History in the Anthropocene
Examples of anthropological perspectives on history teaching in teacher education, Aarhus, DK.
Marianne A. Leth, Senior Lecturer VIAUC-Aarhus History and anthropology
The Anthropocene and education?
• UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, focusing on Aim 4, Quality Education, and 4.7, Education for Sustainability for example: https://www.verdensmaal.org/verdenstimen
• The Anthropocene ‘new normality’ as a frame for the human impact on the planetary system challenges the educational
systems and calls for new concepts of ‘bildung’ and knowledge.
• ‘Bildung’: German inspirations and the Scandinavian
‘folkeoplysning’
• ”UBAN: Understanding Bildung in the Anthropocene” – a
Nordic research network (project lead, Prof. Kenneth Nordgren KAU-S and docent Jesper Garsdal VIAUC-DK)
History and the Anthropocene
• History subject does not seem so obvious connected to teaching in sustainability, climate changes and global responsible citizenship.
• History contributes with the long lines of chronologies of society making on the globe - society building in time and space. It is just a matter of which kind of chosen perspective and directions or master
narratives is able to include the human impact on earth and to acknowledge and internalize this as part of the historical consciousness (Nordgren (2019, 2021).
• ‘Bildung’ and history: The broad version of historical consciousness as an interpretive process (Rüsen Jensen (2017).
• History in teacher education must redirect the focus a bit from the dominating national master narrative to a more multi-perspective and anthropological inspired approach:
• We have to loosen up the agreed truth that human evolution and civilization is closely connected to and entangled in the human/European conquest of nature - founded in the binary opposition of nature and culture/civilization from the Enlightment (Nordgren (2019, 2021), Poulsen (2019), Latour &
Chakrabarty (2020), Leth (2020)). (This discussion is being conducted thoroughly elsewhere)
• The following: just an example of how to include multiperspectivities and anthropological thinking to be able to tell a little part of the story of ‘this new normality’ by trying to transcend the relation: nature - culture
Three views on landscapes
• Prof. Kirsten Hastrup (2018): ”Antropologiens Landskaber.”
• What happens with the relations between nature and history, when the populated landscapes both arise and disappear?
• 3 ways of viewing landscapes:
• 1. The provocative landscape
• 2. The ruined landscape
• 3. The authorized landscape
• They can be understood both concretely, and as allegories of how anthropology can contribute to a broader knowledge of nature and the world, and as an input to the discussion of the
human position as actor in the global landscape – in collaboration with other actors - but as a particularly committed actor!
Case: The living
around ”Gudenåen”
• The river as an axis and starting point of the long lines in history
• The river as an axis for exemplary selected stories of living communities in living
landscapes
• An example in using anthropological concepts and anthropological (field) methods in history
1. The provocative landscape
• The landscape as open, movable and composed: a provocation against concepts of time, place, history and the integrity of geography.
• The human arrival and interference: new forces at stake, as
manifestation of societal power, religion and fighting for resources
• Nature cannot be understood outside humans and vice versa.
• Humans are deeply placed in a landscape of a far greater order than the close community (only)
• Interaction between nature and society
• "Every landscape constitutes an indefinable field with fluid boundaries, embedded stories, strange interests, many times and not least a
concurrent nature": This decentrates the analyzed places
Human stories and prints in the landscape around the river: Two men from the marsh
• The Tollund Man (300 – 100 f.v.t)
• The Grauballe Man (290 f.v.t)
• What stories can they tell?
• Multiperspectivity on the interpretations
• The weapon sacrifice in Illerup River Valley ca. 205 e.v.t
The Anthropocene view
• The provocative landscape is composed by times, processes and stories, globally and locally
• The anthropocene view: one can not distinguish between anthropos and geos ie. there is also ambiguity in the causal chain around natural
phenomena. (continuity – change questions)
• An analytical task creating a compiled/total picture of the separated, yet uniting forces of history. In this the anthropological holistic tradition gets new significance
• Intanglement of geological, biological, anthropological and societal
perspectives: there is always coherence in the way nature and society are intertwined.
• It is easy to degrade the meanings of the landscape into the interaction between society - technology - nature and societal challenges.
The anthropocene anthropological view
• Focus on the inconsistencies and incongruities
(disagreements) with which the provocative (and provoked) landscape confronts us.
• Designate a new form of sustainability that can include and embrace the ENTIRE landscape, incl. lit., mythology, culture, etc . (ref.:sustainability concepts)
• The indeterminacy between geos, anthropos and bios in the LIVED landscape.
• The landscape is becoming in an unintentional design
Provocative landscapes:
The river and the access to water
• Left: The monestries built in the 12th century. The Plague
• Right: The royal privileged Inn (1250) Svostrup Inn overflooded in
2020: A new plague
2. The ruined landscape
• Almost all landscapes in the postmodern age are characterized by a degree of ruin: depleted (exhausted) agricultural areas, industrial facilities, marine farming, animal husbandry, etc.
• The ruined landscape is particularly studied in regions scarred by imperial and colonial strategies.
• A ruined landscape as a clash between different notions of the human place in the landscape: the ruined cities around the jungle landscapes e.g.
• The route from ruined cities to cultural heritage is quite short!
Before: a mental image of uninhabitable landscapes with hidden native Indians. Now: national icons and tourist destinations
Ruined landscapes - examples
• The common Danish-Ghanaian cultural heritage
• The nuclear accidents: landscapes are transformed by (deficient) technologies and (bad?) political decisions.
• The American underground base in Thule: the inland ice was overlooked. The landscape was not sworn in - or understood.
Ruin as a decoupling of a society from a history that presupposed a freely accessible landscape.
Ruined landscapes:
Gudenåen
• Left: The industry (from the 19th century) and mills along the river
• Right: The middle age fortified estates around the river
• The monestries: Catolic estates – ruins - heritage
• What stories do they tell?
