It’s been a while since my attempt to maintain a personal website for some mental offloading, and I am not surprised at all that it didn’t quite work as well as I wished (aspired to be). Maybe many things would have been better said (posted) on Twitter. But Twitter is no more, and Bluesky seems to be in some kind of postdoc hell… it is what it is.
A few months ago, in April, I was in the amazing Utrecht for the amazing EASLCE Conference. I co-convened a panel with Daan Jansen. Eline Tabak chaired it. I actually did my BA in English Literature and French, but my literary days are far, far away. It was fascinating, however, to see that the conference explicitly calls for panels on invasive species and multispecies enmity, and to listen to so many amazing talks on multispecies conflicts, the ethics of killing animals, and different perspectives on invasive species. Our panel was on a Friday morning, and a full house! Yay! The presentations by Henry Strivens (fascist squirrels), Vincent Bihlman (Ruddy Duck Invasion), and me were more history-oriented. But I’d say the stories we told, and the more stories the audience told during the vibrant Q&A, showed that narratives and human values are inextricable from the invasive species research and management.
In a little more than a week’s time, Luiza Teixeira-Costa and I convened a panel Meeting invasions halfway: Reimagining futures with invasive species through STS for the EASST Conference in Krakow ( 8-11 September). Short abstract:
Bringing together ecologists and STS scholars, this combined panel+workshop examines invasion science as an eco-social practice, exploring cultural meanings, ethical tensions, and possibilities for coexistence with so-called invasive species, exploring cross-disciplinary opportunities in practice.
We thought a science and technology (STS) conference was the perfect occasion to explore that intricacy (of biological invasion) between the humanities and natural sciences head-on. And with the interdisciplinarity in mind, we explicitly ask for contributions that live in both worlds, and invited several ecologists and conservationists to join us as panelists and discussants. Two sessions of presentations will be followed by one session of workshop — three workshop activities running in parallel from the perspective of eco-tourism/research-tourism, urban planning, and architecture. I am so excited.
It might also be the last conference before I finish my PhD. Woah.
We call the panel Meeting Invasion Halfway — it’s a shoutout to Karen Barad’s fantastic book Meeting the Universe Halfway, a line from the poem “Cascade Experiment”, by Alice Fulton (Fulton, 1990).
Our intention, first and foremost, and the most explicit one, is to meet the natural sciences of biological invasions halfway with the humanities of biological invasions. There’s been a lot of research on both ends, with varying legitimate concerns expressed in very different narratives and disciplinary lingo. The controversy over many aspects of invasive species continues today and is becoming less emotive and sometimes personal.
Prominent invasion ecologist Daniel Simberloff very recently published a 700-something-page book on the history of invasion ecology, Ecological Explosion. Many see it as what might be his last work at length. Being a long-time, and one of the most prominent and vocal counter-critics of (to put it in very simplistic terms) humanities scholars who question the concept and treatment of invasive species, he also dedicated a whole chapter (Chapter 18 “Controversies Abound”, and also some bits in Chapter 9 and 19) on the controversies and the “caustic criticism” (p.429).
Prof. Arthur Shapiro posted his book review on Conservation Sense and Nonsense and said:
Simberloff has no patience for the blanket rejection of species solely on the basis of their “native” vs. “non-native” status. He recognizes that each case must be approached contextually and that there is no justification for eradication campaigns except in the most exigent circumstances (pathogens, parasites—the current alarm over the screwworm comes immediately to mind; invaders that pose grave risks to agriculture or to the survival of prized native species and ecosystems). Chapter 19, on the future of invasion science, elaborates on these themes in the context of a world that is changing at an ever-accelerating pace.
Do age and experience confer wisdom on us? Perhaps not inevitably. But this book convincingly demonstrates that they have done so for Dan Simberloff.
This post is not a book review. But since Chapter 18 concluded with how “scholars in the social sciences and humanities” put forward “consistently caustic criticism”, understandably, I am not similarly optimistic. The details of the controversies outlined in the chapter, with hundreds of footnotes, show how much attention he has paid to understanding and tackling the criticism. The defense is passionate and informative. But as geographer William O’Brien said (Simberloff quoted him himself):
Demand for proof of overt racist and xenophobic intent downplays the ways in which language can transport such values beyond the intent of any individual or group of speakers.
In the chapter, it was repeatedly emphasized that today’s invasion science and the scientists are clearly separated from the extremist and racist precursors to invasion sciences and the frantic and careless use of xenophobic and bellicose language by the media when reporting about invasive species. He argues that most critics’ “conception of invasion science is a social construction” and that the criticism lies in “social factors and the psychology of scientists” rather than real-world observations (p.430). While he acknowledges the problematic connotations of many terms used in invasive species research, he contends that they are unavoidable and that refraining from them entirely might not be helpful, since they are already too entrenched in the field and public imagination.
Again, this is not a book review. But I do find it puzzling how both the quote that he cited (in understanding), and the defense of invasion science that he elaborated, so clearly demonstrated the entanglement between science and society, between science communication and public communication, between history and the present, and yet he insisted that there is a line drawn. It can be drawn, and it is drawn. It is not uncommon to see socio-cultural dimensions emphasized in acknowledgment of concurrent research efforts, but as soon as dissent arises, arguments from the other side are dismissed as misunderstanding or incapacity to understand. Many of these instances are also recorded in the chapter’s subsection on “invasive species denialism”. Concluding the book was also a looking-forward where he hopes the “sociopolitical inertia that many invasion scientists see as the real crisis” (p.450) can one day find a more promising response.
So, can the line be drawn, or not? Who gets to draw that line? Is that line grey or red?
Which brings me back to Krakow. Debates like this one really resonate with what “Meeting Invasions Halfway” is built on: that invasion science is as much cultural and ethical as it is biological; rather than chasing an absolute consensus, perhaps understandings can be met halfway, backed by some of those disciplinary observations and some other beliefs, theories, and principles. That’s the space our panel and workshop want to work in — not settling who’s right, but bringing ecologists and STS scholars into the same conversation. As my faovurite lines of the poem go:
Because truths we don’t suspect have a hard time
making themselves felt, as when thirteen species
of whiptail lizards composed entirely of females
stay undiscovered due to bias
against such things existing,
we have to meet the universe halfway.
Nothing will unfold for us unless we move toward what
looks to us like nothing: faith is a cascade.