糖果派对

February 2025

Dear PACA subscribers

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2025, in which we launch the Database of Environmental Grassroots in Denmark. We also present a concept quest covering the emerging ecological class, the latest PACA-news, and ways to engage with PACA this coming spring.

Concept Quest: Post-anthropocentric grassroots actors and the ecological class

In PACA, we’re interested in innovative, radical, bottom-up climate action - what we sometimes call post-anthropocentric grassroot action. We understand post-anthropocentric grassroots actors as civil society, bottom-up initiatives that aim to introduce, develop, promote and expand post-anthropocentric narratives and practices. These narratives and practices are attempts to downscale or transform (but not dissolve) human interests and needs in a way that with care attends to and interacts with the more-than-human world.
Many of the actors usually work in contrast to, or outside of the hegemonic socio-technical and political systems of infrastructures, institutions, and market structures. This could be within the sectors of agri-food production, political climate action, mobility, production, waste and resource management, or community living. As prefigurative practices, they experiment with, develop and test post-anthropocentric ideas and practices that protect or recreate the living conditions for human beings, while valuing the natural world beyond narrow human interests. Examples are regenerative farms, climate activist movements, repair-cafes, local biodiversity initiatives, degrowth-networks, art and literature groups, and eco-villages.
We believe that these actors are a part of an ongoing creation of a new ecological class: a wave of interests and attitudes that can potentially give rise to a unified political source that seeks to transform the dominant socio-political perspective and treatment of questions about climate change, biodiversity and the environment. To different degrees and in different ways, these actors seek to challenge and replace the hegemonic discourses and politics based on anthropocentrism, technological fetichism, productivism, and/or the associated imperatives of economic growth and profitability.

Environmental grassroots database

 During the last year, PACA has mapped the landscape of environmental grassroots actors in Denmark that, in different degrees, show traces of post-anthropocentric narratives and practices. We are thrilled to now share a database with mission descriptions, contact information and field categorizations of these actors. View the database . Thanks to all for agreeing to be part of it!
As the list shows, the groups and organizations operate within a diverse set of overlapping fields, with categories such as “Regenerative practices”, “Economy and consumer lifestyle” and “Community living”. This mapping will continue in the future where we will analyze and collaborate with selected actors in order to understand and support their activities, strategies, ideologies, successes, and barriers. The database also serves as a tool to create knowledge, alliances, and cooperation between actors themselves as a kind of information service and will be updated along the way.
If you think that we’ve missed someone, please let us know at paca@sdu.dk!  

Copenhagen, Denmark, April 28, 2023. Extinction Rebellion puts plants on the road at Christiansborg and sits on the asphalt to stop the traffic. Stock photo.

Engage

• We will continue the PACA Earthcare Reading Circle this spring, reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. We will meet Tuesdays every 4 weeks from 12-13. Sign up at paca@sdu.dkThis spring, the PACA Cinema will host film screenings of documentaries and fiction films that address human-nature relations in the Anthropocene. We will meet on Mondays from 14.30-16.30. To register, please write paca@sdu.dk
• On March 5th, D-IAS hosts the event 'In defense of hope in an age of climate upheaval: Theoretical and empirical considerations' by Maria Ojala, professor in socio-ecological resilience at University of Oulu, Finland. Read more here.
• PACA Seminar, March 18: Join this seminar in which we are visited by Simon Önnered, forward-thinking innovator, trained in the ways of systems thinking and strategic planning. To register, please write paca@sdu.dk
• The Cross-Disciplinary Conference the Social Impact of Climate Fiction at 糖果派对, 26-27 May 2025 is approaching. The conference seeks to consolidate emergent scholarship and artworks that explore the power of narrative to motivate climate-conscious action. Read more and register .
  
  

News: Funding

• Together with the SCC Elite Centre of Nature-based solutions (Aqua NbS), we have received support for the project Living Labs for Live Climate Research, Action, and Learning (LIRA). Expanding on the research of PACA and Aqua NbS, LIRA will integrate a post-anthropocentric conversation around the water cycle’s balancing effects on biosphere restoration. Reaching beyond the narrow carbon focus of mainstream climate discourse, our living climate research approach develops knowledge-based systems of assessment and recommends actions and innovations that lead to are stored water cycle and improved planetary health. 
• PACA has received a grant from. The grant will fund the project FUSION, which aims to break the paralysis of climate anxiety observed amongst many high school students in the Danish-German border. FUSION aims to educate youth in the collective imagination of positive climate futures and empower them to develop and implement joint climate change initiatives across borders in the program region. It is a collaborative project involving two university and seven school partners from Denmark and Germany. The project will be realized in collaboration with the Kiel Institute for Responsible Innovation at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences at the Christian-Albrechts-University zu Kiel and several local high schools in the Danish-German borderland. 

Open Positions

We are inviting applications for a Post Doc position within FUSION, the Interreg project Facilitating Collective Climate Future Envisioning among the youth in the Danish-German border region. The Post Doc will be involved in all parts and activities of FUSION. Read the description .

Recent publications

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  • Willert, K. B., (TRANS.), & Gelände, E. (In press). Et blik ind i en mulig fremtid: Hvordan vi opnår systemforandringen. I En anden økologi: Anti-kapitalistisk håndbog, Antipyrine. 
  • Willert, K. B., (TRANS.), & Barca, S. (In press). Reproduktionens kræfter: Socialistisk økofeminisme og den globale økologiske krise. I En anden økologi: Anti-kapitalistisk håndbog, Antipyrine.

Through the eyes of the PACA mascot

I had the pleasure to attend the online seminar with Stefania Barca in which she presented the foundations of her book “Workers of the Earth. Labour, Ecology, and Reproduction in the age of Climate Change”. Going against a widespread assumption, the book insists that labor and the environmental crises are not necessarily contradictory, but that labor can also be seen as diverse historical subjects that have resisted environmental degradation. What I specifically took away from the following dialogue was how we relate to non-human nature in urban territories. Needless to say, I can only support this - critters unite!
If you would like to listen to the recorded version of the seminar, please write paca@sdu.dk

Snowdrops, Winter Aconites, and auguries of spring. Private photo.

PACA recommends... 

Listen in on this “” conversation between about her experience as feminist, ecologist, activist, mother, musician, Seeger and more... Or dive into the cyclical atmosphere of Katrine Stocholms 2021 album "”

Thanks for spending time with the PACA Post, 

The PACA team