Zusammenfassung
- Was Call For Papers — CfP: The Planetary in Crisis
- Wann to (Europe/Berlin / UTC200)
- Wo München — Deutschland
- URL https://www.planetaryhealing.gwi.uni-muenchen.de/the-planetary-in-crisis-stories-scales-and-situated-practices/
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Beschreibung
Call for papers: The Planetary in Crisis: Stories, Scales and Situated Practices
5 -7 October 2026, LMU Munich, Germany
Abstract submission deadline: 31 July 2026
In which situations does the idea of a “planetary crisis” emerge and become manifest through storytelling? Which scaling practices become visible when humans situate their social worlds in relation to Earth dynamics and deep-time formations in times of crisis? How do stories of planetary crisis shape human ways of being in the world? Which practices and modes of relating to the more-than-human realm figure within these narratives, and how are they framed by diverse actors? This workshop addresses these questions, thus moving beyond abstract invocations of the planetary crisis as a given context. Instead, we are more interested in situated practices and understandings of such crisis, as well as in healing responses. Analysing how storytelling composes and responds to the planetary in crisis may reveal how these practices evoke different scales of crisis.
This workshop positions planetary storytelling as a key methodological and conceptual entry point to engage with the planetary crisis from an ethnographic perspective. Storytelling — through mutual listening, conversation, and dialogue, positioned in their ontological context — serves as a tool to render the at times totalised and universalised dimensions of the planetary crisis more relational, tangible, and reflective. Sharing experiences of environmental loss and hope with a wider audience may also hold a healing potential for those articulating their planetary stories. At the same time, such narratives can evoke eco-anxiety, rupture, or feelings of isolation, revealing the ambivalent affective terrain of planetary engagement. Further, storytelling may involve performative elements from which new ways of thinking and acting may emerge.
By bringing these dimensions into conversation, the workshop aims to expand the methodological, conceptual and imaginative repertoire for rethinking the planetary crisis and its multi-scalar manifestations across diverse contexts. Building on these premises, the workshop invites productive ways to engage with these narratives as articulations of a diversity of worldviews, power-relations and aspirations for desirable planetary futures. The workshop seeks to advance anthropological approaches on how human modes of world-making intersect with earth system dynamics in crisis through the lens of storytelling. We foreground individual and community perspectives in these processes, acknowledging that they are shaped by historical and ongoing power asymmetries, racialised political projects, and unequal access to resources.
We invite scholars from anthropology and related fields to critically explore the stories of the planetary in crisis and the related scaling practice they encounter in their work through questions such as:
- How does the idea of planetary crisis emerge through stories, and how is the planetary thus (re)constructed?
- How do people make sense of local and planetary scales?
- Which modes of storytelling do people use and what are the limitations of such storytelling?
We invite contributions in classic formats such as presentations, as well as innovative and creative formats of storytelling, which are not limited to but may include films, photographs and audio. The workshop will take place as a hybrid event. Participants attending in person in Munich will have the opportunity to join a tour of the ESO supernova planetarium in Garching.
To present your work and engagement with planetary storytelling, please send a title and abstract (max. 300 words) together with a bio (max. 100 words) to planetary.healing[ at ]ethnologie.lmu.de by 31 July 2026.
Organisation:
This workshop is organised by the Reinhart Koselleck-Project on Planetary Healing: Transformation, (De)colonization and Climate Change convened by Eveline Dürr, LMU Munich.
Keynote speakers:
Elizabeth DeLoughrey (University of California, Los Angeles)
Anne Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City)
Alessandro Rippa (University of Oslo)
Michael Uzendoski (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Quito)
