summary
This research focuses on the potentials and difficulties of social transformation towards more sustainable and equitable ecologies. For this purpose, I take a participatory action research approach with activists and artists associated with Foodpark Amsterdam, an initiative that aims to save the Lutkemeerpolder from becoming an industrial area by providing an alternative vision and plan, namely a foodpark premised on the principles of the commons. I look at the Lutkemeerpolder as a site of contestation and imagination of interrelated narratives, biophysical material realities, and different potential forms of living together. Understanding these dynamics in terms of praxis, politics and poetics informs my thinking about research into transformation. The praxis of contestation and imagination at the Lutkemeerpolder refers to my methodological approach, where theory is generated by being embedded in the material context of the polder and the initiatives of Foodpark Amsterdam. Such research will result in a theory of change, but not in the sense of a normative ideal or a recipe for change, but as situated critical reflection of specific actions and practices. By examining the politics at play in the Lutkemeerpolder, I politicize questions that currently are often handled as merely economic and ecological issues. I will examine, how any conversation about land use, including this research, is a political one in the sense that it involves dynamics of power, exclusion and inclusion, as well as the articulation of difference. My research on change, then, will result in a renewed understanding of politics involving more centrally the more-than-human world. Lastly, understanding the struggles around the Lutkemeerpolder from a poetics perspective, draws attention to the different visions that are generated about the area by the municipality, neighboring residents, and Foodpark Amsterdam. These visions simultaneously resonate and dissonate within a larger cultural context of artistic and creative efforts that imagine more socially just and sustainable futures. This gives insight into the affective and energetic fields of inspiration and persuasion that drive change processes.
partners
This research is part of the BIOTraCes project (https://www.biotraces.eu), a European research collaborative project funded by Horizon Europe that takes a justice-driven and bottom-up approach to biodiversity and transformation in European landscapes.
Project duration: 1 October 2022-31 September 2026
who's working on this project
Contact: Tamalone van den Eijnden
