Agenda

Emanuela Borgnino (University of Turin) presents her book Ecologie native,  (Eleuthera 2022) in conversation with Roberta Raffaetà (NICHE), as part of the NEW BOOKS in Environmental Humanities series.

Abstract:
"He wa'a he moku, he moku he wa'a" (The canoe is an island, the island is a canoe). A commonly used saying in Hawai'i, it reminds us how collective and individual well-being depends on the propensity for relationships, collaboration, and reciprocity between human beings and the environment. The relational aspect in the study of ecology, supported by scientific, ethnographic and anthropological tools, allows us to investigate how these ecological relationships are shaped and their concrete effects on the present. One element is hared by several native knowledges: a sense of trust in the environment, which allows one to act and react to changes and in interaction with other organisms by producing variable and negotiated responses. This disposition translates, at least in Hawai'i, into a trust in places, which custodians of the past are both expressions of the present and pathways to imagined futures. Native Ecologies offers a possibly alternative response, and centers the environmental discourse around the responsibilities we have towards land, sea, river and desert "places." An ethnographic journey will help us tackle the history of colonization and denationalization of the Hawaiian Kingdom through the analysis of various forms of responsibility (ecosystemic, participatory, and collective).

Biography:
Emanuela Borgnino Teaches Pacific Studies (Ethnology of Oceania) at the University of Turin and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. After earning a B.A. in Oriental Languages and a Ph.D. in Cultural and Social Anthropology, she did field research first in Japan and then in the Hawaiian archipelago, where she conducted extensive research on the topic of ecological responsibility. She has also worked with Slow Food International's Indigenous Terra Madre (ITM) project and the UN Subcommittee on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Borgnino's research focuses on environmental anthropology, human being-environment relations and specifically the intersection of ecology and responsibility, marine protected areas, and indigenous peoples' rights.

This event is organised in collaboration with the HealthXCross Project, P.I. Roberta Raffaetà, 'GA n. 949742 ERC-HealthXCross'