Anthropocenic landscapes, landscapes in ruins: past and future expectations in the Catalonian mountains

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Ferran Pons-Raga
Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA) – Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Ismael Vaccaro
Milà i Fontanals Institute of humanities – Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Ruins survive in time and space, just as time and space seem to survive in ruins. However, it is not a static or univocal survival. The presence of ruins always evokes landscape transformations that are perceived, represented and valued in a changing way according to the experiences and memories that emanate from them. Focusing on the remains of a massive forest infrastructure from the beginning of the 20th century (La Matussière, Pallars Sobirà), and on the construction of large reservoirs in Catalonia in the middle of the last century and which are now barely filled for part of the year (Sau Reservoir, Osona), this article highlights the heuristic capacity of ruins in the Anthropocene to examine the new mental and economic framework of the capitalist management of forests and water. Making ruins visible and invisible allows us to capture what remains and becomes visible in the landscape, but also what fades or emerges and becomes invisible or gradually visible. Ruins speak to us, ultimately, of the resignifications and value assignments of landscape transformations, past and future, within the framework of the capitalist exploitation of natural resources.

Keywords
climate change, capitalism, natural resource management, ruins, landscape

Article Details

How to Cite
Pons-Raga, Ferran; and Vaccaro, Ismael. “Anthropocenic landscapes, landscapes in ruins: past and future expectations in the Catalonian mountains”. Digithum, no. 30, pp. 1-10, doi:10.7238/d.v0i30.417847.
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(c) Ferran Pons-Raga, Ismael Vaccaro, 2022


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Author Biographies

Ferran Pons-Raga, Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA) – Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Doctor of Anthropology at McGill University (Montreal) with the thesis Greening the commons. Alpine skiing, brown bears, and extensive husbandry in the Pyrenees (2022). As a result of his interest in the processes of abandonment and heritagization through ruins, he has published the books Mines, boscos i hotels. Peguera: usos i representacions d’un poble abandonat (2015) (Mines, forests and hotels. Peguera: uses and representations of an abandoned village) and Cartells, runes i fites. Coneixements oblidats i marques invisibilitzades al peu de la Bonaigua (2020) (Signs, ruins and landmarks. Forgotten knowledge and invisible marks at the foot of Bonaigua). He has written numerous articles and book chapters on landscape transformations based on the emergence of environmental conservation and tourism in high mountain areas of the Catalan Pyrenees. As a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher, he currently analyses the social conflict surrounding interactions between the growing presence of cat colonies and local biodiversity on the Canary Islands.

Ismael Vaccaro, Milà i Fontanals Institute of humanities – Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Scientific researcher at the Milà i Fontanals Institute of humanities research, CSIC. His research and publications have focused on the fields of environmental anthropology, political ecology, property theory, landscape studies and political and economic anthropology. In particular, he has worked on analysing policies for conservation, territorialism, communal and collective action, mining and the connections between the rural and urban worlds. His ethnographical research has mainly focused on Southern Europe (the Pyrenees), but he has also worked in Mexico (emigration, shipment and agricultural and forest transitions), Uganda (management of fishing resources) and the Solomon Islands (local perception of climate change).

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