Prognosis: visions of environmental futures

Mathews, Andrew S.; Barnes, Jessica

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12391

Cited by 62 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Based on speculation about such factors as the environment, health, and capital, anticipation is intricately associated with a logic of disaster management and attempts to prepare for a future defined by risk. Anthropologists have shown that administrators and planners increasingly respond to this futurity and its dimension of risk through ‘prognosis’ (Mathews and Barnes, 2016), regimes of preparedness (Samimian‐Darash, 2009), and manipulations of time (Guyer, 2007). When they conflate disaster with national security, regimes of anticipation increase government control over spaces, populations, and bodies (Lakoff and Collier, 2008; Collier and Lakoff, 2015).…”

Section: The Emotional Lives Of Disastersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas

Gagné

2019

Disasters

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A landslide occurred in the region of Zanskar in the Indian Himalayas in 2015, damming the Tsarap River, creating a lake that effectively became a ticking time bomb, threatening villagers downstream. During the period between the discovery of the natural dam and the bursting of the lake, the state's approach to disaster management plunged the local population into a situation where ‘technocratic time’ ruled, as government experts handled the impending disaster at a rhythm dictated by the production of studies and reports. Analysis of the temporality of disaster mitigation and preparedness measures during this anticipated flood, as well as of the factors that surrounded the events, reveals how attitudes towards the state shaped people's perceptions of these interventions. In Zanskar, the technocratic pace and the state's lack of transparency were seen as a form of oppression that further marginalised the region, in particular by subjecting its population to the process of waiting.

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Section: The Emotional Lives Of Disastersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas

Gagné

2019

Disasters

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“…At a basic level the physical strata of the underground are active, as was made all too clear in the September 2017 earthquake in Mexico, and organic materials come into contact and interact with each other. The biophysical characteristics of underground substances, like other resource materialities, provide affordances that shape but do not determine how they are engaged by people and industries (Barnes and Alatout 2012;Li 2015;Mathews and Barnes 2016;Richardson and Weszkalnys 2014). The stored energy of coal invites its burning for heat and energy, while the characteristics of water make it an "uncooperative commodity" that was difficult to privatize in England and Wales (Bakker 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

<b>Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation</b>

2018

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Rather than existing a priori, the underground comes to be through interlinked political, economic, cultural, and technoscientific practices and processes. Underlying each of these are issues of knowledge, expertise and power that STS is uniquely positioned to explore. In this thematic collection, our focus on the underground draws attention to the work, knowledge, and placemaking activities of those engaged in mining and energy development. We focus on how questions about extraction and burial are posed and deliberated through maps and models. More generally, we highlight the contributions of STS Underground, a network that in its nascent stage is helping to connect the many STS scholars who seek to use the underground as a source, site, and symbol for thinking of the future of the field, as well as their personal interventions as engaged scholars.

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“…Mathews and Barnes 2016). The natural sciences draw on paleoclimatic data and draft scenarios strongly focused on these parameters, whilst the development of scenarios that explore in greater depths the social dimensions of future climate change fall under the purview of those producing literary fiction (Johns-Putra 2016; Nikoleris et al 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Past-Forwarding Ancient Calamities. Pathways for Making Archaeology Relevant in Disaster Risk Reduction Research

Riede

2017

Humanities

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Despite the alleged mastery of humans over nature, contemporary societies are acutely vulnerable to natural hazards. In interaction with vulnerable communities, these transform into catastrophes. In a deep historical perspective, human communities of many different kinds have been affected by numerous kinds of natural disasters that may provide useful data for scenario-based risk reduction measures vis-à-vis future calamities. The low frequency of high magnitude hazards necessitates a deep time perspective for understanding both the natural and human dimensions of such events in an evidence-based manner. This paper focusses on the eruption of the Laacher See volcano in western Germany about 13,000 years ago as an example of such a rare, but potentially highly devastating event. It merges Lee Clarke's sociological argument for also thinking about such very rare events in disaster planning and David Staley's notion of thinking historically about the future in order to 'past-forward' such information on past constellations of vulnerability and resilience. 'Past-forwarding' is here intended to signal the use of such deep historical information in concerns for contemporary and future resilience. This paper outlines two pathways for making archaeological information on past extreme environmental events relevant in disaster risk reduction: First, the combination of information from the geosciences and the humanities holds the potential to transform ancient hazards from matters of fact to matters of concern and, hence, to more effectively raise awareness of the issues concerned. Second, in addition to information on past calamities feeding into preparatory scenarios, I argue that the well-established outreach channels available to the humanities (museums, in particular) provide powerful platforms for communication to multiple publics.

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Prognosis: visions of environmental futures

Cited by 62 publications

References 92 publications

Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas

Waiting for the flood: technocratic time and impending disaster in the Himalayas

<b>Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation</b>

Past-Forwarding Ancient Calamities. Pathways for Making Archaeology Relevant in Disaster Risk Reduction Research

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