Imaginaries of flood, attachment and testimony: The futures of Majuli

本项目探讨了高风险洪涝地区的人口结构和物质未来，重点关注印度阿萨姆邦马朱里居民的生活想象。灾害政策和计划在很大程度上依赖定量数据来规划和减轻马祖里未来的洪水；然而，在了解该地区居民对未来风险的经验描述方面仍然存在差距。这种差距是有问题的，因为想象中的未来在很大程度上塑造了一个社区与地点的关系和决策过程，比如决定迁移和何时迁移。该项目将包括丰富的深入研究，重点关注个人和集体的证词，以解决马居里（以及类似岛屿）对洪水和基于地方的依恋的想象。深入了解这些基于与地点的情感关系的可能未来的想象，对于帮助社区理解和更好地应对在高洪水风险地区生活和适应更广泛的气候变化方面所面临的不可避免的挑战至关重要。基于创新的未来主义方法，该项目不仅有望提供重要的规划信息，帮助了解气候变化对马居里的影响，还将为更好地了解和理解其他洪水易发地区的社区响应提供一个框架。研究背景：雅鲁藏布江流域居民正面临着气候变化带来的严重后果；从气温上升、年流量高峰到不可预测的季节性降水波动。这些事件迫使我们在反乌托邦的环境背景下思考气候的未来。以环保态度为主导的气候变化叙事，显示了地方的影响力。这种方法将挑战激进的科学方法，并开辟新的社区适应战略和规划响应形式。气候变化引发的出行总是被预测为未来的问题，但气候危机不再是未来的威胁。基于对未来灾害易发地区环境破坏的想象（在特定的背景下，洪水），人们有意或无意地将自己推向更安全的地区，这反过来又有助于塑造这些空间。与此同时，气候变化的政治经济学研究侧重于围绕气候变化的叙事的构建以及如何应用这些叙事。基于女权主义政治生态学的学术研究认为，人们对环境风险的看法因权力结构而异，这取决于人们的社会定位。因此，这种方法的交叉视角需要将基于性别、种族等的社会差异包括在内，以便在未来的场所制作愿景中适应个人经验。然而，文献中缺少的是塑造个人重新安置选择的想象力和强大的视觉表现。本研究旨在填补这一空白，并研究社会经济和时间经验，在这些经验中，新的发展模式可以在未来的背景下进行。此外，这将有助于促进对政策制定者和政府之间经济或社会等总体广义结构如何经常与个人和主观想象景观相矛盾的理解。目的：本研究的主要目的是构建和研究基于想象的个体叙事，以及它们如何反过来塑造聚落模式。此外，如果当地社区想要重新安置，该项目还旨在确定他们想要安置的潜在口袋。这些目标将在迅速变化的气候及其相关灾害，特别是洪水之后进行调查。

This project explores the demographics and physical futures of high-risk flood areas with a focus on lived imaginaries of inhabitants of Majuli in Assam, India. Disaster policies and plans draw heavily on quantitative data to map and mitigate against future flooding in Majuli; however, there remains a gap in understanding residents' experiential accounts of future risks in this region. This gap is problematic given that imagined futures heavily shape a community's relationship to place and decision-making processes such as the decision to migrate and when. This project will comprise a rich in-depth study focusing on individual and collective testimonies that address imaginaries of flood and place-based attachments in Majuli (and similar islands). Deeper insights into these imaginaries of possible futures based on the affective relation to place are vital to help communities understand and better respond to the inevitable challenges that lie ahead in terms of living in high flood-risk regions and adapting to wider climate change.Based on innovative futuristic methodologies, this project promises to yield not only important planning information to help understand the impacts of climate change in Majuli, but also provide a framework for better insights into, and understanding of, community-based responses in other flood-prone regions. Background of the study: The residents of Brahmaputra valley are facing severe consequences in the wake of climate change; ranging from temperature rises, annual peak flows and unpredictable seasonal precipitation fluctuations. Such events compel us to think through climate futures amid dystopian environmental contexts. Climate change narratives charged by a pro-environmental attitude demonstrate the affective power of places. This approach would challenge the radical scientific approach and open up new forms of community adaptation strategies and planning responses. Climate change-induced mobilities are always projected as issues of the future, however climate crisis is not a futuristic threat anymore. Based on future imaginaries of environmental destruction in disaster-prone areas (floods, in the given context), people knowingly or unknowingly push themselves towards safer areas which in turn help in shaping those spaces. Along with it, political economy studies of climate change focus on the construction of narratives around climate change and consequently how they are applied. Scholarship based on feminist political ecology argues that perceptions of environmental risks vary depending on the social positioning of the people based on power structures. The intersectional lens of this approach hence necessitates the inclusion of social differences based on gender, ethnicity, etc. in accommodating individual experiences in the future visionaries of place-making. However, missing from the literature are the imaginaries and robust visual representations that shape individual choices regarding resettlement. This research aims to fill this gap and study the socio-economic and temporal experiences within which new models of developments can be contextualized in the future. Further, this would help advance understanding of how overarching generalized constructions, like economy or society, among policymakers and governments, often contradict the individual and subjective imaginary landscapes. Objectives: The prime objective of the proposed research is to construct and study individual narratives based on imaginaries and how do they shape settlement patterns in return. Additionally, if the local communities envision resettlement, the project also aims to identify the potential pockets where they imagine doing it. The objectives will be investigated in the wake of rapidly changing climate and its associated disasters, specifically floods.