Future Natures – Details, episodes & analysis

Maymana Arefin is the founder of Fungi Futures, a project learning with fungi to map radical alternative futures.

Maymana began Fungi Futures in part due to inspiration from the “wood wide web” which they value as a metaphor for our interconnectedness, our dependence on one another for mutual aid, care and transformation, “I sought to understand how we, as a collective can organise better, hearing the cries of our neighbour to mobilise and manifest webs of support ~ this wasn’t some cute, distant fantasy but a call to action ~ decolonisation is NOT a metaphor”.

This episode challenges some deep-set assumptions around where ecological knowledge comes from and whose knowledge matters. Maymana explains how fungi are teachers and – if we pay attention – can show us different ways of being in relationship with our ecosystems and ourselves.

In the discussion, we cover topics around the colonial history of botany and nature-based art, what ‘queering’ ecology means, and how fungi help bring community and healing.

Links

Some of the books, articles and initiatives mentioned in this episode are linked below. If you are viewing this episode on some podcast players, some links may not work: visit the original post on the Future Natures website. For full audio and show notes from this and all past episodes, visit futurenatures.org/podcast

Maymana’s website

Maymana’s poem: Communion with a shaggy inkcap

MISERY (QTBPOC mental health collective)

- MISERY’s Instagram

- MISERY’s YouTube channel

Land in Our Names

‘Foragers’ (documentary on Palestinian foraging by Jumana Manna)

Further readings

The Palestine Heirloom Seed Library founded by Vivien Sansour

Mushroom growing in Gaza and occupied West Bank: articles from Jinha Agency and Al Jazeera

QUEER ECOLOGY

Queer ecologies (projects and resources)

A queer ecology reading list

BOTANY AND COLONIALISM

Books:

Shipping Roots, by Keg de Souza. Shipping Roots shares lesser-known stories of plants being moved over oceans and lands as elements of the colonial legacies of the British Empire. As someone with Goan heritage, the book draws on de Souza's experiences "as a person whose ancestral lands were colonised, and as a settler on the unceded lands of the Gadigal people."

Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings by Wendy Makoons Geniusz

Webinar talks:

Decolonizing Botany - Banu Subramaniam (author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism). More about the work of Banu Subramaniam is covered here.

Plants of Black Freedom - Leah Penniman (hosted by American Herbalists Guild)

Articles:

How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science (English and Spanish versions): Quechua Amazonian evolutionary biologist Nataly Allasi Canales imagines what it would be like to grow up with the Matsigenka, living in the forest in the Amazon Basin and using the plants around her as food and medicine.

The theft and the colonization of Africa's indigenous knowledge by Anselm Adodo

ETHICAL MUSHROOM FORAGING

Ethical foraging, piece by Maymana Arefin in The Great Outdoors magazine

Urban heat justice is a topic that traverses both how people experience and suffer from heat, especially in the context of evolving climate crisis and its impacts on cities around the world.

 In this episode we talk with Panagiota Kotsila about urban futures, climate related suffering and heat injustice – an issue entangled with disability injustice, racial justice, labour justice, housing justice and, in many cases, differentially experienced along lines of age, gender, and class.

We talk about the continuities of colonial histories and their presence in the health of migrants in cities who are differentially affected by urban heat - focusing on experiences from Barcelona, Spain.

We discuss how ‘green isn’t always good’, drawing on examples from Panagiota’s work around social justice issues of urban green spaces and the political ecologies of cities. We also learn about migrant knowledges as central to creating ‘emancipatory’ cities where the diverse needs of residents are met through active participation.

You can follow Panagiota on X/Twitter at @PKotsila.

Links

Some of the books, articles and initiatives mentioned in this episode are linked below. If you are viewing this episode on some podcast players, some links may not work: visit the original post on the Future Natures Substack.

Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (website)

Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (YouTube channel)

Undisciplined Environments Collective

Book: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Justice by Raj Patel and Rupa Marya

Book: Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations. Edited by Undisciplined Environments Collective. Published by Fernwood Publishing - see especially Part 4: Feminisms (by Panagiota Kotsila, Ilenia Iengo and Irene Leonardelli)

The ‘Climate Refuge’ concept

Journal article: Expanding the Boundaries of Justice in Urban Greening Scholarship: Toward an Emancipatory, Antisubordination, Intersectional, and Relational Approach. 2020. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(6), 1743–1769.

Book chapter: Immigrant communities in Europe as situated knowledge holders for postcolonial and feminist urban adaptation to climate health risks. From the book Urban Movements and Climate Change (2023)

Panagiota’s upcoming research project: Embracing Immigrant Knowledges for Just Climate Health Adaptation (IMBRACE)

The ‘rural’ is a doing word. This is a key take-home message from this interview with Fernando Garcia Dory, set deep in the mountains of northern Spain.

This episode explores how livestock shepherding relates to commoning and enclosures in an ongoing project, Inland: Campo Adentro. Inland is a shepherd school, or ‘agroecological lighthouse’, with a three-word manifesto: art, agriculture and territory.

We talk to Fernando about how he has created a space to reclaim ecological relationships, whilst also challenging regressive concepts around territory, identity and emotions often associated with the countryside.

The ‘rural’ is not simply a genre of study, says Fernando. In the wake of farmer unrest in Europe, neoliberal markets, rural depopulation and a need for renewed interest in slow agriculture, he and his community contend with intersecting issues affecting the future of shepherding in Spain. They focus on the everyday ‘doing’ and making of diverse, creative and lively futures for extensive agriculture.

Links

Some of the publications and initiatives mentioned in this episode are linked below. If you are viewing this episode on some podcast players, the links may not work: visit the original post on the Future Natures Substack.

Inland: Campo Adentro on Instagram

Inland: Campo Adentro (main website)

More information about Inland’s shepherding school (in Spanish)

Seasonal Matters, Rural Relations – booklet by Seasonal Neighbours 

Micribiopolitics of milk (an offer to buy the book and Campo Adentro cheese!)

Book: The Rural (MIT press 2019)

Transhumancia y Naturaleza – founded by Jesús Garzón 

Transhumance map

Confederancy of Villages

Antonia Malchik is the author of a forthcoming book entitled ‘No Trespassing: How the ancient struggle for ownership, private property and the rights of the commons will define our future’. Antonia regularly writes online about ownership, property and what we lose in the privatization of the commons through her Substack newsletter, ‘On the Commons’. 

In this episode, we trace the histories of enclosure into the current structures of ownership and privatization. Focusing primarily on the United States, Antonia raises some nuanced and refreshing insights into how enclosure relates to urban mobility, contemporary environmentalism, and democracy.

With a knack for telling stories, Antonia regularly relates issues to her own experiences, and draws on the work of a range of activists, writers, campaigners and thinkers.

This episode is a journey with many roots and branches, including a discussion on the influence of the far right in relation to land politics, always coming back to the roles of ecological values, power and ideologies.

Links

Some of the books, articles and initiatives mentioned in this episode are linked below. If you are viewing this episode on some podcast players, the links may not work: visit the original post on the Future Natures Substack.

Antonia Malchik: A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time

Antonia’s article in Aeon Magazine: Who owns the Earth?

Andro Linklater: Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership

Jonathon Stalls: WALK - Slow Down, Wake Up & Connect at 1-3 Miles Per Hour

Walk2Connect

Girl Trek

Rail-volution (now called Mpact Mobility)

David Harvey: The Right to the City

Henry George: Progress and Poverty

Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London - The Guardian

Stop Cop City in Atlanta

What is the 15-minute cities conspiracy theory?

