Amount Awarded: $15,000
This collaborative workshop between scholars at the University of Oslo and University of California, Berkeley, is a second follow-up, focused on preparing for publication an edited volume of papers from the initial workshop Oct 21-23, 2016, funded by a Peder Sather grant. The 2016 workshop focused on ritual and the other-than-human world in the context of environmental change. It was informed by new ontologies developed in the social sciences in the past two decades, and especially by theorists who are revisiting animism and materialism in radically new ways. These developments have been enriched by the multiple disciplines that have contributed to their emergence: environmental studies, critical animal studies, science studies, philosophy, theology and anthropology, to name some of the most influential. In 2016 we explored how these theoretical approaches might deepen our understanding of the meanings of ritual practices and other performative acts that are shaped by and shape environmental change, and their social effectiveness when the social is expanded to include things and beings beyond the human. After three years of completing individual research, oriented by these new theoretical approaches, we will finalize our work in a joint book publication.