PACA Post#1

July 2024

Dear PACA subscribers

Summer is approaching with its unpredictable weather, drowsiness, and regeneration. Before we close our laptops and lock the offices, we are eager to share some news with you in this first PACA newsletter.

The SDU Climate Cluster Elite Center for Mobilizing Post-Anthropocentric Climate Action (PACA) has been working full steam since January 2024. Made up of an interdisciplinary research team, we investigate how new narratives of the human-nature relationship can mass mobilize transformative climate action. We unbraid the foundations of post-anthropocentric theory, beliefs, and practices and examine their emergence in civil society.

But what do we mean by a new root narrative? And by social transformations being necessary for a green future? Watch the film to learn more about PACA.

Engage

• At the end of October, the British philosopher and social scientist Kate Soper will visit PACA to give an open DIAS-lecture and host a PhD-seminar. Soper is at the forefront of approaching the environmental crisis through critical theory and consumption theory. She has recently published the book Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism. Dates will be announced in the next newsletter.
• In the fall , we are launching a reading circle, which will be open for everyone who’s interested. We will read Stefania Barca’s ecofeminist Workers of the Earth:Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change (published this month), which will be available in an online version via SDU Library.​
  • The first date of our reading circle is September 5. Let us know if you want to join at paca@sdu.dk
• We will also initate the PACA cinema, where we will watch and discuss films. Reserve the dates! Schedule (more information will follow):
  • September 12: Fungi
  • October 10: Okja
  • November 7: Princess Mononoke
  • December 5: Utama
  • December 19: Landbrugets natur (The nature of agriculture)

We will be presenting our research at various conferences, events, and festivals this coming fall. Stay tuned on www.sdu.dk/paca , to learn more about where to meet up with PACA people.

Concept Quest: Post-anthropocentrism

The planetary crisis is also a struggle about concepts and worldviews. As ideas shape the way we engage with the world, we must understand and expose those that have, directly or indirectly, spawned ecological degradation. But we must also understand and amplify ideas that defy and go beyond the dominant narratives. In every newsletter, we will present a concept or topic central to the research we do in PACA. We begin the quest with the concepts anthropocentrism and post-anthropocentrism:

Anthropocentrism means human-centeredness. In PACA, we understand anthropocentrism as a narrative about domination that affirms a strong divide between the human (culture) and the non-human (nature). It is a worldview with a narrow and exclusive focus on human interests, desires, abilities, and values, thereby disregarding and exploiting the more-than-human world. With its deep historical roots, anthropocentrism is profoundly embedded in our political structures, socio-economic production and consumption systems, and everyday lives.

We understand post-anthropocentrism as a necessary antidote to anthropocentricism that downscales or transforms (but not dissolves) human interests and needs. Post-anthropocentrism is a way of paying careful attention to the interactions between humans and the rest of the natural world. We find post-anthropocentrism in every idea or action that perceives the more-than-human as valuable in itself rather than something thatmerely exists for the sake of certain human goals such as economic profit. Post-anthropocentric action is swiftly sowing seeds in many areas of contemporary societies (e.g., regenerative agriculture, climate movements, upscaled recycling).

PACA Diaries: A vision quest

We recently went on a retreat to explore and formulate a joint vision of PACA. With the aim to engage with nature and more-than-human critters as co-teachers, we packed our tents and hiking shoes and spent 24 hours at an alpaca park. From the slowness of our surroundings and a program centered around sensory based walking and 1:1 alpaca bonding came a lot of great discussions about creating echoes and giving back.

Our vision is to foster dynamic knowledge ecologies and establish an open space for dialogue, experimentation, co-creation, and learning that engages researchers, citizens, and communities and creates echoes in civil society. We strive to provide conceptual tools that disrupt prevailing anthropocentric worldviews and nuture emerging post-anthropocentric narratives to address the ecological devastations that arise from current production and consumption patterns.

Through the eyes of the Paca (the PACA mascot)

At first, I was sceptic about joining the alpaca trip. What good could come out of a trip with a bunch of homo-sapiens researchers wanting to pat a herd of fenced alpacas? As it turned out, the alpacas were clearly dominating the space, and my human friends learned to respect our sophisticated nature and sensitivity to physical contact. Watch the encounter for yourself below:

News

Funding

We have received support from the SDU Climate Cluster Fast Track Funding for the project “Farmer’s pasts and futures in Europe: memory, subjectivity, and resistance”. With this project, the researchers aim to develop and test a workshop that can bring together urban dwellers, rural people, and sustainability advocates in the effort to find a common path to more sustainable rural communities. Read more here .

Open positions

Our team is expanding. The Department of Business & Management invites applications for two new positions starting from January 2025 or soon thereafter: a 3-year PhD scholarship and a Research Assistant position. For more information on the job description and application process, see the announcements in the attached links. Feel free to share in your networks.

Recent publications

• Jordskred: bidrag til den nye naturtænkning
• Posthumanisme og økomarxisme – en falsk dikotomi?
• Look up! Five research proposals for rethinking marketing in a post-growth society
• Climate Fiction for Leveraging High School Students' Far-Future Climate Perspectives.
• Shall we dance? How systemic intermediaries coordinate interaction within local sustainability initiatives over time.

PACA recommends…

Enter your summer holiday with some post-anthropocentric listening. The slow media organization For the Wild hosts and produces the for the wild podcast . Joined by researchers, activists, and local community representatives from across the world, the podcast is striving to be an anthology of the Anthropocene. Let Merlin Sheldrake walk you through his book Embodied Entanglements about our non-negotiable relationship with fungi or listen to Abena Offeh-Gyimah discuss the power of seeds and soil from the perspective of ancestral foods in Ghana.

Thanks for spending some time with the PACA Post. With hopes of a regenerative summer,

The PACA-team

If you want to strike up a conversation or receive the newsletter in your inbox let us know on paca@sdu.dk.

For more PACA related stuff, find us on Instagram @pacaclimateaction .