Life with Forest Loss; Renewed Relations and Ritual Re-enchantments

Forest loss is a global crisis. In Sweden, diverse old growth forests are replaced by clearcuts and vulnerable monocultures. Everyday experience of life with local forest loss is increasing, but is critically understudied.

We combine ethnology and environmental anthropology to grasp cultural and emplaced processes through which people attempt to renew and re-enchant relations.

We respond to Haraway’s (2016) call to “stay with the trouble”, without getting stuck in resignation, denial, or excessive optimism.

Through ethnographic fieldwork and visual methods, we create multifaceted material combining interviews, questionnaires, participant observation, and walking ethnography.

We work from two rural sites deeply troubled by forest loss: 1) life with clearcuts and toxic remnants in Swedish Sápmi; 2) in slow recovery after the mega forest fires in postindustrial Mid Sweden.

We analyse the entangled relations, including more-than-human, and the roles rituals can play on scales from everyday rites to seasonal celebration and other articulations of social memory. We approach these as attempts towards re-enchantment of landscape, relations, and hope.

Through dissemination and collaboration we open dialogues with research, museums and the public in a timely democratic contribution to the fragile debate concerning the future of the forest in and beyond Sweden.