In this talk we present the research project “Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750-2020”, with a focus on the work package “Moving Nature” and methodological challenges of scaling. The historical development in Northern Europe since the mid-18th century has played a key role in the processes leading to the Anthropocene, and the project studies these processes as an increasing intensification of attempts to conquer, control and utilize nature - the production of “socio-natures”.
One of the challenges we deal with in the project is how the historical and cultural disciplines can make fundamental contributions to a common understanding of planetary macro-processes. Is it possible to find a way of scaling or mediating between localized, qualitative and empirical cases and the Earth system science concept of the Anthropocene? One of our approaches to this question is to view the Anthropocene as resulting from an accumulated set of movements or transportation processes. In the work package “moving nature”, we take “movement” of nature to be a characteristic of the Anthropocene. As a historically specific landscape situation, the Anthropocene is arguably characterized by a series of practices that have moved nature. However, already with the two words “moving” and “nature”, questions arise. For what is nature? What does it mean that nature is moving? What technologies have been used for moving it? Who are the actors doing the moving? And with what kind of agency?
Kyrre Kverndokk is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has published on topics such as the practice and politics of Second World War memory, the cultural history of natural disasters and climate change temporalities. He is currently the PI of the interdisciplinary project “Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750–2020”. He also has a special interest in folklore archives and is the PI of the digitization project “SAMLA: National Infrastructure for Cultural History and Tradition Archives".
Marit Ruge Bjærke works as a researcher in Cultural Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway. Her background is in marine biology, history of ideas, and cultural studies. Her research interests lie within the environmental humanities, with a focus on biodiversity loss, climate change, temporal understandings, and invasive alien species. She is currently part of the leadership group of the RCN project “Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750-2020”, and leads two of the project’s work packages.