In recent years, scholars from the fields of anthropology, arts, environmental humanities, environmental science studies, feminist theory, organisational studies, sociology and tourism studies have challenged the ontological divide between nature and culture, human and non-human by emphasising human-environment relationality as a mode of being-in-the-world. Indigenous and Sámi studies are paradigmatically based on relational understanding of the world: humans and other beings inhabit the world through their inter-connectedness with each other and act upon their mutual responsibilities. It is also increasingly acknowledged that relational perspectives in social theory are enormously indebted to Indigenous ontologies in which the environment (other species, plants, land, air, and water as holistic entities) is indivisible from social worlds.

Human-environment relationality thinking highlights that human communities do not only use and live from the land, but live and breathe with the land – and with non-human others. Human-environment relationality conceives of nature and humanity as ineradicably entangled and calls for radical openness toward otherness, questioning the very assumption of ‘the human’ as the only being with agency and capability of ‘knowing’. Therefore, in this symposium, we will explore the alternative, responsible, reciprocal and ethically sustainable forms of living enabled by the human-environment relationality. The symposium seeks to foster transdisciplinary discussions along with invitations to think, imagine, act and research with other species and more-than-human worlds. A particular emphasis is given to Indigenous thought which forms a foundation of human-environment relational scholarship.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Gro Birgit Ween
Assistant Professor Ragnhild Nilsson
BioARTech Laboratory

More information on SuMu Symposium website