Research is the core activity of PACA and central to what we do. To learn more about the different PACA projects, click on the titles below:
PACA research projects
The 糖果派对 Citizens Science research project Addressing Climate Anxiety Using Flash Fiction in the Classroom combines high school teaching and research to illuminate and focus on young people's climate ideas. Since young people are particularly aware of the negative impact the climate crisis will have on their life, we have asked to more than 250 high school students in Denmark to write a short story about the climate in 2060. By comparing these different versions of our shared future, we aim to gain insight into young people’s imagination and the role of post-anthropocentric narratives in their depiction of the years to come.
Participating Researchers:
- Bryan Yazell, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies. Lecturer, DIAS.
- Patricia Wolf, Professor WSR, Department of Business Management. Professor WSR, Center for Integrating Innovation Management.
- Karl Attard, Lecturer, Nordcee, Danish Center for Hadal Research. Lecturer, DIAS.
- , DIAS.
The project is coordinated by 糖果派对 Citizen Science:
-
Mette Fentz Haastrup, High School Coordinator, University Library of Southern Denmark, 糖果派对 Citizen Science
-
Thomas Kaarsted, deputy director, University Library of Southern Denmark, 糖果派对 Citizen Science
-
Line Laursen, Information Specialist, University Library of Southern Denmark, 糖果派对 Citizen Science
The Burning Man community is a global cultural movement that is guided by principles which, among other things, stress inclusion, decommodification, and collective stewardship of the environment. In this project, the researchers aim to co-develop and enact post-anthropocentric climate narratives through flash fiction writing, improvisation theatre, and music making. We aim to gain insight into radical envisioning processes in communities such as the Burning Man Festival and examine how they can inform alternative systems of production and consumption.
Researchers:
- Patricia Wolf, Department of Business & Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at 糖果派对,
- Bryan Yazell, Department of Language, Culture, History and Communication & DIAS, Faculty of Humanities at 糖果派对
- Christoph Kunz, Professor in Business Informatics at the Media University in Stuttgart
- Ella Fegitz, PhD, Project Manager at 糖果派对 Research & Innovation Organization
My postdoc-project is called Concepts in Action: The Borderlands of Environmental Theory and Practice. Many of our collective ideas and habits – expressed in political, socio-economic, and legal practices – lie beneath the climate- and biodiversity crises. How do we go beyond these ideas and habits? A green revolution requires knowledge about social norms, political strategies and mobilization, and sustainable life-forms. In my project, I am interested in recent theories about such life-forms and how they can be traced and accelerated in society. How do we mobilize an ecological class? In particular, I am interested in 1) new ways of organizing the production and distribution of food that we see in certain agricultural movements, and 2) in new ethical and legal perceptions of human/nature relations going beyond a narrow focus on human interests and economic growth that we find in climate movements and green NGO’s.
Researcher: .
In my PhD project, I examine how specific environmental organisations manage to mobilise an “emerging ecological class” by strategically utilising post-anthropocentric ontologies while balancing these with anthropocentric narratives of nature. I work with the basic assumption proposed by Anna Tsing (2015): “We are contaminated by our encounters - they change who we are as we make way for others.” Along these lines, my research will be examining whether being urged to use or consume nature influences people’s incentives to conduct climate action. Particularly, I’m focusing on environmental organisations managing to balance anthropocentric (consumption-oriented) and post-anthropocentric (ecological interdependence beyond a human-centred perspective) approaches to nature in their discourses on climate action.
Researcher:
Rural communities must also be viable when we reach the other side of the climate transition. But what is a viable rural community, and how do we ensure that the disrespect and distance between urban dwellers and rural communities does not grow? With this project, the researchers aim to develop and test a workshop that can bring together urban dwellers, rural people, and sustainability advocates in the effort to find a common path to more sustainable rural communities. Important for the project is that it bottom-up style builds on the participant’s own ideas on what characterizes a viable and sustainable rural community.
Researchers:
- Manuela Zechner, postdoc. Dept. of Business and Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, 糖果派对 and Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking, Copenhagen University
- Søren Askegaard, Professor, Dept. of Business and Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences.
- Sune Vork Steffensen, Professor, Center for Human Interactivity, Faculty of the Humanities.
One of the greatest challenges facing the implementation of green energy infrastructures is local opposition to the transformation of landscapes. It points at the dilemma, that climate change is by and large a product of the industrial revolution, which have nurtured ecological movements critical to industrial development. At the same time, many of the proposed solutions to climate change are of industrial character. The project is grounded on the hypothesis that the conflicts are based on diverging understandings of what constitutes “nature” and the “pristine landscape” and that these imaginaries have historical roots. Thus, this project seeks to investigate historical and contemporaneous landscape imaginaries (e.g. norms, beliefs and aesthetic preferences) undergirding design of new energy infrastructures at the scale of landscapes and the ensuing public discourse, to understand their impact on transitions towards 'post-natural' energy landscapes.
Researchers:
- Niels Peter Skou, Associate Professor, Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, Faculty of Humanities
- Tau U. Lenskjold, Associate Professor, Department of Design, Media and Educational Science, Faculty of Humanities
- Bryan Yazell, Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Language, Faculty of Humanities
- Patricia Wolf, Professor, Department of Business & Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences
- Brooks Alexandra Kaiser, Professor, Department of Business and Sustainability, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences
- Connie Svabo, Professor, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science
- Magnus Wahlberg, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science
During the last year, PACA has mapped the landscape of environmental grassroots actors in Denmark that, in different degrees, show traces of what we in PACA call post-anthropocentric narratives and practices. The database contains mission descriptions, contact information and field categorizations. View the database here:
Based on this web of grassroots, we will analyze and collaborate with some of these actors in order to identify and support their aims, activities, strategies, ideological assumptions, successes and barriers. The database also serves as a tool to create alliances and cooperation between actors themselves as a kind of information service and will be updated during the coming years. If you think that we’ve missed someone, please let us know. Thanks to all for agreeing to be a part of it!
What unites these groups? 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 in a careful way attends to and interacts with the more-than-human world. In different ways and to different degrees, they aim protect or recreate the living conditions for human beings while valuing the natural world beyond narrow human interests.
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. Examples are regenerative farms, climate activist movements, repair-cafes, local biodiversity initiatives, degrowth-networks, art and literature groups, and eco-villages. Some of them are volunteer based and/or non-profit associations and organizations, cooperatives, start-ups, campaign groups, think tanks, social enterprises, eco-collectives and villages, social movements, networks,
As the list shows, these actors operate within a diverse set of overlapping fields, such as “Regenerative Practices”, “Economy and Consumer Lifestyle”, “Political Action & Activism” and “Community Living”. 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, intense consumption, productivism and/or the associated imperatives of economic growth and profitability.
In my PhD project, I will explore how Danish climate activists use literary fiction in their activist practices. Through qualitative interviews, fieldwork, and close readings, I will investigate how literary fiction, in particular sci-fi and cli-fi, can contribute to the creation of new visions of more sustainable future societies. Among other things, I am interested in what type of literature climate activists read, the ideas, language, and images that these stories provide, and how the activists use them in their practice. On a greater scale, I am interested in how storytelling can mobilize people to engage in the climate struggle.
Researcher: