The Power and the Water: Connecting Pasts with Futures

“电力与水：连接过去与未来”考察了自工业化以来环境“连通性”的本质，以及它们的遗产如何在21世纪初挑战我们。环境连通性表明我们对地方、生计和社区是如何通过多个空间尺度和不同持续时间的相互作用过程塑造的理解，这些相互作用过程将地方行动与“行星系统”联系起来。这些理解涉及到基础设施及其环境影响如何在地方、民族、制度和文化之间产生新的距离，同时也产生新的联系。我们对连通性的理解还涉及人类社区的建设和维持如何创造一种景观，这种景观可以促进或中断物种、生物多样性以及社会文化和自然世界的复原力的相互作用。我们将研究不同的环境叙事是如何在特定的地方和背景下部署的；这些叙述是如何相互作用的；它们如何设法将社区及其对环境的影响联系起来；他们如何将指定的环境“专家”与各种公众和政策制定者联系起来；以及它们如何反过来塑造身份，并打造新的理解社区、共享基础设施和政治行动。我们还将考虑影响社区恢复力、社会学习和环境政策反应的共同负面经历。我们将研究“环境”和“自然”的概念是如何对空间进行分类的，并划定什么是值得保护的，优先考虑自然界中有价值的某些想法，以及生态和社会文化联系是如何工作的。特别是，我们探索了技术在一系列液体和能源环境中的变革作用-从泰恩河的操纵和塞文河的拟议利用到峰区矿山的排水和大型电力输送系统，如塔。我们可以通过一系列综合研究来充分公正地对待这些问题和这种方法，这些研究探索了20世纪及以后的环境连通性的关键方面（向后和向前）。这将使我们能够欣赏环境体验的共性和对比，以及这些与特定时间、地点和社区以及社会、教育和信息体验的关系。该项目由三部分组成，重点关注不同类型的连接，所有这些都基于对电力和能源的考虑。1. 河流系统及其连接的生物物理、能量、商业和文化流动（参考泰恩和塞文）。2. 基础设施和能源系统/部门及其发电、输电和消费的连接站点（参考国家电网的出现和20世纪萨默塞特的能源环境）。3. 建造水道的基础设施，以及它们如何将自然和文化遗产的概念与地上和地下的水道联系起来（参考德比郡前铅矿区的sough[排水渠道/人工河流]）。每一条线索都有助于产生英国环境史和环境思想的新综合，展示了“环境连通性”的历史发展和偶然性，以及它们的地点和上下文特定特征。这些努力与“关爱未来”和“互联社区”计划所强调的主题相结合。与特定形式的环境连通性相关的是什么样的未来设想、可持续发展的可能性或退化和溶解的风险？人们和社区在多大程度上意识到支撑他们生活的联系？这赋予了个人、知识生成系统、机构以及“自然力量”什么样的责任和管理/所有权观念？

'The Power and the Water: Connecting Pasts with Futures' examines the nature of environmental 'connectivities' since industrialization and how their legacies challenge us in the early 21st century. Environmental connectivity denotes our understanding of how place, livelihood and community is moulded by interacting processes of multiple spatial scale and different durations, that link local actions to the 'planetary system'. These understandings relate to how infrastructure and its environmental impacts generate new distances but, equally, fresh bonds between places, peoples, institutions and cultures. Our understanding of connectivity also engages with how the construction and sustainment of human communities creates a landscape that can facilitate or interrupt the interactions of species, biodiversity and the resilience of socio-cultural and natural worlds. We will examine how different environmental narratives are deployed in particular places and contexts; how these narratives interact; how they seek to link communities and their environmental impacts; how they connect designated environmental 'experts' and a variety of publics and policymakers; and how, in turn, they shape identities and forge new communities of understanding, shared infrastructure and political action. We will also consider shared negative experiences that affect community resilience, social learning and environmental policy response. We will examine how notions of the 'environmental' and 'natural' categorize spaces and demarcate what is worthy of protection, privileging certain ideas of what is valued in nature and how ecological and socio-cultural connections work. In particular, we explore the transformative role of technology across a range of liquid and energy environments - from the manipulation of the Tyne and proposed harnessing of the Severn to the drainage of Peak District mines and massive electricity delivery systems such as pylons.We can do fullest justice to these questions and this approach through a series of integrated studies that probe key aspects of environmental connectivity in the 20th century and beyond (backwards and forwards). This will allow us to appreciate commonalities and contrasts in environmental experience, and how these relate to specific times, places and communities, as well as social, educational and informational experiences. The project consists of 3 strands focusing on different types of connectivity, all rooted in considerations of power and energy. 1. River systems and their connected bio-physical, energetic, commercial and cultural flows (with reference to Tyne and Severn). 2. Infrastructure and energy systems/sectors and their connected sites of generation, transmission and consumption (with reference to the national grid's emergence and the energy environments of 20th century Somerset). 3. The infrastructure of constructed watercourses and how they connect notions of natural and cultural heritage and watercourses above and below ground (with reference to soughs [drainage channels/artificial rivers] in Derbyshire's former lead mining district). Each strand contributes to the generation of consequential new syntheses of environmental history and environmental thought in Britain, demonstrating the historical development and contingency of 'environmental connectivity', but also their place- and context-specific character. These endeavours hook up with themes highlighted in the 'Care for the Future' and 'Connected Communities' programmes. What kind of future envisioning, and possibilities for progress toward sustainable development or risks of degradation and dissolution, are associated with particular forms of environmental connectivity? How far are people and communities aware of connections undergirding their lives? What kind of responsibilities and ideas of stewardship/ownership has this conferred on individuals, systems of knowledge generation, institutions, and, indeed, the 'forces of nature'.