Developing a new understanding of the cultural relationships of humans with nature through heritage and tradition, this book examines ways of transforming these relationships sustainably and assesses the impact on policy-related actions for ecologically embedded futures, drawing particularly on case studies from the European north.
This book opens up fresh perspectives, drawing on current debates in multispecies studies and bringing together approaches from environmental activism to community art practice and critical heritage studies. Focusing on ecological relationships underpinning the making of meaningful places, it combines theoretical exploration with case studies that raise themes, issues, and eco-cultural practices that have relevance across the world. Contributors evaluate intangible cultural heritage and traditional ecological knowledge for their potential to augment sustainable development, thus encouraging the rethinking of sustainability as a human-ecological concept indicating how new, locally rooted relationships with nature may create policy-oriented pathways towards cultural sustainability transformation.
Creative Perspectives on Sustainable Nature-Culture Relationships provides new insights to both professionals and students in the fields of sustainability studies, involving human ecology, geography, landscape studies, cultural anthropology, cultural heritage studies, art, archaeology, performance, literature, linguistics, futures research, philosophy, and beyond.
Ullrich Kockel is Professor of Creative Ethnology at the Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, and a Visiting Professor at Vytautas Magnus University Kaunas, Lithuania, and the Latvian Academy of Culture. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Steering Group of Learning for Sustainability Scotland, a United Nations University-recognised Regional Centre of Expertise, and the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, he works on issues of place, cosmology, cultural ecology, and sustainability.
Riina Haanpää is university lecturer and Associate Professor in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research focuses on oral history and memory as well as local and traditional ecological knowledge. Haanpaa has worked on several local oral history projects in the Satakunta region and developed community-based oral history research.
Mairéad Nic Craith is Professor of Public Folklore at the Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, her research seeks to integrate critical heritage studies, cultural history, literature, and folklore into a creative ethnology. Author of seven monographs and sole or joint editor of eleven collections, her most recent monograph is The Vanishing World of The Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia (2020). Her current research focuses on environmental aspects of Irish-Gaelic mythology and folklore.
Katriina Siivonen is Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies and senior university lecturer in Futures Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. She combines futures research, cultural heritage research, and sustainability science into a transdisciplinary entity in her work. Through more than 25 years of research, she has developed the study of cultural sustainability transformation and heritage futures into a thematic research area integrated into society. She is a member of the Expert Panel for Sustainable Development in Finland, and has been chairing the Advisory Board of the implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the ICH in Finland.
