🌱Fieldnotes in Ecocultural Communication: Week of February 18, 2021
Hawai‘i's seaweed expert Isabella Aiona Abbott + Kelp farming for the climate + ecocultural identity + more!
Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a bi-weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! Today, in my midweek update, I share my ‘fieldnotes’ in environmental communication, with ideas I’m exploring at the moment. You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:
📚 What I’m reading
This week I’ve had limu on the brain (limu means seaweed in Hawaiian), In particular, I recently discovered the fascinating work of the ethnobotanist and seaweed expert Isabella Aiona Abbott (1919-2010):
You might ask, why seaweed?! I’m reading about seaweed because one of the questions I’m curious about is: What are the influential stories being told about human relationships with threatened wildlife (like sea turtles), and who are the key actors in these stories? It turns out seaweed, as a key link connecting the human-turtle food-web, is a major actor!🌿
One challenge for me right now, as a researcher coming from the social sciences, is that many of the important stories being told about these nonhuman actors – such as sea turtles and seaweed – are coming from biologists. Or, sometimes ‘eco-social’ scholars who toe the line between the ‘social’ and the ‘natural,’ like seaweed expert and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner Isabella Abbott.
Here’s another great biopic of her life with an interesting interview she did in 2008 with PBS Hawai‘i:
🎧 What I’m listening to
Sorry, bear with me, but I’m also listening to stuff about seaweed too😬🌿…The podcast ‘How to save a planet’ just released this fascinating episode today (Feb 18) about ‘Kelp Farming, for the Climate’. Here’s a brief description of the episode:
“Seaweed and giant kelp are sometimes called “the sequoias of the sea.” Yet at a time when so many people are talking about climate solutions and reforestation — there aren’t nearly enough people talking about how the ocean can be part of that. In part one of our two-part series, we go out on the water to see how seaweed can play a role in addressing climate change, and how a fisherman named Bren Smith became kelp’s unlikely evangelist.”
Also, this great conversation between dancer and choreographer Rhiannon Newton & environmental communication scholar Tema Milstein. Here’s the full description from the website:
“In their Activators conversation, Tema Milstein and Rhiannon Newton speak about modes of communicating and experiencing human participation in ecological crises and restoration.
Rhiannon is a dancer and choreographer and Tema is a former journalist and now university associate professor whose work focuses on the intersections of culture and ecological relations. Together they discuss the role of the arts, embodiment, Indigenous knowledge, and storytelling in how we make sense of our relations within the more-than-human world.
Drawing attention to utopian and dystopian approaches, they discuss the idea of an Ecocultural Identity and how this might help us understand how humans are already always entangled with their environment and other lifeforms. Thinking through how people express, perform, or hide a sense of one-ness or connectivity with non-human life, they consider how we are disciplined by practices of spectatorship in theatres, theme parks, and the wild.”
👀 What I’m watching
Okay, one last thing on seaweed. Watch this fascinating interview with ethnobotanist Isabella Aiona Abbott talk story about seaweed. Here’s a description of the video to give you an idea:
“Some cultures have learned to use marine resources, including marine plants. Among Pacific Island cultures, Hawaiians have developed more uses of algae as food and medicine. The reasons for this are unclear, however, Phycologist (algae expert) Isabella Aiona Abbott has some logical hypotheses based upon the 'ai kapu and traditional practices of Hawaiian women. This episode discusses some of the species of algae that are eaten in Hawai'i and the life experiences of Isabella Abbott as a native Hawaiian scientist.”
💬 Quote I’m thinking about
“…if our identities are cultural and social, we also need to understand them as always ecological. That doesn't mean how environmentalist are we, or how green are we. It means that, even if we're none of those things at all and quite the opposite, those are ecological identities too. There are destructive ones, and there are ecological ones. They're having an impact, and they are less or more in relationship with understanding that we're ecological. But they're always having an impact, because we're always acting in relationship.”
– Tema Milstein, associate professor of environmental communication at UNSW Sydney, on the idea ‘ecocultural identity.’ In conversation with Rhiannon Newton.
✏️ Writings from my desk
3 Essential Podcasts To Help You Make Sense Of The Climate Crisis And Give You Hope Too
‘Sympoiesis’: An Environmental Keyword For New Nature Writers
Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting too😊 I'd also love to hear from you, so feel free to leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest:)
Hey, Gavin! Did you see this story about kelp as a potential biofuel? https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uosc-us030121.php
I love that you’re covering the benefits of kelp. It’s a multi-solution plant! Kelp beds protect shorelines by reducing wave energy. Kelp reduces the carbon dioxide in water, reducing acidity and increasing oxygen, all of which help shellfish grow. The healthy microclimate created by kelp beds also attracts fish and other marine life.