About Panel

In her 1986 essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Ursula Le Guin presents an alternate narrative for imagining the history of the world, drawing attention away from the perspective of spear-wielding hunters towards women gatherers (of food, firewood, and stories), and their woven baskets, or other carrier bags. This panel spoke to conservation as a practice of everyday life inspired by Le Guin’s retelling of human evolution as a story of collecting and holding in custody rather than of possessing and preserving.

Through the interrogation of colonial collections ranging from museums, zoos, topographical maps, and invitro fertilization banks, the goal of the panel was to expand our understanding of conservation, beyond processes of restoration and preservation for posterity and viewed instead as a dynamic process of change, involving sustained practices of care and custody in the present.

Chair and Convenor:

Aarti Kawlra, IIAS, Netherlands

Participants:

• Danishwara Nathaniel, Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), Switzerland
• Laila Al Hamad, Zeri Crafts, Kuwait
• Anitha Silvia, C2O Library and Collective, Indonesia
• Mizuho Matsuo, National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), Japan
• Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth, Independent Scholar, India
• Françoise Vergès, Sarah Parker Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, United Kingdom
• Mariko Murata, Kansai University, Japan