ILARIA GADENZ
I would like to start with the basics. What is meant by environmental anthropology? What is its history?
Emanuela Borgnino
Environmental anthropology is a relatively young discipline, although its roots lie in the early ethnographic accounts of the great founding fathers of anthropology, such as Bronislaw Malinowski and others, who emphasized the importance of the relationship between human groups and the environment. Nature has always been part of anthropological discourse, but it was only in the 1950s and 1960s that the relationship between culture and the environment began to be investigated systematically. The discipline developed almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic—on the one hand in the United States, on the other in Europe, especially in France with Claude Lévi-Strauss and then with his student Philippe Descola, who posed new questions about the very concept of nature. Today, environmental anthropology has further branched out: there are studies dedicated to oceans, mountains, deserts, and woodland areas. The fields of research are multiplying, as are the issues the discipline raises.

ILARIA GADENZ
You often argue for the need to reconsider rocks as nature. Yet, in many languages—such as Hawaiian, which you know well—the word “nature” does not exist. So what, then, is nature to you, and in light of this fundamental discrepancy surrounding the term, why insist on advocating for the inclusion of rocks within it?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
Yes, that’s true. Not only in Hawaiian, but in many Pacific languages such as Samoan and Tongan, there’s no word corresponding to “nature.” Even in Japanese, the term shizen is a relatively recent introduction. The same is true for the native languages of Japan; the Ainu in the north and the Ryukyu in the south, on the island of Okinawa, do not have a term to designate the concept of nature. However, this does not mean these societies have not developed a deep and complex relationship with the environment. They simply did not feel the need to separate human beings from the surrounding world, as happened in the cultures of the so-called globalized North (which we used to call the West). This separation gives rise to the need to name what lies outside of man as “nature” and to place human beings elsewhere. As an anthropologist, I’m interested not so much in understanding the absence of the term in certain cultures, but in how these societies construct a different epistemology, or a different way of experiencing the world.
The fact that the term “nature” exists only in certain cultures, therefore, signals a distance between humans and the environment. This is an anthropocentric perspective, which tends to place humans at the center and other beings—plants and animals, but also stones and atmospheric phenomena—in the margins. We environmental anthropologists do not yet have a shared term, but we agree that human subjects are not the only ones that exist; rather, there is a plurality of subjects—of agents that make up an environment—of which humans are a part. Scientists, marine biologists, and ethologists prefer to talk about the ecological system of a given place.
So why include stones in this plurality? Because not all cultures share the same categories, and just as the distinction between nature and culture does not exist everywhere, neither does the distinction between living and non-living, or between animate and inanimate. My invitation is to try and break out of these dualities. It’s better to accept a little conceptual instability than to get trapped in binaries. In actual fact, even the category of living is not as clear-cut as we believe it to be. If we think about our own scientific culture, we talk about the life of stars, the average life of caesium, of particles that decay. Some will say that these are social metaphors that help us understand what we study, but perhaps they suggest how we too acknowledge a certain degree of vitality even in what we call “non-living.”
In the languages of the Pacific, the word non-living does not exist, because everything is in some way permeated by vital energy, which is nothing other than the biological beginning of things. Everything has had a genesis on the planet—consider, for example, oceanic volcanoes born from the depths of the sea in a geological time not our own.
Stones—though not all of them—are considered alive in many societies; they are recognized as having the ability to feel and connect to the surrounding world, to initiate a form of socialization. Many of the societies I study do not believe that stones think—after all, attributing the ability to think to stones would still be an anthropocentric way of attributing human qualities to them. But it can be said that they feel, just as humans feel. And it is this common ability to feel that puts them on the same level, in a form of shared communication.

ILARIA GADENZ
In Dear Mountain, I try to extend Aldo Leopold’s invitation to think like a mountain by shifting it toward listening. This shift implies a different relationship with time—an expanded, profound time. It’s an idea that might seem disorienting insofar as it confronts us with timescales that are hard to get our heads around, such as those of climate change. But it is also an invitation to think in terms of sustainability, as Ailton Krenak writes when he talks about always considering the “seven generations” to come—that is, always thinking in terms of time frames much broader than one’s own lifetime. You have spoken in the past about the ability of stones to live through different social times. It is an image that struck me deeply. Could you explain better what you mean?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
I will try to answer by starting a little further back. I believe today it’s increasingly difficult to draw rigid boundaries between different fields of knowledge: science, philosophy, art, environmental studies, the social sciences. Even for geologists and biologists, it’s complex to maintain a clear distinction between the “hard” materiality of rocks, minerals, and mountains—and the “soft” materiality of biology, which is more fluid and circular. This difficulty in separating things that, in the end, draw one another in means that stones enter the narratives of many cultures—from South America to Oceania, from Africa to Europe—as beings in motion.. In fairytales and myths, stones travel, transform, and fall from the sky. And when they find their place in the landscape, they stay there for several generations, making their presence felt in the world and influencing human beings. That is when stories are born. In this sense, when I talk about the socialization of stones, I am referring to the relationship between stones and human beings and the capacity of stones themselves to act.
Stones help us understand, through their weight—material and immaterial—that sustainability is a relationship. It is taking, giving back, offering, receiving, nourishing, and being nourished. In Hawaii, where I have been working for many years, establishing a relationship with an ecological element—a stone, a plant, an animal—means taking care of it, but also allowing oneself to be transformed by that relationship. Today we often talk about economic independence, but in nature everything is interdependent. If we really want to talk about ecology, we must start from this: sustainability arises from interdependence. And interdependence can also be with stones.
Living with stones reminds us of just this: the possibility of coexisting on different timescales. Stones live their own social times, which are longer yet not unrelated to ours. Even though they are not shaped by humans but by wind, water, and atmospheric agents, they participate in our same world. Sharing space and time with stones means recognizing that they too are part of a larger society, in which humans and non-humans cohabit and coevolve.

