Making With the Apples. A Multispecies Ethnography in Rural Economies

• Applicant: Dr. Arnika Peselmann
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 469261901

The project explores human-plant relations in intensive agriculture from the perspective of multispecies studies. Using the example of apple breeding and cultivation in the Alte Land near Hamburg, the European-ethnological study investigates interspecies interactions in rural economies and asks about action-effective ideas and knowledge of 'the apple' as well as about forms of plant action. The study thus contributes to the development of a deeper understanding of the interdependencies of humans with other life forms, which is of scientific as well as societal relevance in view of global warming and other ecological crises often subsumed under the term Anthropocene. To operationalize the research, the specific actor constellations, discourses, and practices of four fields of action are examined in detail. First, the habitualized knowledge of practitioners in commercial fruit growing and the concrete human-apple (tree) interactions against the background of an industrialization, but also of an ecologization of agriculture strived for under the term "Agrarwende". Secondly, the project accompanies the collaborative knowledge production between producers and researchers with a focus on measures for climate change adaptation in fruit growing: Which future scenarios are designed, which technologies and new multispecies constellations are tested in experimental fields and how do plants and other life forms shape the transformation process? Thirdly, the field of action of variety breeding is examined with questions about how plant life is negotiated, which is put into value through breeding, but which is also destroyed by the thousands in the selection process. Here, positions are also worked out with regard to the controversial debates on property rights to plant material and biotechnological processes in society as a whole. Fourthly, with a view to orchards and other extensively used areas, alternative human-apple (tree) and multispecies relationships and diverging ideas of sustainability will be explored.The project combines concepts from the hitherto separate interdisciplinary multispecies studies with those from rural and agro-food studies and complements them with approaches from cultural studies of working cultures, cultural heritage and futures research. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork with qualitative interviews and participant observation, which allows capturing non-verbalized knowledge and bodily interactions in multispecies constellations. Based on this, the research aims to contribute to the empirically grounded theorization of people-plant relations in rural economies and thus critically accompany agricultural transformation processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants