Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Thinking through nostalgia in anthropologies of the environment and ethnographies of landscape

Ellen, Roy (2021) Thinking through nostalgia in anthropologies of the environment and ethnographies of landscape. In: Angé, Olivia and Berliner, David, eds. Ecological Nostalgias: Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Ecological Upheavals. Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology . Berghahn, New York; Oxford, pp. 17-38. ISBN 978-1-78920-893-1. E-ISBN 978-1-78920-894-8. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:85586)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. (Contact us about this Publication)

Abstract

The chapter examines the treatment of memory in ecological and environmental anthropology. Though increasingly acknowledged, its role has not always been explicit. In this context ecological nostalgia is understood as the selective use of memory to create potent and evocative valuations of particular scenarios impacting on how people store, represent and use environmental information. The chapter shows how specific ecological nostalgias are dependent on the ways people make their environments, both physically and conceptually, and through a process in which science, governments, stakeholder citizens, heritage specialists and traditional peoples may all in different ways be complicit. The argument is illustrated using two case studies, the first surrounding research linked to national park development in Brunei during the mid 1990s, and the second concerning Nuaulu people on Seram, during the period 2000-2015 as they mobilized support in negotiations with the Indonesian government to establish an independent devolved administration. I show how the complexities of historical process prevent any easy definition of what constitutes 'ecological nostalgia' in both instances, arguing that this is essentially positional.

Item Type: Book section
Uncontrolled keywords: Brunei; eastern Indonesia; environmental anthropology; landscape ethnography; memory; positionality of nostalgia
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Depositing User: Roy Ellen
Date Deposited: 20 Jan 2021 07:21 UTC
Last Modified: 08 Mar 2021 13:04 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/85586 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Ellen, Roy.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.