Panel 14: Social Media / New Media
ECOMEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE (THE 2018 ASLE SYMPOSIUM)
A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE
Panel 14: Social Media / New Media
“Fly Fishing in the Digital Age: From Eastern Rises to #KeepEmWet”
Cory Willard (Ph.D. candidate in English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
“Going Rogue: A Material Feminist Reading of AltUsNatParkService as Environmental Rhetoric and Ecomedia’s New Resistance Movement”
Amy Propen (Assistant Professor, Writing Program, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Have questions or comments? Feel free to take part in the Q&A!
Before posting, you must first register. Note that questions and comments can be intended for individual speakers, the entire panel, or anyone who has posted to the Q&A. Respond directly to a particular question/comment by way of the little “reply” below it. The vertical threadlike lines are there to make it easier to see which part of the discussion (i.e. “thread”) you are taking up. You can choose to be notified via email (see below) whenever a question, answer, or comment is posted to this particular Q&A. Because the email notification will contain the new comment in its entirety, you can both follow the discussion as it is unfolding, as well as decide whether you would like to step in at any point. You can choose to receive email notifications for as many of the conference Q&A sessions as you like, as well as stop notifications at any time. Because the Q&A sessions will close at the end of the conference, all email notifications will also end at this time. Although only registered conference participants can pose questions and make comments, Q&A sessions are visible to the public and will remain so after the conference has ended, as we hope that they will become cited resources.
Hi Cory:
Thanks for your paper on fly fishing. Your arguments about people concerned with maintaining the quality of water to pursue their activities has played out in numerous ways, including the power of this group to help, in part, make sure that Montana’s rewriting of their constitution in the early 1970’s allowed for all citizens to have access to all running waters throughout the state.
One of my questions revolves around a statement from Eastern Rises, “Because of the Cold War Kamchatka has no people in it.” Could you please follow up on this. Does the film do so? Wouldn’t it be of interest to find out why the fly fishing is so good, if it comes at the expense of the total removal of a large human population? If that is true.
Thanks again for your edge presentation.
Hi Joseph,
Thanks for you comments. Also, sorry I was MIA the last few days of the conference. I had another conference overlap with the last few days and I thought I would be able to balance things better than I did.
I think your point is totally fair, actually. In the larger work this presentation is from I have a whole section that critiques the very notion using Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness.” The film itself doesn’t address those critiques, but I would suggest that other types of fly fishing media do. For instance, especially in fly fishing magazines like The Drake there is increasing focus on urban fly fishing. I think the human/nature dichotomy is problematic and I actually think fly fishing is the type of activity that when studied thoughtfully can help break it down. But to answer your question simply, no the film doesn’t address that.
Hi Cory,
Thank you for an engaging presentation. Finding ways to help communities act collectively seems like a good place to start your exploration of *Eastern Rises*. Just recently, I saw a news story about how fisher people and the trout they seek are working together in Colorado to address parasite problems and “develop wild fisheries of fish that can reproduce and survive on their own, without our help.” Here’s one take on the story: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colorado-biologists-breed-rainbow-trout-to-save-disease-ravaged-population/
So my question is, how might the more than human contribute to the collective necessary to make change?
Hi rlmurray50,
Thanks for you comments. Also, sorry I was MIA the last few days of the conference. I had another conference overlap with the last few days and I thought I would be able to balance things better than I did.
Anyway, I think the more-than-human or simply non-human world contributes to collectivity in a number of ways. The first one that comes to mind is simply symbolic value. Something like trout and salmon clearly can provide an emotional, spiritual, and economic resonance that can move people to action. While it is fair and reasonable to critique movements that venerate certain species over others, I do think there is some value in the fact that in order to save or improve the populations of species like trout or salmon you have to protect and restore the whole watershed habitat which, ultimately, benefits a diverse array of species. I think other activities and types of non-human animals have this same effect as well. They provide an identifiable and felt location of held value and meaning that can radiate outwards.
Hi Cory,
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Best,
Robin
Hi Amy, Thank you for your informative presentation, “Going Rogue: A Material Feminist Reading of AltUsNatParkService as Environmental Rhetoric and Ecomedia’s New Resistance Movement.”
I appreciated learning about this movement and its source and audience. Your slides prompted me to take a look at some of the tweets and posts, as well as responses to them. One site I found talks further about the park service handing over their Twitter account to environmental activists and journalists. I don’t know if this claim is true, nor if it is true, if it matters who continues the tweets. Do you have a take on the movement’s possible changing source?
Thanks for your comments, rlmurray50. I think the possibility of the shifting source speaks to the always ever-changing landscape and contexts of digital communication, in this case as it pertains to ecomedia. It would make for an interesting subsequent study to conduct a rhetorical or comparative analysis of the ways that this environmental advocacy, via their social media activism, has potentially shifted, given what appears to be the movement’s possible changing source. I can imagine possible implications for perceived ethos, possible shifts in how arguments are structured, and so on. But again, it would make for an interesting subsequent project and these thoughts are more speculative.
Thank you!
Cheers, Robin
Hi Amy:
Thanks for presenting us with one phase of organized resistance that seemingly comes from “the front”. This alt park work is really engaging and your sophisticated reading/approach in analyzing the rhetorical presentation by these actors does not detract from their commitment to doing something or anything they can to a current administration that has actively presented a hard core anti-environmentalist world view, socially, politically and economically.
Do these folks fear Secretary of the Interior Zinke’s intention to root them out and essentially eliminate them as agents of resistance? Or is that an image that I draw from too many films like Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows?
Hi Joseph, Thanks for your thoughts and supportive comments! In my initial reading and analysis of the materials presented here, I was sensing more of a “join us/strength in numbers/can’t keep us down” sort of energy than trepidation, per se. I would also need to take a look the Melville film that you mention to get a fuller picture of your question, but those are some initial thoughts, at least! Thanks again for your comments.
Hi Amy:
The Melville reference is kind of a one off joke by me, but still may have relevance, because the number of people in the “Resistance” in France was quite small, and their determination to do something was re-inforced by the fact they realized it was going to invariably end badly. But what the Interior Dept is doing is so cruel and so thoughtless, the idea of people within trying to do anything they can to slow it down is pretty amazing. The idea that they will be hunted down is the Melville connection.
Hi Amy! Thanks for a really interesting presentation. I really liked your analysis of these Alt National Parks Service artifacts and am eager to learn more from your book. I leave this presentation with a changed sense of how the elements of these memes come together to create new messages about responsibility, relationship, and resistance. The presentation also leaves me with a question about the medium itself, and how platforms such as Facebook and Twitter might be part of the material feminist reading you present. Given the role we know Facebook played in shaping and reinforcing political identities running up to 2016, or the way Trump’s Twitter habit has (arguably) shifted the media focus on and the information-value of Tweets, it seems relevant to address these media a an element of the “resistance”–or not!
Hi CAHagood, Thanks for your thoughts! And yes, all good points about the broader potential work of these media, beyond this illustrative case!
Hello, Corey –
Thank you so much for introducing me to the world of fly fishing media – I’m particularly intrigued by the #keepemwet hashtag, which I had previously known nothing about. I’m intrigued by the idea that Instagram can be a vehicle for disseminating a certain kind of ecological script.
However, I do want to ask you several questions about the type of “environmentalism” that you are constructing here. While you clearly address gender in your presentation, I have queries about how your conception of the type of practices you describe here intersect with race and class.
I want to first echo Joseph’s concern about the construction of nature as “pristine” and free of people – as Cronon has aptly pointed out, this kind of space which becomes a site for upper-middle class white “stewardship” often is created by the removal of indigenous and poor people from the land. Looking at the hashtag you mentioned, I am struck by how racially homogenous the photos are.
Additionally, at one point you state in the presentation that although fly-fishing’s engagement with ecology may seem selfish, “environmentalism is also most often a selfish pursuit in its barest essence.” I think that may be true of the type of the environmentalism you seem to be envisioning in this presentation – but I think that a lot of environmental justice advocates would argue that that is a function of a largely outdated kind of engagement with the environment, not a characteristic endemic to environmentalism.
