Brittany Kesselman reflects on her participation at the ISE congress in Morocco.
From 15-19 May 2024 I attended the 18th congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) in Marrakech, Morocco. The conference theme was ‘Biodiversity and Cultural Landscapes: Scientific, Indigenous and Local Perspectives’. There were participants from 72 different countries. While most came from academia, other participants were artists, or representatives of Indigenous peoples’ groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
I attended the conference with my colleagues from the Bioeconomy Chair, and together we organized a panel called ‘Nourishing Diversity: Exploring the Interplay of Local Foodways, Biodiversity, and Cultural Landscapes in the Global South. Initially, we had planned the panel to include collaborators from West Africa and South America. In the end they were unable to attend, so the panel focused on work in South Africa. Our panel was made up of Eva Ross, presenting on her work on breadmaking cultures and changes in foodways among communities in the Cederberg, Western Cape province; Sthembile Ndwandwe, sharing her work on the impact of honeybush commercialization on harvester communities in Haarlem village, Western Cape province; Maya Marshak, presenting on agroecological deskilling in the wake of industrial maize adoption in KwaZulu-Natal province; Jess Fortes, sharing her work on traditional foodways in KwaZulu-Natal province; and myself, recounting research on precolonial foodways and the contemporary resurgence of traditional foodways in various parts of South Africa.Rather than each presenting a separate paper, we opted for a less conventional approach, weaving together our presentations into a series of inputs on different themes. This showed the many overlaps between our work, in terms of understanding people’s traditional relationships with the natural world, how those were disrupted by colonialism and capitalism, and the ways in which people resisted or adapted to those disruptions. We also touched on some examples of the resurgence of traditional foodways (e.g. in the form of food festivals). Our panel began with a wonderful animation, conceptualised and illustrated by Maya Marshak, that also brought together all of our work in terms of things lost (“ghosts”) and things emerging, in the wake of industrial agriculture and neoliberal conservation. Before taking questions from the audience, we held a meditative reflection exercise, which involved audience members imagining a landscape they know well, finding a traditional food plant there, and thinking about how the landscape is changing.
In order to create a more sensory engagement with the plants we spoke about, we provided a small gift to participants—small samples of kei apple jam graciously supplied by Loubie Rusch of Making Kos, honeybush tea, rooibos tea, millet grains, and a painted image from the animation. At the entrance to the room, we had a display with these and additional items, including sprigs of umsuzwane (Lippia javanica) and wild rosemary (Eriocephalus africanus), zebra beans, tea, and breadmaking booklets that Eva co-produced with her research participants (bread makers) from the Cederberg. These gave people a chance to engage with the plants, and the research generally, in a more interactive and embodied way.
Based on feedback from participants, the panel was well received, both in terms of content and our arrangement of inputs into a broader story. Many of the presenters at the conference shared unconventional work, in terms of using storytelling, the arts and other creative methods to share their research. It was inspiriting to see children’s books produced as research outputs, with the aim of educating young people about conservation.
Other highlights of the conference included the keynote addresses by Anna Tsing on ‘Swamp Epistemologies’ and Carolyn Finney on ‘What Endures: Race, Resilience and the Land on Which we Stand’. I appreciated how both of them wove together personal stories with ecological questions and broader systemic issues. I also loved the biocultural forum, a room devoted to the display and production of cultural products and creative outputs. There, we made quilt squares that reflected the themes of our work, learned about weaving grass into rope, and saw food products from the Atlas Mountains as well as handicrafts from the west coast of Mexico. Outside of the conference, I especially enjoyed wandering through the maze of souks in the Medina, where small shops display colourful textiles, beautiful ceramics, intricate metalwork and fragrant spices in mounds spilling out into the narrow streets.