In the present moment, humans appear determined to demonstrate that they can be profoundly destructive. They have done so in the past as well, but the level of contemporary destruction seems particularly devastating, threatening the very conditions that enable life on the planet as we know it. This current environmental destruction caused by humans often overlaps with destruction caused by non-human agents. For example, tsunamis hit people hardest where mangroves have been destroyed previously. It also poses thorny questions of blame and justice as the havoc wreaked on livelihoods across the Global South is often attributed to colonial extraction, capitalist political economy and inequalities amid the Anthropocene.  As applicable and important environmental experiences of destruction are, this workshop not only builds on but also goes beyond them. Inspired by Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of “creative destruction”, which attaches positive value to destruction as a necessary means for economic development, we are interested in circumstances and traditions that deem destruction desirable or necessary. We thus ask about the ideologies of destruction and the (Western and non-Western) cosmologies in which they might be embedded. This also includes cases in which the visibility of destruction is central for its public relevance entailing the investment of considerable ideological labour to downplay or conceal destruction. Our focus on conceptual discussion implies exploring how destruction differs from similar concepts, such as disruption, decay or devastation; in which contexts they are used and to what effect.

A major concern of the workshop is to reflect how destruction can be explored ethnographically discussing which challenges anthropologists encounter during fieldwork, such as in situations of conflict and war, or violence towards those documenting destruction, both human and ecological. Where are the limits of ethnographic methods in such contexts and is participant observation possible at all if one studies destruction? Such provocative methodological questions – along with conceptual ones – represent possible starting points for papers presented at the workshop.