Overview
GARDENING THE GLOBE aims to examine historical processes through which nature has been conquered, controlled and commodified in Scandinavia from the mid-18th century to the present. The project will investigate cases related to three themes: 1) processes of moving animals, plants and minerals; 2) practices of eradicating organisms; and 3) the human production of landscapes. By focusing on Scandinavia, GARDENING also explores a fundamental tension between the production of environmental problems and the development of welfare in Scandinavian history and politics.
Today’s environmental problems are often presented with the help of scientific concepts from Earth Systems science and geology – such as the term Anthropocene. Although such concepts are important for highlighting humanity’s impact on the planet as a whole, they also seem to make factors such as historical conditions, social structures and cultural values invisible. There is therefore a need for a broader understanding of how the practices and technologies that have led to today’s environmental problems are historically situated. GARDENING will study these historical processes as a series of increasingly intense attempts to conquer, control and utilize nature – that is, the production of what we call “socio-nature”.
Such processes were heavily intensified from the mid-18th century. At the same time, the modern notion of the intrinsic value of nature emerged. Thus, the processes that utilized and controlled nature also involved a process of separating this “socio-nature” from “pure nature” – that is, nature that is uncontrollable or nature that is regarded as valuable and being the object of conservation. GARDENING sets forth to study these processes through a number of historical, ethnographic and geological case studies on the production of socio-natures. Using the production of socio-natures as a methodological approach makes it possible to showcase such processes on a number of different scales, from single cases to the Anthropocene as a whole, and also to emphasize the similarity between the socio-natural practices that take part in efforts to remediate environmental problems and the practices that produced them in the first place.
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Objectives
GARDENING’s primary objective is to examine the relationship between Western modernity and the emergence of the Anthropocene by exploring the historical processes that have led to the Anthropocene as an increasing intensification of attempts to conquer, control and utilize nature. The empirical cases will be Scandinavian, dated from 1750 to the present.
Our secondary objectives are:
- Explore how notions and practices that divide “socio-natures” from “pure nature” have evolved historically in Scandinavia from the mid-18th century to the present.
- Explore how these practices are embedded in trans-local and trans-temporal networks of humans, non-humans, ecosystems, geology, technology and materialities.
- Develop methods for bridging the epistemological gap between qualitative, historical studies and Earth system science, including new ways of scaling between historical and societal processes and the systemic level of the Anthropocene.
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Research questions and work packages
Some of the most important ways in which nature has been changed into resources have been through the relocation, removal, and eradication of species, and through the production of new landscapes. GARDENING therefore asks:
- How have the processes of moving and relocating animals, plants and minerals been part of the production of different socio-natures in the Scandinavian countries?
- How are socio-natures produced through practices of removal or eradication of species?
- How have different kinds of landscapes and landforms been produced in modern Scandinavian history? And how do such practices relate to long-term geological processes and timescales?
GARDENING includes three thematic work packages, one for each of the research questions: Moving Nature (WP2), Cultivating Eradication (WP3), and Making Landscapes (WP4). Each of the project participants will conduct one case study, which will be included in two of the three thematic work packages. The cases include management of invasive alien species, the use of rotenone in Scandinavian rivers, the concept of “nature’s economy”, Danish pig farms, Swedish mining landscapes, urban gardening, “the green shift”, and man-made geological land formations.
GARDENING aims to examine historical processes through which nature has been conquered, controlled and commodified in Scandinavia from the mid-18th century to the present, and will provide new historical insight into how practices in Scandinavia have contributed to today’s environmental problems. By focusing on Scandinavia, the project explores a fundamental tension between the production of environmental problems and the development of welfare in Scandinavian history and politics. By combining cases from different disciplines, from cultural history to geology, and with both text studies and field studies, the project will also develop methods for bridging qualitative, historical studies and Earth System science.
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The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway.
The banner art is by courtesy of artists Harem and M.u.M. It is a segment of a mural titled “Sell-Fish/Squid help me” and can be seen in its entirety at Skur14, Holbergskaien 1, 5004 Bergen.