Soulfire Farm, United States

David Bollier’s ‘Frontiers of Commoning’ podcast

Nick Estes: Our History is the Future

Laughing at extremism won’t make it go away – Antonia Malchik

Betsy Gaines Quammen: True West and American Zion

Joe Wilkins: Fall Back Down When I Die

Andreas Weber: Enlivenment: Toward a Poetics for the Anthropocene

Leah Sottile: Bundyville and Stories that Need to Be Told (Crazy Town podcast)

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass

Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass

Andy Thatcher is a photographer, film-maker, writer and researcher who is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Bristol. Andy’s research includes using ‘folk horror’ as a lens to understand the contested histories of English commons.

[Content Warning: This podcast includes a discussion of violence in a historical context.]

In our conversation, we talked about histories and folk legends linked to historic commons in the southwest of England, and how Andy uses research and film making to explore their atmospheres and stories. Folk traditions have long ways for local people to assert claims to the land. Though many historic English commons are obscure and little-known, they can reveal histories of conflict and trauma.

Our conversation touched on ideas about how the ‘weird’, the ‘eerie’ and haunting can help us think differently about places. And we discussed how folk horror of the 1970s and beyond – from the Wicker Man and Penda’s Fen to Candyman and examples from other countries and cultures – can open up deep histories, clashes between tradition and modernity and moral ambiguity.

Links:

Andy Thatcher’s website – see also the films Clouties and Common Place, mentioned in the podcast

Oak Apple Day at Wishford Magna – archive footage from 1949

Folk Horror Revival – articles, essays and resources on folk horror

The Wicker Man (1973) – IMDB

Penda’s Fen (1974) (video at Internet Archive)

Candyman (1992) – IMDB

Strange Natures: Season of art, essays and reflections from Future Natures

Cover image: Still from Penda’s Fen

Cansu Sönmez talks to us about her research on people’s responses to large infrastructure projects, like dams and railways, that disrupt their lives and the spaces where they live.

Cansu shares the story of what happened in the old town of Hasankeyf in Turkey, which was recently flooded by a large dam built to provide hydroelectric power. She also describes the ongoing resistance in Italy against the TAV high speed railway, and how people link memories with places in ways that challenge the visions of developers and the state. We discuss the idea of ‘organised abandonment’ and what it means for people and places who are left behind.

Cansu Sönmez is a PhD candidate at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila, Italy. The interviewer is Nathan Oxley, Centre for Future Natures / IDS.

Covas do Barroso in Portugal is in a region that’s famous for traditional ways of life and sustainable agriculture. It’s also right next to a site that’s targeted for Europe’s largest open-cast lithium mine. Local people have been campaigning against the mine now for several years, through a series of consultations, challenges and assessments. In this episode, Anoushka and Nathan speak to two people with insights into the struggle: Carla Gomes and Francisco Venes.

To find out more about the movement, visit the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/UnidosemdefesadeCovasdoBarroso

Anoushka talks to Almendra Cremaschi about seeds and the multiple forms of enclosure that have affected the seed sovereignty of farmers in Argentina and across the world.

We talk about Bioleft, an initiative based in Argentina that challenges the concentration of seed markets and makes space for knowledge, imagination, and art to grow an open-source system for seeds.

For more information about Bioleft, visit the website: https://bioleft.org

Read more: https://futurenatures.org/seeding-the-commons-in-argentina/

Anoushka Zoob Carter talks to Sam Bliss, who is involved in activism and research on 'food that's not for sale'. As well as the topic of enclosure, Anoushka and Sam explore the paradoxes of food waste in the food commons. The conversation also takes a provocative dive into the role of private property rights in producing food as a commons.

Read more: https://futurenatures.org/food-thats-not-for-sale/

Yafa el Masri was born as a Palestinian refugee in Beirut. In this episode, Anoushka talks to Yafa talks about the importance of commoning in refugee camps in Lebanon, drawing on her recent research there, and her own experience of refugee camp life as a young person.

Read more: https://futurenatures.org/commoning-in-refugee-camps-in-conversation-with-yafa-el-masri/