Future Pasts in an Apocalyptic Moment: A Hybrid Analysis of 'Green' Performativities and Ecocultural Ethics in a Globalised African Landscape

这个项目调查了过去的不同观念，特别是想象中的人与自然之间的过去关系，是如何制约着现在为了追求“可持续性”和避免“环境危机”而紧急创造的未来。它一方面探讨了传统的、土著的和地方的人与自然关系的概念之间的紧张关系，另一方面则探讨了创造“绿色”未来的基于市场的现代方法背后的新概念之间的矛盾。我们将通过在纳米比亚西部进行深入的实地研究--我们的三名团队成员在那里拥有长期的研究经验--并与我们当地的机构合作伙伴纳米比亚国家博物馆合作来做到这一点。因此，我们的研究运用了文化地理学、民族音乐学、环境史学、哲学和社会人类学的方法和理论。我们的实地位置概括了许多当代情况下存在的紧张局势。在这里，关于人与自然关系的新旧概念正在发生惊人的碰撞，因为人们从地球上一些最古老的文化以及高度珍视(和濒危的)动植物物种所在的土地上开采铀等资源。通过与企业、国家、非政府组织和地方背景下的不同行为者接触，我们将探索对环境变化的理解，为正在创建、营销和交流的一系列新的“绿色”实体提供信息，以产生可持续性。我们将把这些可持续发展目标与当地土著文化中景观和其他物种的构思和记忆方式并列在一起，这些方式被编码在故事、歌曲、舞蹈和治愈仪式中。我们精选的、相互关联的和商品化的“绿色事物”是：i)“绿色铀”(所谓的“绿色铀”，因为它据称有助于低碳发电，但也因为其开采的影响将被“抵消”)，ii)生物多样性抵消(其中一个地点的开发造成的环境损害被其他地方的保护活动抵消)，iii)来自本土植物知识的天然产品，iv)动物狩猎奖杯，以及v)KhoeSan岩石艺术遗产。这项研究将加强对新的“绿色”物体如何行动、如何被感知、如何“实现可持续性”的人文理解，从而将过去的社会和环境健康向前传递到未来。我们将通过深入分析对环境变化的看法来补充这一点，并协助整理和展示重复的风景照片。在这些照片中，当代照片揭示了自19世纪末制作早期档案图像以来，风景是如何变化的(或没有变化)。我们项目的一个关键和反复的组成部分是在温得和克博物馆展出我们研究的图像、音频和视频材料，并在纳米比亚的各种实地情况下作为流动展览。我们的目的是激发关于环境变化和可持续未来的想法的公开讨论，从而产生进一步的研究数据。我们还将通过一个网址为www.futureasts.net的项目网站促进公众参与。来自这些相互关联的研究线索的结果将被综合起来，并在进一步的线索中形成理论。它将审查在不同文化背景下对人与自然关系的理解之间的交界处产生的哲学和伦理问题。我们的工作将充实“生态文化伦理学”的一个新的跨学科领域，它认为可持续发展的想象与特定过去、现在和未来的文化生产交织在一起。不同可持续发展观点背后的相互竞争的伦理原则的并列将汇集本项目其余部分分析的经验材料。

This project investigates how different ideas of the past, in particular imagined past relationships between people and nature, are conditioning the futures being urgently created now in pursuit of 'sustainability' and the avoidance of 'environmental crisis'. It explores tensions between traditional, indigenous and local conceptions of human/nature relationships, on the one hand, and new conceptions underlying modern market-based methods for creating 'green' futures, on the other. We will do this through in-depth field research in western Namibia - where three of our team members have long-term research experience - and in collaboration with our local institutional partner, the National Museum of Namibia.Problems such as 'environmental change' and 'sustainability' are complex and require analysis that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Our research, therefore, applies methods and theory from Cultural Geography, Ethnomusicology, Environmental History, Philosophy and Social Anthropology. Our field location encapsulates tensions present in many contemporary circumstances. Here, old and new conceptions of human/nature relationships are colliding spectacularly as resources such as uranium are extracted from land which is home to some of the oldest cultures on earth, as well as to highly valued (and endangered) animal and plant species. Through engaging with diverse actors in corporate, state, NGO and local contexts, we will explore the environmental change understandings informing a range of new 'green' entities that are being created, marketed and exchanged so as to generate sustainability. We will juxtapose these 'sustainability objects' with ways that landscape and other species are conceived and remembered in local indigenous culture, as encoded in stories, song, dance and healing rituals. Our selected, interconnected and commodified 'green things' are, i) 'green uranium' (so-called because of its alleged contribution to low-carbon generation but also because the impacts of its extraction are to be 'offset'), ii) biodiversity offsets (in which environmental harm arising from development in one location is offset by conservation activity elsewhere), iii) natural products derived from indigenous plant knowledge, iv) animal hunting trophies, and v) KhoeSan rock art heritage. This research will enhance humanities understandings of how new 'green' objects act, and are perceived to act, to 'perform sustainability', and thereby to transfer past social and environmental health forwards into the future. We will complement this by in-depth analysis of perceptions regarding environmental change, assisted by the collation and exhibiting of repeat landscape photographs. In these, contemporary photographs reveal how landscapes have changed (or not) since early archival images, dating back to the late 1800s, were made. A key and iterative component of our project is the exhibiting of images, audio and video material from our research, both at the Museum in Windhoek and as mobile exhibitions in varied field contexts within Namibia. We intend this to stimulate open discussion regarding ideas of environmental change and sustainable futures, and thereby generate further research data. We will also foster public engagement through a project website with the URL www.futurepasts.net.Results from these interconnected research strands will be synthesised and theorised in a further strand. This will examine the philosophical and ethical issues arising at the interfaces between different culturally-bound understandings of human/nature relations. Our work here will flesh-out a new cross-disciplinary domain of 'ecocultural ethics' that considers sustainability imaginaries as entwined with the cultural production of particular pasts, presents and futures. This juxtaposition of competing ethical principles underlying different sustainability perspectives will draw together the empirical material analysed in the rest of the project.