Journal article
Anthropause environmentalisms: noticing natures with the Self-Isolating Bird Club
- Abstract:
- This paper offers a detailed empirical account of how human–environment relations were reconfigured in the UK and Ireland during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 lockdowns, a period which natural scientists defined as the COVID-19 Anthropause. Bringing this scientific concept into conversation with geographical work, we consider anthropause as both a lived condition and an historical moment of space–time decompression. Our expanded conceptualisation of anthropause, centred on lived experience and everyday life, develops a more hopeful politics than those offered by the ‘Great Acceleration’ narrative, which suggests digital media and urbanisation separate humans from nature. In contrast, we identify affirmative and inclusive modes of ‘anthropause environmentalism’ and explore their potential for fostering convivial human–nature relations in a world that is increasingly urban, digital, and powered by vernacular expertise. To make this argument, we turn to the Self-Isolating Bird Club, an online birdwatching community operating across several social media platforms which, at the pandemic's height, reached over 50,000 members. We trace three key changes to human–nature relations illustrated by this group which we use to structure our paper: connection, community and cultivation. The COVID-19 Anthropause recalibrated the fabric and rhythms of everyday life, changing what counts as a meaningful human–nature relationship. This paper will be of interest to geographers exploring environmental change at the interface of more-than-human and digital geographies, as well as environmentalists and conservationists. To conclude, we offer suggestions as to how scholars and practitioners might harness the lessons of anthropause to respond to the ‘anthropulse’.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.7MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/tran.12569
Authors
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers More from this journal
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 232-248
- Publication date:
- 2022-09-14
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-08-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1475-5661
- ISSN:
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0020-2754
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1282598
- Local pid:
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pubs:1282598
- Deposit date:
-
2023-04-21
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Turnbull et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © 2022 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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