The ruined landscape: the meaning of the rubbles
• Even the powerless can leave significant footprints: Rubbles after a long and uneven history: rubbles exert pressure on social practice by co-producing the specific spatiality that sets the stage for human life in the landscape.
• Fragments and ruins help us to analyze the separate and
different stories, which are based in the particular place and as part of the whole picture.
• Fragments and ruins remind us that people, including the scientists, are part of the landscape and that they must be spotted so that they do not block the path of the imagined and formulated goals and intensions.
3. The authorized landscape
• How are the indefinable landscapes authorized?
• The translation from the lived landscape to metric maps can change the landscape radically - a change of
perspective and a change of concept.
• Economic surveys of e.g. DK in the 1700s with land registers, arable land, meadows, forest, heaths, etc.
Based on a scietific authorization!.
• The scientific institutions have shares in the determination of landscapes - even today.
Matrikelkort Truust 1815 - 1855
• Authorization through tax liability and the quality of the soil.
The authorized landscape – the soil
• The definition of "the good soil" in scientific terms: large- scale cultivation projects
• local terms and understandings: the marginal soils - the living soil in the communities
• Latour (1999): Different lands become comparable soils (non-different) through science
• Equal but different landscapes are hierarchized for a specific purpose: the fabricated landscape trumps the living
landscape including cultural, spiritual and other unmesseurable elements.
The seabattle of Gudenå: Nature conservation and particular interests
• Left: Map of the dammed Tange Lake
• Above: The Tange Hydropower Plant and The Energy Museum
How do we authorize landscapes?
• How do we analyze and authorize landscapes from many angles and perspectives, in time and space?
• Excessive hierarchy between sciences, regionalism and nationalism. But the world is easily frozen when viewed only from a particular regional perspective:
• The authorization seems given once and for all: the past is obvious - everyone knows the masternarratives.
• All landscapes are challenging current authorizations: local, global, biological, economic, cultural etc.
The landscapes' own life – according to Hastrup (2018)
• Widely branched and diverse interests authorize landscapes based on experience and knowledge of the past, "old dreams, new interests and concerns - for welfare, for rebellion, for future generations - which all interfere in the outcome."
• But “the landscapes are not fooled by authorization - they insist on their own efforts and on the right to change form and
meaning. Even when we think we "have it", we are overwhelmed by a landscape where the human factor is only one among
others”.
• Landscapes are constantly created "in the meeting between
disagreements on different scales, including our own entrance on stage"
Perspectives – what is new?
• Human living and human history as part of the landscapes and vice versa
• Anthropological perspectives might loosen the concepts of multiperspective historical consciousness including the
relation nature – culture and the stories of this, in time and space
• This might contribute to connections of local and global perspectives in history, also in history didactics/education
• In other words: Understanding ‘Bildung’ in the Anthropocene
References
• Garsdal, J. (red) (2020): Bæredygtighed og bæredygtig udvikling: uddannelse, dannelse og fagdidaktik i skole, erhvervs- og professionsuddannelser. Center for Innovation og Entreprenørskab, VIA
• Hastrup, K. (2015). Mennesket på kanten af mellem natur og samfund - Den humane vending i et antropologisk perspektiv. I: Gudmand-Høyer, M., Raffnsøe, S, og Raffnsøe-Møller, M. (red.): Den humane vending. En antologi. Aarhus Universitetsforlag Hastrup, K. (2018): Antropologiens landskaber. Fratrædelsesforelæsning 23. Februar 2018. Tidsskriftet Antropologi nr. 7
• Hawkes, J. (2001): The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: culture’s essential role in public planning. Common Ground P/L, Melbourne
• Høiris, Ole (1988). Kulturbegrebet i antropologien. I Hauge, Hans & Horstbøll, Henrik (red.): Kulturbegrebets kulturhistorie. Aarhus Universitetsforlag
• Høiris, Ole (2007). Mellem vildskab og fornuft - menneskets civilisering. I: Høiris, Ole & Ledet, Thomas (red.): Oplysningens Verden. Idé, historie, videnskab, kunst. Aarhus Universitetsforlag.
• Høiris, Ole (2010). Antropologiens idéhistorie. Århus Universitetsforlag
• Høiris, Ole (2021): 'Den vilde' i europæisk idéhistorie- Grænserne for menneskelighed. Århus Universitetsforlag
• Jensen, B.E. (2017): Historiebevidsthed/fortidsbrug – teori og empiri, Historia
• Latour, B., Chakrabarty, D. (2020): Conflicts of planetary proportions - a concersation. In Tamm, M., Simon, Z.B. (eds.): Journal of the Philosophy of History 14: Historical Thinking and the Human
• Leth, M.A. (2020): Bæredygtighed i historie. I Garsdal, Jesper (red): Bæredygtighed og bæredygtig udvikling: uddannelse, dannelse og fagdidaktik i skole, erhvervs- og professionsuddannelser. Center for Innovation og Entreprenørskab, VIA
• Nordgren, K. (2019). Boundaries of historical consciousness: a Western cultural achievement or an anthropological universal? I: Nordgren, K. & Zanazarian, P. (red.): Journal of Curriculum Studies 2019, vol. 51. No. 6.
• Nordgren, K. (2021): The Anthropocene and the Need for a Crisis in Teaching. In: Public History Weekly 8 (2021) 9, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2021-17397.
• Paulsen, M. (2019). Digging into the Anthropocene - finding way to cautious educational practice. Paper to symposium “Global challenges - rethinking education”. Tilgået fra:
https://www.michaelpaulsen.dk/
”Anhropologists!
Anthropologists!
”
• The Far Side by Gary Larson 1984.
