Seminar: "More than human, less than State: animal stateless nationalisms in Catalonia and Scotland" by Guillem Rubio Ramón

Guillem Rubio Ramón, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburg will visit ICTA-UAB to give an online seminar.
 

Title: "More than human, less than State: animal stateless nationalisms in Catalonia and Scotland"

Speaker: Guillem Rubio Ramón, University of Edinburg
 

Date: Wednesday, 10th March 2021
Time: 12-13 h
Venue: Online. https://zoom.us/j/99579204790?pwd=V3RFMHk3YlE3RG85ejJCelF4UXdWQT09


Geographical and cognate disciplines have thoroughly studied the intertwining of ideas of nature and nationhood. This work covers topics such as the social construction of nature; the intersections between nationalist and environmentalist political agendas; and the national discourses of ownership, control, and identity of natural resources. Mostly unseen within this broader picture are nations without a state and nonhuman lives that do not constitute authentic or national natures. Catalonia and Scotland are two cases that perfectly illustrate this: two European stateless nations where recent political turmoil is still altering what it is to be Catalan or Scottish. Even if the connections between nature and nationalism have been studied in both cases, animals have mostly appeared circumstantially or as passive symbolic objects within contested rural landscapes. My research, therefore, revolves around these gaps and seeks to simultaneously chart two convergent trajectories in this body of work: expanding how we understand nature and how we discursively construct the nation. Drawing on insights from previous fieldwork in the Pyrenees and ongoing research on different farmed animal industries in both nations, this presentation looks at those large numbers of nonhumans both hidden but radically ‘entangled’ in the machinations of the nation.

Bio
Guillem Rubio Ramon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Geography at the University of Edinburgh and a visiting student at ICTA-UAB (Laseg group). His research interests lie at the intersection of human-animal studies, political ecology, and geographies of identity. He has previously worked at the Centre for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona and earned his MPhil in Development, Environment, and Cultural Change at the Centre for the Development and the Environment in Oslo.