Work in Progress

Mònica Alcala-Lorente (UAB-IHC): “Narratives, representacions i (ab)usos dels espais agrícoles i forestals en l'excursionisme finisecular a la província de Barcelona (1876-1904)”  

Abstract: 

In this seminar I will share the progress of my thesis dissertation, provisionally called “Narratives, representations and (ab)uses of agrarian and forestry spaces in fin de siècle excursions around Barcelona province (1876-1904)”. Through the bulletins of the first excursionist societies and other related materials, I analyze the excursions carried out by certain residents from Barcelona to the outskirts of the city during the fin de siècle years. From these sources, I situate the agrarian and forestry spaces as dialogical tension zones within the debates around the (re)definition of nature and rurality, and their most adequate functions in relation to the capital, urbanity, and the modernization of agroforestry practices. Besides, I also study the power dynamics stablished between the excursionist associates, and between them and their interlocutors at the visited places. The aim is to dismantle the coloniality processes that hierarchized agroforestry knowledge and allowed the legitimation of certain (ab)uses of the places and their inhabitants (whether human or not); as well as to explore how these processes were related to the construction of a bourgeoise masculinity linked to technical institutionalized knowledge, and to regenerationist mandates.

Foundational picture of Associació Catalanista d’Excursions Científiques, 8th December 1876. Author: Rafael Areñas. Source: Arxiu Fotogràfic del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya  

Mònica Alcalá-Lorente is a PhD researcher of the PhD program in History of Science at Institut d’Història de la Ciència (IHC-UAB) and teaches history of health sciences with gender perspective at Facultat de Medicina (UAB). Her research combines the history of life sciences with environmental history, post/decolonial studies, and gender and ecofeminist perspectives. In her thesis project she is revisiting the history of Catalan excursionism, where she analyzes the processes of coloniality of knowledge and the construction of masculinities through the study of the first Barcelonian excursionist societies during the last years of the 19^th century.