Welcome to Confluences, a column on art, kinship and life.

“If we put aside the myth-making of modernity, in which humans are triumphantly free of material dependence on the planet,” writes Amitav Ghosh in his new book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, “and acknowledge the reality of our ever-increasing servitude to the products of the Earth, then… it could even be said that the fate of the Banda Islands might be read as a template for the present, if only we knew how to tell that story.”

Through a circuitous narration spanning centuries, Ghosh traces the history of the nutmeg: from its bountiful and respectful indigenous cultivation in Indonesia’s Banda Islands, to the bloody, destructive colonial pursuit of it by the Dutch East India Company, and beyond. The book demonstrates the historically catastrophic decision to approach the natural world as inert - and its resources as isolated elements - rather than as a greater interconnected story of climate and geopolitics.

Ghosh’s words embody the concept of “humble geographies”, to which I was introduced by the writings of geographer Samantha Saville. “A humble epistemology,” Saville writes, “embraces being part of the world rather than its master”. As a mode of consciousness, this means remaining “open to being affected by objects and beings, and to the different limitations, knowledges, relations, and identities that openness can bring. A humble researcher is willing to tell backstories, hold theories and research ‘goals’ in proxy, and embrace the accompanying mess and failures.” A pedagogy grounded in humility leads to slow, thoughtful scholarship with the potential to be increasingly participatory and inclusive. It also means a wider, less anthropocentric, perspective on the roots and impacts of various phenomena.

In Issue #9’s Ancient Knowledge, Future Farming, Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe share this humble, posthumanist perspective as they discuss the necessity of utilising Aboriginal approaches and protecting indigenous flora and fauna in Australia. “We depend on Mother Earth,” explains Bruce. “Depend on Country, but we have to give back to Country. We just can’t be taking all the time. Industrial agriculture is that you take, take, take, take, and expect her to give forever. She can’t… Mother Earth will provide for us, but we have to provide for her.” A similar sense of consciousness toward humble geographies is evident in Deepti Asthana’s account of the buransh (rhododendron) in Uttarakhand, northern India, in Issue #9. Like the nutmeg, this vibrant red flower has a huge socio-cultural impact on its community; it is a source of livelihood, medicine, religious ritual, and more. As agriculture loss and flash floods threaten Uttarakhand’s village populations and tourism industry, this ripple effect is clear, and it becomes increasingly crucial to preserve natural resources - like buransh - in a responsible and humble manner.

As Saville envisions it, a humble geography “incorporates epistemologies that de-centre humans and take other species, places, and material things seriously”. It is awake to the power of social constructs to affect the narratives we weave about the world around us, and provides “an essential corrective to an arrogant Anglo-European worldview”. But what can the individual practitioner do to employ this sense of consciousness? "This is the great burden that now rests upon writers, artists, filmmakers, and everyone else who is involved in the telling of stories,” Ghosh writes. “To us falls the task of imaginatively restoring agency and voice to nonhumans. As with all the most important artistic endeavors in human history, this is a task at once aesthetic and political - and because of the magnitude of the crisis that besets the planet, it is now freighted with the most pressing moral urgency.”