Who can own nature? And other questions of belonging...
But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, where people can never fully be in charge.
What people can share is not absolute rights over land and nature but the knowledge, affect, and social relations involved in living with them.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Empire’s salvage heart: Why diversity matters in the global political economy, 2012
Invitations to contemplate these words and play with your thoughts
What captured our attention
What if “Nature” does not exist
What if we acknowledge our relations with every entity
What if we invent an ecosystemic economy
What do you think?
Where does Europe begin and Where does Europe end
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Cross Idea
Well, where does the Danube has its origin?
It seems that, against the age-old controversies between specialists, it stems from the source of the river Breg, but the water that irrigates the meadow from which the Breg rises comes from a pipe, planted straight into the ground.
An old woman who l …
What if “Nature” does not exist
Challenging the right to own nature also challenges the reduction of nature to a mere thing.
At first glance, it may seem contradictory to claim that “nature” does not exist while also speaking of nature’s rights. Yet this apparent contradiction is, in fact, a critique of a specific concept of nature—one that renders it passive, object-like, and devoid of agency or rights.
To say that "nature" does not exist is to reject this reductive view. Instead, nature must be understood as a network of actors, in which we are just one among many—not as a passive entity that can be bought, sold, and owned.
