That Time is Coming": speculative futures in depopulating rural Japan

本研究旨在探讨在人口迅速减少的日本农村社区中，对未来的猜测如何影响当前的思想和行动，以及如何利用这些猜测来促进共同创造更具包容性的可持续未来。由于有如此多的基于统计数据的未来预测，打算采取另一种方法：这项研究将包括与参与者合作制作一系列短片，每部短片都根据一个人唤起可能的未来。这些不同的推测将向当地决策者、记者和社区成员公开放映，以促进就可能的行动方针进行进一步对话。要做到这一点，它将借鉴感官民族志，电影制作，设计人类学和社会参与艺术，从而研究社会人类学的能力，在道德和创造性地干预长期的，大规模的问题在地方一级。

This research aims to explore how speculations about the future in a community in rapidly depopulating rural Japan are impacting present thought and action, and how these speculations can be used to facilitate the co-creation of more inclusive, sustainable futures. With so many future projections based on statistical data, the intention is to pursue an alternative approach: the study will include collaboration with participants to produce a series of short films, each evoking the possible future according to one individual. These differing speculations will be screened publicly to an audience of local policy makers, journalists and community members in an effort to stimulate further dialogue about possible courses of action. To do this, it will draw on sensory ethnography, filmmaking, design anthropology and socially engaged art, thus examining social anthropology's capacity to intervene ethically and creatively in long-term, large-scale issues at a local level.