In the summer of 2022, 100 Dutch farmers parked their tractors outside of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre in Ter Apel, on the Netherlands’ north-eastern border with Germany to protest that they “no longer feel welcome” in the Netherlands. With right-ring populists being elected across the world, the action offers lessons that progressive environmentalists sorely need to hear.
Freedom remains one of the most evocative political rallying cries around the world. It is central to the notion of humanitarian intervention, which has dragged Western nations into war since the 18th century. It was successfully mobilised to found the welfare state. And it is now a buzzword for the nativists being swept to power across the world…Even if the urge for freedom speaks to something deep within us, what it means changes from place to place, and from one generation to the next. Both lessons are crucial for those wishing to mobilise environmental action. Those who write the book of freedom gain huge political rewards.
From most people’s gut perspective, belonging is rooted in a kind of from-ness. Like a tree, you are rooted in a place. Though it’s not easily admitted in liberal society, one’s rootedness is usually detected by skin colour and facial features. Even amongst the most welcoming of insiders, there is an unspoken assumption that those here first get to decide how things ought to be. On a secondary level, cultural behaviour confers belonging. “Okay, their grandparents aren’t from here, but at least they get our way of life.” But what is this “our” anyway?
Freedom remains one of the most evocative political rallying cries around the world. It is central to the notion of humanitarian intervention, which has dragged Western nations into war since the 18th century. It was successfully mobilised to found the welfare state. And it is now a buzzword for the nativists being swept to power across the world…Even if the urge for freedom speaks to something deep within us, what it means changes from place to place, and from one generation to the next. Both lessons are crucial for those wishing to mobilise environmental action. Those who write the book of freedom gain huge political rewards.
In David Abram’s enchanting The Spell of the Sensuous, he tells the story of how he lost the ability to commune with the more-than-human world. For me, one of the surest paths to losing connectedness was analysing my experiences for academic purposes.
The term 'tradition' is widely used to refer to indigenous wisdom and fossil-free farming. Such thinking is important in challenging modernist techno-optimism. But it also makes tradition seem like something that belongs to the past and political margins.
Urban Futures Studio
