Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

In the dark times

Will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

About the dark times.

Bertolt Brecht, Motto (Willett and Manheim 1976: 320)

Following the first edition, several articles in this forum provide case studies to illustrate the entanglement between climate change and intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The contributions focus especially on the impact of UNESCO's 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the potential role of ICH in tackling climate change. This introduction provides an overview of the key themes dealt with by contributors in this second forum. The case studies particularly cover creative responses to climate change. Our definition of ‘creative’ is broad-ranging and includes interventions in domains such as theatre and art as well as at the level of community as local people utilise traditional practice in creative ways as a response to climate change.

This contribution aims to describe how a small cooperative of fishers, known as the Cooperativa Pescatori del Trasimeno, located in a Central Italian Lake, is developing innovative strategies to address economic and environmental challenges. Through a combination of participant observation and in-depth interviews, this research seeks to determine whether the cultural capital derived from intangible heritage is serving as a strategic asset for the fishers’ cooperative in dealing with both new and longstanding threats. Confronting with the inland pressures of a global market and with the threats posed by invasive species and eutrophication of the lake ecosystem, the fishers rely on their ecological knowledge and emphasize the sustainability of their fishing and processing practices. The primary objective of this article is thus to examine the connections between localized knowledge and resilience-based practices. It does so by delving into the realm of heritage creation through two main areas of focus: the strategic use of intangible heritage to promote economic activities and the importance of community and traditional practices for climate change mitigation and for the self-preservation of the cooperative.

Recent rewilding movements in Europe have used ecosystems’ historical baselines to construct progressive conservationist philosophies and practices. Both the rhetoric and activity surrounding these rewilding projects evoke folkloristic preoccupations with traditionalisation, as rewilders use past models and present materials to establish a landscape's continuity amidst the ongoing and future ramifications either caused or exacerbated by climate change. This article considers how humanistic concerns with cultural conservation intersect with parallel concerns in ecological contexts, positioning the impulse to traditionalise as not only ascribing authority to rewilding efforts but also reframing how ideas of sustainability and intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can be jointly theorised in cultural and environmental domains. By bridging theoretical approaches from folklore studies and the environmental humanities, this article positions the urge to conserve within a wider human tendency to traditionalise available materials during periods of crisis, looking specifically at how the environmental crisis of climate change poses threats to both landscapes and ICH at global scales.

This article focuses on the contribution mystery playing as an intangible cultural heritage practice in the twenty-first century can make to our cultural responses to the ecological consequences of human behaviour. Using the 2018 Chester Mystery Plays production of Noah and His Ship as an example, the article seeks to illustrate how mystery playing can provide a site for reflection on human agency in the age of anthropogenic climate change.

This article explores Lucy Wright and Joseph Beuys’ creative engagements with folklore and traditional knowledge. It considers the degree to which these European artists’ work might mitigate or promote resilience to the impacts of climate change globally. If there is potential to be gained from engaging creatively with folklore to support more sustainable life ways, who has the right to do this and what are the potential challenges around this kind of work? While recognising that intangible cultural heritage traditions often display vital human interconnections with local landscapes, such that their protection may also constitute a form of environmental protection, it asks whether supporting, or perhaps rather shifting European reactions to climate change need always be achieved with reference to European folklore, or whether trans-continental work may also be valuable. Reflecting on the Anthropocene, the article asks how it frames, supports, elides or limits action on climate change. It then turns to indigenous stories of coyote as exemplary stories, pedagogical narratives which initiate creative processes of personal and collective interpretation and guide people to a sustainable relationship with their environment. Finally, it draws on Randazzo and Richter's recent work to consider how such traditions might be turned to in ethical ways to critique the Anthropocene thesis, opening up other possible ways to support ongoing life on earth.

In this article, we explore the role that languages can play in addressing climate change. Beginning with a discussion on the ‘demotion’ of language in the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, we evidence the power of the oral tradition in the transmission of ecological knowledge. Following a brief exploration of the co-relation between linguistic and ecological diversity, we argue for greater recognition of the role language plays in passing on ecological knowledge, as well as its value as intangible cultural heritage in and of itself. We give some examples from the island of Ireland to evidence how crucial traditional knowledge is embedded within the Irish language about land, landscape and the environment. The final section asks whether in addressing climate change, we should focus on minority languages where speakers maintain close connections to nature. Understanding the traditional knowledge about climate, land and the environment has implications for policy changes generally and for wider international debates on climate change such as those by the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties.

The editors of this highly anticipated thematic issue have called for a more integrated approach to the concurrent development of climate debates and discourse on intangible cultural heritage. Inspired by the relevant and intriguing articles featured in this issue, I discuss how environmentalism serves as a platform where the appropriations of heritage by illiberal populist movements are increasingly evident and serious. The aim is to place this issue within the broader scholarly landscape to show that its importance not only extends to applied anthropology and engaged critical heritage scholarship but also serves as fertile ground for advancing anthropological theories and methodology grappling with stakeholder exclusion. It holds promise for understanding, explaining, predicting, or even preventing the populist hijacking of collective identities worldwide through the heritage-environment nexus.

This article investigates classification freedom in e-waste processing as a phenomenon that appears despite environmental risk and even though the promise of economic profit depends on strict discipline in e-waste disassembly and sorting. This paradox raises the question of what allows for classification freedom. E-waste recycling is embedded in specific registers of value shaped by a network of stakeholders: producers, e-waste processing facilities, the state, and the European Union. Building upon ethnographic research in an e-waste processing company in Czechia, I argue that the registers of value in e-waste recycling have stabilising effects on working conditions and make classification freedom possible. By elucidating the network of relations in e-waste recycling, the article sheds light on the link between stability and freedom.

Online review platforms such as TripAdvisor remain an underexplored resource in both cultural anthropological and historical research into the experience of cultural heritage. Yet they are an integral part of both tourism and our digital everyday life, and there is hardly a place or historical site that is not reviewed on such sites by visitors. This includes large-scale sites associated with Nazi heritage such as the Thingstätte on Heidelberg's Heiligenberg hill. Delving into this topic provides insights into a doubly neglected field in heritage studies: the Thingstätten themselves and the tourist experience as such, conveyed in digital space. The results of the qualitative content analysis conducted here reveal how tourists envision the past and experience the present at such sites and how they digitally deal with it. In so doing, visitors reflect on various aspects of this distinctive form of Nazi heritage.

Aimée Joyce (2024), Spectral Borders: History, Neighbourliness and Discord on the Polish-Belarusian Frontier (Canon Pyon, Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing), 207pp, £65.00 (Hb), ISBN: 978-1-912385-52-2

Sarah May, Stefan Growth, Johannes Müske (eds) (2023), Morality as Organizational Practice: Negotiating, Performing, and Navigating Moral Standards in Contexts of Work (Münster, New York: Waxmann, Freiburger Studien zur Kulturanthropologie vol. 6), 216pp, £34.90 (Pb), ISBN: 978-3-8309-4787-5

Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Oslo, died on 27 November 2024. He was only sixty-two years old, yet his death was not altogether unexpected. He had struggled with a difficult affliction for many years, but despite that, he had carried on with his multitude of interests and activities.