ABSTRACT:

A surge of marine restoration initiatives promises to bring reefs back from the brink of extinction. This represents a fundamental shift from ‘hands-off’ protection to ‘hands on’ intervention to reverse the on-going decline of ocean health, for example by building artificial reefs. Yet, in current times of ecological precarity, there is no ‘natural condition’ to go back to. Instead, restoration involves practices of care that shape new kinds of marine nature for an uncertain future. As a consequence, debate is rising around what is a ‘good nature’ – or reef – to restore? For whom? And what intervention is appropriate? Applying the feminist theoretical lens of ‘care' I re-conceptualize the politics involved in reef restoration. Despite its moral association of ‘doing good’, care is political. It is underpinned by different assumptions of what is a good and healthy reef, and what knowledge should guide intervention. How do such politics of care shape the conditions for including different kinds of knowledge and values in marine restoration? Addressing this question, I explore how restoration enacts specific inclusions and exclusions in knowing and repairing degraded marine environments for the future. Marine social scientists increasingly warn that restoration interventions perpetuate deep-seated inequalities in what voices are listened to, and whose knowledge count. For instance, by prioritizing techno-scientific solutions, restoration has displaced situated ways of knowing and caring for reefs. Yet such critique has almost entirely focused on tropical reefs. This talk shifts focus to plural ways of knowing and caring for oyster reefs in the temperate zone. I draw from multi-sited anthropological research, involving three case studies in the United States, Netherlands and United Kingdom. Here, oyster reefs are uniquely entangled with transatlantic cultural history and industrialization. An ethnographic focus on oyster care practices sheds light on the current re-imagining and re-shaping of human-nature connections in degraded marine environments in the North. The ultimate goal is to help shape more equitable conditions for reef restoration science, policy and practice and advance debate on epistemological justice in marine restoration.

BIO:

Annet Pauwelussen is assistant professor with the Environmental Policy group of Wageningen University and research fellow with Ocean Nexus at the University of Washington. Inspired by anthropology, STS and political ecology her research and teaching focus on environmental justice and the role of knowledge and values in marine conservation and restoration. Her current project ‘The Future of Past Reefs’ (2024-2027) funded by the Dutch Research Council investigates multi-species relations and politics of care in oyster restoration in the temperate zone. Her earlier work engaged with human-sea relations, sea-nomadic societies, gender and illegal fishing networks in Southeast Asia, using visual and mobile methods in long-term ethnographic research. For this she graduated cum laude from Wageningen University with her PhD thesis ‘Amphibious Anthropology’.

BIOrdinary 2024 Seminar Series