Project at HIAS
The Totem Pole Journey as Indigenous-led approach to biocultural diversity
During her fellowship at HIAS, Barbara Muraca will systematize information and material collected over 4 years of collaboration with the intertribal non-profit organization Se’Si’Le and design a format for collaborative publications that are inspired by right and respectful relations with the project partners and the land. This research originated in a transdisciplinary project aiming at developing an Indigenous-led framework for collaboration across knowledge and value systems for the conservation of bio-cultural diversity (project funded 2022-24 by University of Oregon) on the ground of the Totem Pole Journey as communication method. It is inscribed in Barbara Muraca’s established research on people-nature relationships, Process Philosophy, and relational values and will contribute, from a decolonial perspective, to current debates on the integration (or braiding) of different and diverse knowledge systems for biodiversity.
Her Tandem Partner is Frank Adloff, Professor for Sociology, especially Dynamics and Regulation of Economy and Society, and director of the DFG Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability” at the University of Hamburg.
Website
Funding
The HIAS Fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.
Tandem
Prof. Dr. Frank Adloff, Professor for Sociology, esp. Dynamics and Regulation of Economy and Society, University of Hamburg
Biography
Barbara Muraca is Associate Professor of Environmental Philosophy at the University of Oregon, USA. From 2018 to 2022 she served as lead author in the Assessment Report on Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature for IPBES (the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). She has published numerous articles on relational values as framework for environmental philosophy, valuation, and policy and on Sustainability and Degrowth in leading Journals (including Bioscience, Environmental Values, PNAS, Ecological Economics and COSUST) as well as book chapters in English and German and two books in German on the theoretical foundations of Strong Sustainability and on Degrowth. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Greifswald and worked as Post-Doc at the Advanced Research Group ‘Landnahme, Acceleration, Activation. Dynamics and (De)stabilization of Post-Growth-Societies’ funded by the DFG (German Federal Research Agency) at the University of Jena, before moving to Oregon in 2014.
Barbara Muraca’s research is rooted in Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, from which she takes inspiration for her inter- and transdisciplinary work on the diverse values of people-nature relationships, on sustainability, ecological economics, and degrowth. Her more recent research interests focus on decolonial perspectives on bio(cultural)diversity and convivial conservation.
Muraca is fellow at the DFG Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability” at the University of Hamburg and at HIAS. Her fellowship is provided by the DFG as well as the by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.
Image Information
Spirit of the Water, Totem Pole Journey, Photo by Barbara Muraca