Hip Hop Ecologies

Hip hop is one of the globally most successful forms of cultural production today. Since its emergence in the African American and Latino neighborhoods of 1970s New York City, it has spread around the world and exerted a considerable impact not only on pop culture, but on societal debates around race, class, public safety, nationality, gender, and a range of other issues. The rapidly expanding field of hip hop studies has examined its artistic development and cultural significance from a variety of angles. What has remained almost entirely absent from scholarly debate is the relationship between hip hop and the environment.

 As a predominantly urban phenomenon, hip hop does not pursue an environ­mentalist agenda in any narrow sense. Its focus is on social rather than natural life, on the city rather than the country. Nevertheless, an environmental perspective on hip hop promises to enrich our understanding of the ways in which popular cultural forms shape and are shaped by environmental concerns. Such an approach can direct our attention to important dimensions of hip hop that have remained marginal to public and scholarly debate. Conversely, hip hop offers unconventional vistas that challenge narrow conceptions the environment and of the academic field of Environmental Studies.

The workshop wants to provide a forum for critical discussion and open-ended exploration of these issues. Contributions might draw on various elements of hip hop culture in any local or national setting to address the following aspects or others:

• depictions and negotiations of nature in hip hop
• environmental approaches to (urban) space in hip hop
• hip hop and urban ecology
• rural hip hop and its environmental dimensions
• material environments of hip hop production and reception
• environmentally aware or embedded hip hop cultures
• hip hop in/and environmental activism
• environmental framings in debates around hip hop
• hip hop and the posthuman
• hip hop and the natural sciences

_{all times CET (Konstanz)}

Thursday, February 18

2.00-3.00 pm

• Opening remarks    Timo Müller / Moritz Ingwersen (University of Konstanz)
• The Forest Fires Collective: An Early Effort Combining Hip Hop and Environmental Awareness    Kwame Harrison (Virginia Tech)

3.15-4.30 pm  

• Hip Hop Naturalisms: From Mobb Deep’s “Survival of the Fittest” to Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA”   Julius Greve (University of Oldenburg)
• Metaphors of Environment and Environmentalism in Italian Rap Lyrics   Rebecca Schreiber (TU Dresden/University of Trento)

4.45-6.00 pm        

• Hip Hop and Arctic Ecology in the Era of Climate Change    Nassim Balestrini (University of Graz)
• “The ocean ain’t your motherfuckin’ trash can!”: Common et al.’s “Trouble in the Water” as Environmental Activism    Stefan Benz (University of Mannheim)

Friday, February 19

2.30-3.45 pm

• “Picture the world”: Kate Tempest’s Aesthetic Resistance    Dustin Breitenwischer (FU Berlin)
• Hip Hop and Hipness: Representations of Nature in Childish Gambino's Music Performances    Lena Gotteswinter (University of Regensburg)

4.00-5.15 pm        

• Molotov the Spaceship Doors: A Tribe Called Quest and Climate Change Narratives of Planetary Escape    C. K. Margrave (Texas State)
• Streets, Gardens, Bodies: The Hip-Hop Ecosystems of the BreakBeat Poets Anthologies    Marta Werbanowska (Howard University/University of Warsaw)

Saturday, February 20

2.30-3.45 pm        

• The Green Hip Hop Nation: Glocalization and Environmentally Conscious Hip Hop in India    Elloit Cardozo (MAKAIAS, Calcutta)
• Movement, Mobilisation, and Health Literacy in Indigenous Australian Hip Hop    Julia Hoydis (University of Graz)

4.00-5.15 pm        

• Hip Hop and Environmental Activism in Kenya's Dandora Slums    Mumbo Kithae Dennis (Daystar University, Kenya)
• “Keep Your Solar Plexus Shining Brighter Than Your Necklace”: Female Empowerment and Holistic Spirituality in Environmentally Conscious Hip Hop    Florian Wagner (University of Jena)

5.30-6.00 pm       

• Concluding discussion

In conjunction with the workshop, hip hop scholars Alain-Philippe Durand and Timo Müller are editing a special issue of the peer-reviewed open-access journal Ecozon@ on Hip Hop Ecologies. The call is not limited to workshop participants, everyone is welcome to submit:

Hip Hop Ecologies

Special Issue of Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, Spring 2022

Hip-hop is one of the most successful forms of global cultural production today. Since its emergence in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City, it has spread around the world and exerted a considerable impact not only on pop culture, but also on social debates around race, class, language, nationality, gender, and a range of other issues. One topic that is rarely discussed, however, is the relationship between hip-hop and the environment.

            As a predominantly urban phenomenon, hip-hop does not pursue an environmentalist agenda in any narrow sense. Its focus is traditionally on urban rather than natural life, on the city rather than the countryside. Nevertheless, an environmental perspective on hip-hop promises to enrich our understanding of the ways in which popular cultural forms shape and are shaped by environmental concerns. Such an approach can direct our attention to important dimensions of hip-hop that have remained marginal to public and scholarly debates. Conversely, hip-hop offers unconventional vistas that challenge narrow conceptions of the environment and its academic study. We invite contributions that explore, substantialize, and challenge these premises in all areas of hip-hop culture (rap music, emceeing, deejaying, breakdancing/b-boying, graffiti). Topics might include but are not limited to:

• depictions and negotiations of nature in hip-hop
• environmentalist messages in hip-hop
• hip-hop conceptions of (urban) space in environmental terms
• hip-hop and ecology
• rural hip-hop and its environmental investments
• material environments of hip-hop production and reception
• environmentally aware or embedded hip-hop cultures
• hip-hop in/and environmental activism
• environmental framings in debates around hip-hop
• hip-hop and the posthuman
• hip-hop and the natural sciences
• the land(s) of hip-hop

Ecozon@ is a multilingual journal. We invite contributions in English, French, German, or Spanish that discuss hip hop cultures in any geographic or linguistic setting. Manuscripts should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words including abstract, keywords, and bibliography. We highly encourage potential contributors to submit an abstract by e-mail before March 2021. Completed manuscripts are due on July 15, 2021 via the Ecozon@ website, which also provides a style guide.

Alain-Philippe Durand, University of Arizona (adurand@arizona.edu)
Timo Müller, University of Konstanz (timo.mueller@uni-konstanz.de)
- editors -