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

这个项目研究了过去的不同观念，特别是想象中的过去人与自然之间的关系，是如何影响现在为追求“可持续性”和避免“环境危机”而迫切创造的未来的。一方面，它探讨了传统的、土著的和当地的人/自然关系概念之间的紧张关系，另一方面，它探讨了创造“绿色”未来的现代市场方法的新概念。为此，我们将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有长期的研究经验——并与我们当地的机构伙伴纳米比亚国家博物馆合作。诸如“环境变化”和“可持续性”这样的问题是复杂的，需要跨越学科界限的分析。因此，我们的研究运用了文化地理学、民族音乐学、环境史、哲学和社会人类学的方法和理论。我们的场地位置包含了许多当代环境中存在的紧张关系。在这里，人与自然关系的新旧概念正在发生惊人的碰撞，因为铀等资源是从地球上一些最古老的文化以及高价值（和濒危）动植物物种的家园中开采出来的。通过与企业、国家、非政府组织和地方的不同参与者合作，我们将探索对环境变化的理解，为一系列新的“绿色”实体提供信息，这些实体正在被创建、销售和交换，从而产生可持续性。我们将把这些“可持续发展的物体”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，以故事、歌曲、舞蹈和治疗仪式的方式进行编码。我们选择的相互关联和商业化的“绿色事物”是，i)“绿色铀”（所谓的“绿色铀”，因为它据称对低碳发电做出了贡献，但也因为其开采的影响将被“抵消”），ii)生物多样性抵消（其中一个地方的开发造成的环境危害被其他地方的保护活动抵消），iii)从当地植物知识中提取的天然产品，iv)动物狩猎战利品，v)霍桑岩石艺术遗产。这项研究将加强人文学科对新的“绿色”物体如何发挥作用，以及如何被感知到如何发挥作用，以“实现可持续性”，从而将过去的社会和环境健康转移到未来的理解。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。在这些当代照片中，我们可以看到自19世纪后期的早期档案照片拍摄以来，风景发生了怎样的变化（或不变）。我们项目的一个关键和反复的组成部分是展示我们研究的图像、音频和视频材料，既在温得和克博物馆展出，也在纳米比亚不同领域的流动展览中展出。我们的目的是激发关于环境变化和可持续未来的公开讨论，从而产生进一步的研究数据。我们还将通过一个项目网站（网址为www.futurepasts.net.Results）促进公众参与，这些相互关联的研究领域将在进一步的领域中进行综合和理论化。这将研究在不同文化对人类/自然关系的理解之间的界面上产生的哲学和伦理问题。我们在这里的工作将充实一个新的跨学科“生态文化伦理”领域，将可持续发展的想象与特定的过去、现在和未来的文化生产交织在一起。不同可持续性观点背后的竞争伦理原则的并置将汇集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.