ILARIA GADENZ
How is this capacity to take responsibility, to care, and thus also to understand socialized? In the societies you have studied, how does one learn to listen to them and to understand them?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
Although each society has its own ways (in the Pacific, these may vary from island to island), we can recognize certain similarities. For example, many societies consider stones to be living beings and regard them as accumulators of vital energy. A vital energy that remains connected and flows through all living things. Stones communicate through this vital energy. In contrast, in our societies we tend to consider them as objects rather than subjects, and therefore do not acknowledge their agency. But when we say stones are and recognize their subjectivity, mineral time and human time intertwine and enter into a relationship. Stones then become receptive elements of human stories, participating in the world and leading human beings to act—for example, through pilgrimages, not only religious ones such as to Mecca, but also those to particular stones considered sacred or significant. In Japan, for example, there are famous stones that people visit. In the Pacific, I have witnessed ceremonies in which certain stones are transported from one island to another to meet other stones, because they are considered part of the same family; they have things to say to each other, stone to stone. In 2019, during an exhibition on Oceania in London, many visitors from the Pacific left messages on the stones on display—words of encouragement, hope, and nostalgia—as if the stones enclosed in the museum’s display cases for tourists to see were imprisoned, far from their home. In the Hawaiian creation chant, the Kumulipo, coral polyps are born from primordial darkness as one of the first forms of life. Coral is therefore considered the ancestor of Hawaiian life, both biologically and spiritually. Likewise, in other cultures stones themselves are considered the ancestors of human beings; there is a shared genealogy, a belonging to the great family of living beings.
This connection allows us to feel each other, to live in relationship with stones. Each culture develops it according to its own codes, but in all of them it is a capacity to perceive and participate in the world: stones, water, wind, clouds—everything is endowed with sensitivity and responds to human actions. It is a sensory knowledge that arises from the body and direct experience, from living the relationship.

ILARIA GADENZ
Considering stones as sentient beings—and perhaps even desiring beings, endowed with passions—what kind of practical and political implications does this perspective entail? In your research, what concrete effects do you observe or imagine?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
Several authors have reflected on this issue. I’m thinking here, for example, of Bruno Latour, who proposes extending democracy to the beyond-human, imagining politics capable of extending agency even to the non-human.
On a practical level, in various contexts we see the encounter between native legal ontology and that introduced by colonial powers. This dialogue gave rise to concepts such as the rights of nature, which aim to acknowledge the legal personality of natural elements—a river, a mountain, a lake, a forest. For an environmental anthropologist, this is an extraordinary field of research, because it means questioning how far we can extend the concept of “person.” If a mountain or a river has legal personality, then it can be sued or sue others. But how can a mountain actually do this? Who has the right to speak for it? Who can say, “I know what this mountain feels or wants”?
The concept of the rights of nature is therefore very interesting, and there is now a wealth of literature—especially in Australia, South America, and India—exploring its implications. Of course, there are difficulties—it is a question of bringing together different legal systems, one based on an individual view of law (as in Roman law), and one that thinks of law in collective and ecological terms, as the right of an ecosystem composed of many voices.

ILARIA GADENZ
It seems to me that, both in the case of the legal acknowledgment of nature and in your anthropological research, a deep cultural resistance emerges. It is difficult to imagine that something other than ourselves could have a voice or representation. Speaking of the legal status of a mountain, I wonder how a mountain represents itself. Perhaps, thinking in terms of ecosystems, we might speak of widespread representation?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
That’s right, it’s a form of widespread representation. Every culture interprets what the mountain “wants” or “desires” in a different way. However, there is also the risk that these rights will be exploited as a belated response to colonial processes.
Often, the voice of the mountain is conveyed through art. I am thinking here, for example, of Mauna Kea, one of the most sacred mountains in Hawaii, now at the center of a conflict between the state and the native population. In this case, poems, songs, documentaries, and visual works become ways of giving voice to the mountain. Art, jurisprudence, and anthropology therefore offer different ways of bringing these voices to the fore. And it is never just one voice; even within the same community, there are always many perspectives that convey dialogue with the mountains or with stones.
I believe these dialogues allow us to rethink the relationship between humans and nature from an anthropological point of view no longer in dichotomous terms, but in ones of collaboration, alliance, and partnership. This makes it easier to accept that the non-human can act—that stones, for example, are not just inert objects but presences that influence events. It is a view that some call externalist, in which the capacity for the action of stones is recognized through social practice such as visits to museums or meetings between stones, as I mentioned earlier. In this sense, stones have stories to tell, desires to live out, and even a historical weight that acts in their relationships with humans. Recognizing their intentionality means counting them among the living and accepting that rock formations can enter into relationships with us, generating observable behaviors, responses, and actions.

