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想法，特别是想象中的过去人与自然之间的关系，是如何制约现在迫切创造的未来，以追求“可持续性”和避免“环境危机”。它探讨了传统的、土著的和地方的人与自然关系的概念与现代市场方法创造“绿色”未来的新概念之间的紧张关系。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实现这一目标。“环境变化”和“可持续性”等问题很复杂，需要跨学科的分析。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。我们的现场位置概括了许多当代情况下存在的紧张局势。在这里，人类与自然关系的新旧概念正在激烈地碰撞，因为铀等资源是从地球上一些最古老的文化以及高度珍贵（和濒危）的动植物物种的家园中提取的。通过与企业，国家，非政府组织和地方环境中的不同参与者进行接触，我们将探索环境变化的理解，为一系列正在创建，营销和交换的新的“绿色”实体提供信息，以产生可持续性。我们将把这些“可持续性对象”与当地土著文化中的景观和其他物种的构思和记忆方式并列，如故事，歌曲，舞蹈和治疗仪式中的编码。我们选择的、相互关联的和商品化的“绿色东西”是，i）“绿色铀”（之所以这么说，是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所造成的环境损害被其他地方的保护活动所抵消），iii）源自土著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。这项研究将提高人文学科的理解如何新的“绿色”对象的行为，并被认为是行动，“执行可持续性”，从而将过去的社会和环境健康向前转移到未来。我们将通过深入分析对环境变化的看法来补充这一点，并通过整理和展示重复的景观照片来辅助。在这些照片中，当代照片揭示了自19世纪后期制作的早期档案图像以来景观的变化（或没有变化）。我们项目的一个关键和反复的组成部分是展示图像，音频和视频材料，从我们的研究，无论是在博物馆在温得和克和移动的展览在不同领域的背景下在纳米比亚。我们希望这能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。我们还将通过一个网址为www.futurepasts.net的项目网站促进公众参与。这些相互关联的研究链的结果将在另一个链中进行综合和理论化。这将研究哲学和伦理问题在不同的文化约束的人/自然关系的理解之间的接口。我们在这里的工作将充实出一个新的跨学科领域的“生态文化伦理”，认为可持续发展的概念与特定的过去，现在和未来的文化生产。不同的可持续性观点背后的相互竞争的道德原则的并列将汇集在一起，在项目的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.