Walking with the Rižana River: Ethnographic experiments in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In the context of the Anthropocene, the social sciences and humanities are faced with numerous challenges. How to decenter the human in the “Age of Humans”? What ontologies, epistemologies and practices emerge, re-emerge or disappear when faced with new climate and environmental realities? How to include more-than-humans in our participatory research? How to go beyond “human horizons” when we are stuck with the human perspective? In order to touch on these challenging issues the paper brings to the fore ethnographic experiments with the Rižana River in the NE Adriatic region, posing the following question: how should the river be approached ethnographically? The paper first discusses conceptual orientations in academic more-than-human research, highlighting the experimental approaches of walking and writing. In the next step, it presents ethnographic experiments with the Rižana River, using walking and writing as two methods of doing ethnography with the river. The conclusion summarizes some of the findings and considerations related to the initial questions.