ILARIA GADENZ
What attracts us as human beings to stones?

EMANUELA BORGNINO
I don’t think I can explain it in universal terms. My job is to collect cultural stories, the ways in which each society responds to this question, and to return them with full respect. What emerges is that there are many different ways of relating to the environment, and this diversity can ensure the survival of our species. Only through diversity can we make multiple choices and come up with different answers.
Mineral time represents a form of long-term existence, a way of being in the world that extends beyond the scale of human life. In most of the cultures I encounter, stones—despite being beyond human time—participate in the reproduction of life and culture. It is true that they embody memories of the past with their steadfastness, but at the same time they move with history and local knowledge, belonging to both the past and the present.
This is possible because stones are recognized as being made of the same matter as human beings and, ultimately, as the entire living world. When many cultures say “this stone is my relative” or “I am genealogically linked to this stone,” they are affirming precisely this: we share the same substance. It is an awareness that we might call ecological and that native peoples have shared since time immemorial. Scientific language tells us that mountains, rivers, and human beings are all made up of the same subatomic particles organized in specific ways at a certain time in a certain place. The only difference is that the cultures I frequent talk to me about genealogical ties and not subatomic bonds. In my opinion, this is what allows us to view ourselves as part of living matter and therefore to be co-authors of past, present, and future stories in some way. Stones will accompany various societies both from the point of view of the stories that are told, the places, and the place names, and from the point of view of the material construction of part of society.
What Philippe Descola called the “ecology of relations” is an ecological discourse that invites connection with the environment, with all its elements—the mountains, the wind, the water. It is a cultural elaboration in which the environment cannot be dominated insofar as human beings are part of it and share the responsibility for being so. Hence the absence of the term “nature” in many of these cultures—if you are part of something, it is difficult to name it from the inside.
It is a choice of belonging that opens up to a deeply ecological knowledge—and one that is particularly valuable today, because even the globalized North is beginning to see how the environment responds to human pressures. Atomic explosions, industrialization, and intensive exploitation have had a profound impact on the planetary ecosystem. It is therefore urgent to learn to listen, document, and understand the capacity of non-humans to respond, as these cultures have always done.
Humans modify the environment—an island, a valley, a mountain—but it is equally true that the environment modifies us. It is a reciprocal, often unexpected relationship that involves elements such as wind, stones, and mountains. Ultimately, it is they who have shaped the cultures of the places where they live.

ILARIA GADENZ
Does this genealogical recognition require physical proximity, concrete closeness? I wonder, for example, how celestial bodies and rocks orbiting in space are considered.

EMANUELA BORGNINO
That’s a question I can’t answer. But when I think about navigation in the Pacific, celestial bodies are considered allies, partners, or teachers. Ocean navigation is based on what is called the celestial compass: knowledge that comes from direct observation of the stars, constellations, currents, clouds, and all the elements of the marine and atmospheric world.
I cannot generalize about the relationship that the various cultures I encounter have with the stars, but I can say that—as with every other element of the environment—what they seek is relationship. Collaboration comes in later. But first there is the building of a relationship, which is then expressed through stories, myths, and social practices, and which ultimately translates into concrete actions, such as navigation.

ILARIA GADENZ
This relationship with the stars and celestial bodies opens up a fascinating chapter even for those, like me, who work with sound and radio. I’m thinking, for example, of the ability of meteors to generate radio frequencies when they come into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere, thus ushering in the beginning of a relationship.

EMANUELA BORGNINO
Yes, of course. Mauna Kea, which I mentioned earlier, is a prime example. It is a huge extinct volcano, the highest mountain in the Pacific, and therefore an ideal location for astronomical observation. It already hosts thirteen telescopes and there are plans to build another one, with a thirty-meter lens, the largest in the world. The native population is not at all opposed to science or curiosity about the cosmos, but they already have their own answers. For them, life originates in the depths of the sea, and the mountain is sacred because it not only represents the highest point of the archipelago, but also a vital source of fresh water—a precious commodity in a saltwater world.
Thus, it’s not a clash of two ontologies, but two different ways of thinking and imagining the relationship with the environment. Hawaiians do not reject an interest in the cosmos—on the contrary, without the stars and constellations, they would never have been able to navigate and populate the entire ocean. However, theirs is a form of collaboration that does not need to be sought, because it is already given, lived, and narrated.