Anthropologies of Sustainability

RESEARCH – DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Anthropologies of Sustainability

Picture of a planned burn of forest in Australia
Photo: Jon Rasmus Nyquist / NTNU. A planned burn in Western Australia, 2016.

Sustainability is ubiquitous in contemporary life. The UN Sustainable Development Goals instill concern for environmental, economic, and social sustainability among business leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians, while the public at large worry about sustainable consumption amidst the diminishing resources of a ravaged planet. These multiple meanings testify to the complexity and malleability of sustainability as a concept, as well as its imaginary potency and its ability to enter a variety of world-making projects.

The Anthropologies of Sustainability research group explores how different actors conceptualize and render active sustainability for different purposes in different contexts. Based on research in Australia, Circumpolar Arctic, Norway, Russia, Tanzania, and the US, we investigate forest fire management, ecological vulnerability, urban governance, energy and digital security, infrastructure, real estate, and science and technological developments, as well as financial and sovereign wealth management with the aim of understanding the discourses and practices of “sustainability” - including what they imagine, enact, and actually sustain.

We collaborate with multi-disciplinary researchers throughout the world, and seek constructive and critical engagements with industry, arts, and science worlds, as well as policy communities, and welcome students at all levels who are interested in exploring these issues with us.

We collaborate with researchers at Binghamton University, PRIO, Rice University, UC Berkeley, and University of Oslo, and have affiliations with the London School of Economics and University of Oxford.

The current research group extends from long-standing research on organizational anthropology at NTNU.

Activities

Activities

  • February 6, 2025 - Commons
    -     Harney, S. & F. Moten. 2013. The undercommons: Fugitive planning and black study. New York: Minor Compositions.
    - Harvey, P., M.E. Lien & J.R. Nyquist. Forthcoming. Introduction: Bioethical regimes and commoning practices. Social Analysis.
     
  • February 27, 2015 – Habitability
    -     Langwick, S.A. A politics of habitability: Plants, healing and sovereignty in a toxic world. Cultural Anthropology 33 (3):415-443.

    Further texts to be announced.
     
  • March 6, 2025 – Workship with Nazli Azergun, University of Virginia.
     
  • March 27, 2025 - Conviviality
    -     Nyamnjoh, F.B. 2024. Incompleteness, mobility and conviviality. Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG.
     
  • April 10, 2025 – Publics
    - Barry, A. The affected public. Pp. 95-115. In Material politics: disputes along the pipeline. Wiley-Blackwell.
    - Habermas, J. 2023. A new structural transformation of the public sphere and deliberative politics. Cambridge: Polity.
    - Also available in Norwegian: Den nye offentligheten: strukturendring og deliberativ politikk. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
     
  • May 8, 2025 – Key Concepts from Michel Serres
    - Bandak, A. & D.M. Knight (eds.) 2024. Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Select chapters and other texts to be announced. 

We are continuing our Ethnographic film screenings this semester, and first up is a film by Knut Christian Myhre, Frode Storaas and Frode Ims called Returning Life (see description below).

The screening will be February 6th, 16:00, Auditorium D6, Dragvoll.
After the screening we will open for comments and discussion. 

Please feel free to spread the word to anyone you think might be interested! Students at all levels are also welcome!

Returning Life:
A film by Knut Christian Myhre, Frode Storaas og Frode Ims.

Once again, Peter leads a group of Chagga-speaking men down the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania and across the border into neighbouring Kenya. There, they meet with a group of Kamba-speaking elders to butcher animals and pour milk, beer, and blood on the ground for their distant forebear Horombo, requesting rain in return. More than 60 years after Peter first accompanied his grandfather, the last colonial ‘chief’ of the area, Mangi Tengia, it is his final trip to the plains, hoping to bring rain for their continued existence.

Returning Life documents a unique ceremony that simultaneously crosses linguistic, ethnic, and international boundaries. It reveals the hospitality and generosity of subsistence farmers in this part of East Africa, and shows their abiding care for the environment, as well as their respect for the past and concern for the future.

The film is a visual companion to the monograph Returning Life: Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro (Berghahn Books in 2018) by Knut Christian Myhre.