Seminar: Urban Forest Ethnography - Theory und Methods of Political Ecology und Environment Anthropology

The defining theme of this module was the overcoming of the dualism of nature on the one side and culture on the other. Taking place in the summer semester of 2023, the module was co-ordinated by Prof. Dr. Andrea Lauser, Nurman Nowak (both of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology) and Prof. Dr. Stefanie Steinebach of HAWK Göttingen. On the basis of methodological and theoretical approaches such as the more-than-human-ethnography (Bubandt et al. 2023) and the concepts of NaturenKulturen (Gesing et al. 2019) and Stadtnatur (Breuste 2019), the course participants researched in the context of the city – Göttingen – how urban spaces are produced and in equal measure shaped by human as well as non-human actors, and therefore subject to constant change in the process.

Following the call for a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to the epistemological and ontological challenges of the anthropocene, social anthropology students from the University of Göttingen and urban tree and forest management students from HAWK Göttingen, as part of the module, came together and formed small, interdisciplinary groups of 2-3 students to investigate three spaces in Göttingen: the musa/Hagenweg area, the Leinepark and the Ernst-Honig Wall. These spaces were sought out and chosen by the students themselves.

At the focus was interdisciplinary and multi-modal research in the field: Through methods from both social anthropology and urban tree management, data was collected jointly with smartphones, cameras and pen and paper from the perspectives of both disciplines and and then put together on the online platform Padlet. The collages of pictures, short videos, soundscapes, mental maps, diagrams, tables and illustrations were then appropriately and systematically structured and put in relation through the formulation of research questions, discussions and the addition of theoretical concepts.

The results of these collaborations, research and methods are presented here as interactive, digital posters.

The cross-disciplinary co-operation was especially inspiring and productive! All participants, both students as well as instructors, got to know the perspectives and ways of working of the respective other research discipline and there was a harmonious, respectful and tremendously fruitful exchange of knowledge and methods, although according to the students' reports, the guests from HAWK did suffer from some culture shock at the beginning.

Sources

Breuste, Jürgen (2019): Die Grüne Stadt. Stadtnatur als Ideal, Leistungsträger und Konzept für Stadtgestaltung / Jürgen Breuste. 1. Aufl. 2019. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum.

Bubandt, Nils; Andersen, Astrid Oberborbeck; Cypher, Rachel Antoinette (Hg.) (2023): Rubber boots methods for the anthropocene. Doing fieldwork in multispecies worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Gesing, Friederike; Knecht, Michi; Flitner, Michael; Amelang, Katrin (Hg.) (2019): NaturenKulturen. Denkräume und Werkzeuge für neue politische Ökologien. Bielefeld: Transcript (Edition Kulturwissenschaft, Band 146).

Research posters of the student research groups

Click on the image to open the corresponding PDF with functional interactive elements!

Der Ernst-Honig Wall

von Fabian Spreng und Louis Westerkamp

Musa/Hagenweg/Wall

von Anna von Borcke und Jonas Künzel

Der Leinepark: Sinnbild des Latour'schen Naturenkulturen Konzepts?

von Christian Weich und Greta Viktoria Simon