I also would ask about the essentialism present in the citation you present as advocating for women in flyfishing, which implied, among other things, that women are more naturally “humble” than men (that whole passage, frankly, made me cringe, and embodied many of the critiques that ecofeminism had leveled at older outmoded forms of environmentalism). Does it seem to you that participation in the sport by women is still structured around a socially constructed gender binary, despite the fact that there is now more recognition and access for women?
Finally, I agree with you that “Engaged and self-aware citizens make for a better and more responsible society,” but I wonder if the quality of engagement you describe – which you describe at one point as a “bond with the sacred” through fly-fishing – will have material impacts as many of the most pressing environmental issues revolve around things like climate refugeeism which are as much societal problems as ecological problems.
I recently moved to Colorado and have am friends with a couple of fly-fishers, and I’m excited to continue this conversation. Thank you for your work!
Cory – I just realized I misspelled your name. Apologies, and thanks again.
Hi Shannon,
Thanks for you comments. Also, sorry I was MIA the last few days of the conference. I had another conference overlap with the last few days and I thought I would be able to balance things better than I did.
I think your point is totally fair, actually. In the larger work this presentation is from I have a whole section that critiques the very notion using Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness.” The film itself doesn’t address those critiques, but I would suggest that other types of fly fishing media do. For instance, especially in fly fishing magazines like The Drake there is increasing focus on urban fly fishing. I think the human/nature dichotomy is problematic and I actually think fly fishing is the type of activity that when studied thoughtfully can help break it down.
As far as race and class goes, I think the critique is fair but given the trends I’ve seen over the last ten years in the sport I think it is also outdated (and perhaps damaging to newcomers) to think of fly fishing as simply something rich white dudes do. As someone who actively takes part in these communities, it isn’t difficult to find people of colour online. That being said, though, fly fishing has historically been and continues to be predominantly white. However, fly fishing has never been more diverse and accessible than it is now and I think we are seeing a lot of companies, organizations, and outlets celebrating that even if the way they go about it is at times problematic. From my perspective, over the last decade or so we are witnessing a significant democratization of the sport. But, obviously, there is a long way to go.
As far as gender goes, I think a lot of the foregrounding of the binary gender issue you’re seeing is because women have very different needs for gear design than men do and they are only recently having companies cater to them in meaningful ways. So there is a foregrounding of difference occurring. Additionally, especially in social media, there are definitely those who objectify women fly fishers and there are some good feminist critiques of fly fishing communities coming out in various formats (podcasts, blog posts, etc.) I would say that as with most fandoms or communities, though, there isn’t a notable difference when it comes to the actual participation.
In terms of material impacts, I’m not exactly sure what you mean. Are you asking if fly fishers have actual material impacts in terms of conservation etc., or if fly fishers can solve issues like climate refugeeism? Obviously not all approaches to ecological awareness or environmental connection can solve all problems. If you’re asking if fly fishing has or has had material benefit in terms of environmental health the answer is obviously yes. Fly fishers have, at least in part, ensured continued access to public lands in many areas, completed habitat restoration, removed deadbeat dams, lobbied against damaging resource extraction, helped shift economies toward models of sustainable ecotourism, etc. I think encouraging people to participate in activities like fly fishing could be part of a larger movement to change people’s relationship with the natural world and perhaps to change how they think about the larger types of issues you mention.
Hi, Cory –
My turn to apologize for being MIA – started teaching summer session II this week (how is it already summer session II?).
Let me start off by thanking you again for starting this conversation and introducing me to a topic that I’m now fascinated to learn more about.
Urban fly fishing?! I mean, now that you mention it, of course that’s a thing, but my stereotypes about where fly fishing happens are apparent in the fact that I wouldn’t have even thought about that. Moving to Colorado recently has given me a very specific lens on what the sport looks like, I think, and one that doesn’t seem to be accurate for the current moment.
RE your statement, “Obviously not all approaches to ecological awareness or environmental connection can solve all problems” – too true, and acknowledged. My question about your statement that “Engaged and self-aware citizens make for a better and more responsible society,” was rooted in this idea of my perception of the style of environmentalism you addressed being rooted in a nature/culture dichotomy, which your follow-up comments help me understand may be a misperception on my part of the sport.
Thanks for engaging in this illuminating conversation with me – I hope you had a lovely conference, and I hope we get to meet in person at the next ASLE!
Shannon