Doctoral Dissertation Proposal: Benjamin Wang: Contamined Landscapes: Explosive Remnants of War in Sudan

这篇博士论文探讨了当地居民、非政府组织、联合国和其他发展集团以及决策者如何实际构建和从概念上理解苏丹受战争遗留爆炸物（主要是地雷）污染的环境。其他战争遗留爆炸物包括未爆炸的火箭和埋在地下的迫击炮弹，它们在发射后很久可能爆炸。在冲突结束后很久，平民区仍有潜伏爆炸物，这极大地改变了当地环境和社区与该环境的互动，以及人们对爆炸技术和景观的理解。通过历史和人种学的方法，本文旨在揭露和可见的感知，互动和管理过程中的污染景观，特别是在苏丹当地社区。因此，这项研究部分是对现有的关于全球范围内对受污染景观的反应的文献的回应。虽然这些文献正确地指出，冲突造成的爆炸性技术污染了大量的景观，但污染景观中的当地知识被抽象化，从而模糊了知识生产的背景以及当地的意义和经验。第一，它旨在解决苏丹缺乏关于爆炸技术对环境影响的学术研究的问题，特别是在达尔富尔各州以外地区。第二，它将环境史和科学技术研究之间的分析动态与当代政策决定，特别是与发展有关的政策决定联系起来。这些研究结果将与学术研究人员，政策制定者和非政府活动家有关。这项研究将审查国家档案馆现代军事记录股、联合国档案馆、詹姆斯麦迪逊大学排雷行动信息中心和瑞士日内瓦国际人道主义排雷中心的档案。口述历史和人种学观察将在一个致力于清除地雷的非政府组织总部和苏丹受影响的各州进行。

This doctoral dissertation examines how local populations, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and other development groups, and policymakers physically construct and conceptually understand environments contaminated by explosive remnants of war (principally landmines) in Sudan. Other explosive remnants of war include unexploded rockets and mortars in the ground that can explode long after being fired. The presence of latent explosives in civilian areas long after a conflict ends significantly alters the local environment and the interactions communities have with that environment, as well as how the explosive technologies and landscapes are understood. Through historical and ethnographic methods, this dissertation seeks to unmask and make visible the processes of perception, interaction, and management within a contaminated landscape, particularly by local communities in Sudan. This study is thus in part a response to the existing body of literature on global scale responses to contaminated landscapes. While such literature rightly points to the profusion of landscapes contaminated with explosive technologies that result from conflict, the local knowledge in a contaminated landscape becomes abstracted, thus obscuring the context of knowledge production as well as local meanings and experiences.This project makes several contributions. First, it aims to address the lack of scholarship on the environmental impacts of explosive technologies in Sudan, especially away from the Darfur states. Second, it connects the analytical dynamic between environmental history and science and technology studies to contemporary policy decisions, particularly those pertaining to development. These research findings will be relevant to academic researchers, policymakers, and nongovernmental activists. This study will examine the archives at the Modern Military Records unit of the National Archives, the UN Archives, the Mine Action Information Center at James Madison University and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining in Switzerland. Oral histories and ethnographic observation will be conducted at the headquarters of an NGO dedicated to clearing landmines and in affected states of Sudan.