- Convenors:
-
Nicola Mai
(University of Leicester)
Johannes Sjöberg (University of Manchester)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites contributions from scholars, artists, activists and other practitioners making local and global attempts to respond to the challenges produced by climate change visible and imaginable by adopting ethnographic and co-creative approaches.
Long Abstract:
The imagination of environmentally sustainable futures has become obfuscated by the tangible onset of climate change and its devastating effects, while efforts to contain it keep being thwarted by the toxic imperatives of fossil fuel neoliberalism.
Marginalised communities in low-emitting countries in the Global South, as well as in peripheral areas of the polluting Global North are being disproportionally affected by environmentally-related forms of violence, exclusion and harm building on existing and emerging inequalities.
Mainstream media representation saturated with images relaying the catastrophic impact of climate change on local communities risks engendering a sense of compassion fatigue, impotence, denial and fatalism, which further contributes to making environmentally sustainable futures increasingly unimaginable.
Voices, perspectives and experiences of people directly concerned with the imagination and enactment of sustainable futures are needed to inform global and local theorisations, policies and interventions addressing the consequences of climate change and environmental crime and harms on their lives and rights.
This panel invites contributions from scholars, artists, activists and other practitioners making local and global attempts to respond to the challenges produced by climate change visible and imaginable by adopting ethnographic and co-creative approaches.
In addition to standard papers the panel will also facilitate presentations of photo, video and audio clips as well as live presentations engaging with (un)imaginable futures. We particularly welcome contributions adopting an innovative 'sensory' epistemological approach to confront and address environmental crimes, harms, and injustices by developing 'new languages and sensibilities: textual, non-textual, sonic, and cinematic' (Redmon 2018)
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 March, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
One of the methods I use in my research "Analysis of the relationship between anthropogenic climate change and local practices towards intangible cultural heritage" is visual documentation. The presentation will consist of the empirical material produced by this time and ideas for its further use.
Paper long abstract:
Between October 2022 and September 2023, I am conducting a pilot field research titled "Analysis of the relationship between anthropogenic climate change and local practices towards intangible cultural heritage", subsidized by the Polish National Science Center (No. DEC-2022/06/X/HS2/00741). It focuses on the impact that the climate crisis has on rituals and customs related to the growing season, the annual snow cycle and water level. Seven case studies are phenomena related to natural environment and inscribed on the Polish national list of intangible cultural heritage: 1) requiring specific meteorological conditions - Kumoterka Races, 2) related to the growing season and plants - two Corpus Christi Processions with the tradition of floral carpets; Basketry; Sowing hearts and crosses in fields and 3) dependent on surface water levels – Traditional rafting riding. The research aims to reflect on the strategies towards tradition in the context of the climate crisis and empowerment local communities, who have the right not only to be informed about the consequences of climate change but to generate concrete solutions. The research work will be embedded in ethnoclimatology (Orlove 2002, Strauss 2018), climate ethnography (Crate 2011) and anthropology of folklore (Burszta 1987, Kowalski 1990, Sulima 2010). One of the methods I will use is visual documentation - primarily photograps, but also short documentary clips. In my speech, I would like to present the visual empirical material that I will manage to produce by this time and also ideas for its further use.
Paper short abstract:
There is growing recognition on the effects that human activities have had on the functioning of the planet. This recognition has, in turn, resulted in more actions, or, more often, calls to action, that have seldom sought to restore the stories driving humans towards their own destruction.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past five decades a growing public and scientific recognition on the effects that human activities have had on the biophysical functioning of the planet has come about. This recognition has, in turn, resulted in actions, or, more often, calls to action, that have seldom sought to address and perhaps restore the underlying stories driving humans towards their own destruction. This paper will seek to explore some practical ideas and examples, in terms of film techniques and narratives, that would both incorporate and elevate diverse ways of seeing the world and restore our potential to imagine alternative, less grueling, realities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore climate change as an injustice in relation to future generations and ask if ethno science fiction as an ethnographic film method could contribute to a ‘temporal proximity’, encouraging critical debate, speculation and sympathy in relation to the lives of future generations.
Paper long abstract:
Official and governmental reports on the effects of climate change are rarely read and do not play a significant part in the everyday life-worlds of most British people. More immediate concerns are often prioritized, and yet, media coverage about environmental disasters and scientific predictions about future environmental threats still play on the imagination of individuals. I refer to this relation as ‘temporal proximity’. This is reflected in the ethno science fiction film Call Me Back (Sjöberg, 2020) of the protagonist James having a phone conversation with his past, present and future selves between 2014 and 2056.
The hierarchy that controls James' perception of the importance of future challenges is similar to news presentations in media, depending on the cultural proximity the audience feels in relation to the news topic. Straubhaar explains cultural proximity as ‘[…] the tendency to prefer media products from one’s own culture or the most similar possible culture’ (Straubhaar 2003: 85). Ethnographic films have traditionally contributed to cultural proximity among the audience by bridging the different with the familiar and mediating complex cultural understanding. Similarly, ethno science fictions present the possibility to create complex understanding and sympathy for future generations – a temporal proximity. Abstract ideas about the future become concrete problems and possibilities as they are imagined and discussed with the audience as an attempt to approach injustice due to the consequence that climate change will have for future generations.