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Short abstract:

This paper examines gaps between theory and practice in connecting past, present, and future in memory studies, heritage studies, and oral history. Drawing from Soy Stories, a trans-disciplinary project, it bridges these divides for effective interventions in sustainable future imaginaries.

Long abstract:

“‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ says the White Queen to Alice.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Over the last decades, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological questions regarding the relationship between the past, present and future have risen in fields that would previously focus primarily on just a single of these temporal dimensions. Fields such as memory studies, heritage studies, applied history, and a re-emergent oral history focused on environmental narratives of the Anthropocene, each seek a connection between these temporal dimensions in attempts to connect studies of the past to issues of the present and future. (Olick, Sierp, & Wüstenberg, 2023; Harrison, Dias & Kristiansen, 2023; Sloan & Cave, 2022)

However, despite valuable contributions to academic and public discourse, disconnects persist between the aspirations outlined in the theoretical frameworks of these incipient disciplines, and the methodological practices that they bring about. (van de Voort, 2021)

This paper comes from the methodological engine room of the trans-disciplinary project Soy Stories - which investigates connected histories of sustainability challenges associated with large-scale soy cultivation in Brazil and soy-based intensive animal farming in the Netherlands. Furthermore, Soy Stories investigates how historical knowledge may contribute to more just and connected sustainable future imaginaries.

By addressing conceptual, theoretical and methodological gaps arising from these fields of study, this paper will seek to contribute to approaches that will allow transformative projects - such as Soy Stories - to perform situated interventions (Zuiderent-Jerak 2015) in projects connecting past, present and future imaginaries.