Sensing Absence
Everyday Experiences of Ecological Love and Loss
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7732633 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maryse A J Carbo (Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, corresponding author), A Tonnaer (0000-0003-0804-369X, Radboud University Nijmegen), Anke A C Tonnaer (Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands), R J G van den Born (0000-0001-7303-7398, Institute for Science in Society, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 52-62 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Conservation and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0972-4923 • E-ISSN: 0975-3133 |
| Publisher | Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4103/cs.cs_108_23 |
| OpenAlex | W4409783132 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 29 |
People all over the world are increasingly confronted with ecological loss and rapidly changing landscapes caused by anthropogenic processes. In this paper, we examine how nature volunteers experience and deal with ecological loss in everyday life in the Netherlands. We do this by focusing on intimate human experiences with nature and more-than-human communities. Our ethnographic methods include sensory ethnography and photo-elicitation techniques. We argue that owing to attentiveness to more-than-human worlds, people’s experiences with nature are increasingly characterised by ambiguity: experiences of love go hand in hand with experiences of loss and absence. Our study shows that there is little space to mourn this sense of loss, which leaves people feeling alienated, both from their social and natural environments. We illuminate the elusiveness of the ghosts of ecological loss, the absences that are sensed in embodied memories but hardly shared. We conclude by arguing that acknowledging the inclusion of humans in a multispecies community is an important step in the act of mourning beyond the human and towards practices and actions of multispecies care
Biology · Environmental ethics · Sociology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Ecology
Shifting baseline syndrome
Extinction of experience
Multispecies Knots of Ethical Time
Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment
Absence
Animals, Angelenos, and the Arbitrary
Reconnecting with nature for sustainability
On not knowing and paying attention
Slow Violence in the Anthropocene
Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene
Introduction
Caring for soil life in the Anthropocene
What Farmers Know
An Indigenous Feminist's Take On The Ontological Turn
Encounter
What If the Angel of History Were a Dog
Extinction
Multispecies Studies
Remembered belonging
Haunting, ruination and encounter in the ordinary Anthropocene
An urban tour
Culture on the Ground
Anthropology and the Anthropocene
The ghosts of place
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |