in preventing a mountain on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, from being turned into a granite quarry. This struggle is used as an illustration of how the cultural, existential, and political dimensions of environmental engagement are intermeshed. A fundamental polarity is identified between local and non-local interests, incentives, and perspectives, in which the non-local tends to be represented by abstract discourse far removed from the experiential realities of local meanings and lifeworlds. As such local meanings are threatened by ”development” projects, social movements mobilized to protect them tend paradoxically to be drawn into the abstract, discursive practices of their opponents, generating ambiguities and rifts in the movements themselves. In evoking the mountain’s sanctity and threats of violent resistance, however, the Mi’kmaq activists managed to transform the terms of environmental negotiation while projecting an image of ethnic revival and unity that publicly transcended internal divisions. Rather than interpret this strategy simply in terms of political opportunism, anthropologists might understand the evocation of spirituality as an attempt to represent in public discourse those local meanings that are systematically excluded from the abstract discourse of modernity.  

Alf Hornborg, Mikael Kurkiala: Controlling "Development" (The Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, 1991-1993)

This project focuses on the existential ambiguities that riddle processes of indigenous identity construction. The aim is to investigate how different groups experience their identification with landscapes subdued or marginalized in the course of Western expansion. To many Europeans, indigenous people have come to represent a pristine, natural condition in remote regions before those areas were deformed into Europe’s periphery. This identification of indigenous people with nature was a product of Cartesian dualism (representing the Other of cultured Europeans), but now challenges this very Cartesianism by identifying – perhaps correctly – a cosmological monism as the only viable alternative to the modern estrangement from nature which we have come to recognize as fundamental to environmental crisis. Increasingly, there has been an inversion of signs, as “indigenousness” and oneness with nature have become idealized in global discourse. While recognizing that many indigenous groups speak as the voice of the land because this is the position left open to them, the project explore various ways of reading their environmentalist messages as statements about power structures. It also addresses the hesitation that anthropologists increasingly feel about their role in “deconstructing” identity formation in the margins. The ethnographic subprojects include the Lakota and Mi’kmaq peoples of North America and the Rabhas of India. 

Alf Hornborg: Technology as Culture (The Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 1990-1993)

The aim of this project is to delineate a more precise definition of the Marxian concept of fetishism and to consider whether this concept is applicable to machine technology. Machines occupy an ambiguous position in Marxist theory, both as manifestations of capitalist accumulation and as vehicles of proletarian emancipation. By extending the theory of fetishism from money and commodities to machines, we may achieve an epistemological shift in our understanding of the foundations of "technological development" and of the very ontology of mechanical work. There has been a lot of ambiguity about the concept of fetishism, to the point where some have even argued for its abandonment. The project concludes, however, that it will remain a useful tool in our struggles to understand the cognitive processes that produce various cultural perceptions of the relations between persons and things. The core of the Marxian definition seems to be the mystification of unequal relations of social exchange through the attribution of autonomous agency or productivity to certain kinds of material objects. The project explores the usefulness of semiotic theory in understanding various versions of fetishism. It also discusses the role of symbols and what are here called “semiotic moments” in technological systems, drawing on ecological economics and world-system analysis to demonstrate how machine technology can be understood as fetishized, social relations of unequal exchange. 

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