Horticulture in Oceania has been under increasing scrutiny due to climate change and related policies. In Vanuatu, cultivators navigate crop growth and community life within the context of shifting environments, storm events, and innovations in climate projects. Desirée Hetzel offers new insights into the encounters and dynamics of climate change in this unique island nation by showing the routes around and roads towards gardening as both an environmental and a social practice. This reflection on indigenous agency from environmental anthropology and the anthropology of climate change comes at a critical moment of planetary transformation.
Inhaltsangabe
List of figures | 7
Acknowledgments - Tok Tankiu | 9
Preface | 13
1 Introduction | 15
1.1 An Island State in Times of Climate Change | 21
1.2 Vanuatu Climate Politics | 28
1.3 Reconsidering Vanuatu Gardening in the Anthropocene | 32
1.4 Researching Mekem Garen | 35
1.5 Outline of the Book | 40
2 Worlding Works - Climate Change Communities | 43
2.1 The Narrative of the Vulnerable Islands | 45
2.2 Becoming a Climate Change Community | 50
2.3 The Intersections of Local and Global | 55
2.4 Worlding Climate Change | 59
2.5 Conclusion | 62
3 Of Heat, Politics and Gardening | 65
3.1 Differing Explantions | 68
3.2 Between Town and Village | 72
3.3 Making with Climate Change | 78
3.3.1 Respektem envaeromen | 78
3.3.2 Climate Change, Communal Life and the Gardens | 84
3.4 Conclusion | 89
4 Projects for Climate Change | 91
4.1 The Genealogy of the Abandoned Home Gardens | 93
4.2 Ontological Friction in Encounters | 99
4.3 Everyday Knowledge and Knowing | 102
4.4 Learning Gardening | 106
4.5 Moving Gardens and Plants | 111
4.5.1 Gardening in Different Locations | 112
4.5.2 Locating Different Plants in one Garden | 118
4.6 Gardening in Transformation | 121
4.7 Conclusion | 124
5 Gardening in Motion | 127
5.1 On a Garden Day | 128
5.2 Gardens out of Place | 131
5.3 Gardening on the Way | 140
5.3.1 The Paths and Roads of Gardening | 141
5.3.2 Walking the Environment | 149
5.4 Conclusion | 153
6 Making Relations for the Future | 157
6.1 At the Roundabout | 158
6.2 The Sociality of Gardening | 160
6.3 Relational Gardening in Dixon Reef | 165
6.3.1 Being a Communal Person in Mekem Garen | 165
6.3.2 Mekem Garen for Others | 170
6.4 Future Projects in Uncertain Times | 173
6.5 Perception of Time through Gardening Cycles | 176
6.5.1 Gardening over Time | 179
6.5.2 We will always make our gardens | 183
6.6 Conclusion | 187
7 Cultivating with Climate Change | 191
7.1 Challenges and Changes | 192
7.2 Moving Lives through Mekem Garen | 196
7.3 Climate Change Revisited | 204
Bibliography | 207