【宏觀視野】Joni Adamson, "Humanities for the Environment"

【宏觀視野】

Humanities for the Environment

Joni Adamson

Professor, Environmental Humanities, Department of English Arizona State University.

The Humanities for the Environment (HfE) website has been designed to enhance collaborative endeavors both in the expanding network of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and in new scholarly and digital humanities communities developing around the world. In its first phase, the HfE Project was part of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant titled, Integrating the Humanities Across National Boundaries, awarded to the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. Rather than defining a single research agenda adequate to this inquiry, the HfE pilot grant has been distributed to three universities. Each has spent the first two years of the project (2013-2014) addressing particular thematic strains within what is becoming to be known as the “Anthropocene humanities.”

The formal mechanism for energizing networking across these international sites is the “Observatory.” Acting as hubs for other sites throughout their regions, each of three HfE Observatories, in Europe, Australia-Pacific, and North America, is designed as a localized node within an international network of humanities centers and institutes. As imagined by HfE researchers, the word “observatory” quickens the imagination and intervenes in traditional humanities research methodologies. It can refer to a laboratory, a tower offering a point of view, or, more specifically, a place whose purpose is the observation of phenomena, but with the caveat that “observation” is never neutral and that values, histories, archives, theories and affects, and ideologies and instruments provide both the ground and the frames for what we “see”—and make available—or curate—for others.

The three universities piloting this project include Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland (European Observatory), Sydney University in Sydney, Australia (Australia-Pacific Observatory), and Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona (North American Observatory). Each Observatory aims to bring scholars from their own nations and regions together with scholars from around the world to engage in a wide range of programs, including research support, public humanities programs, fellowship programs, activism and advocacy on issues of educational and cultural policy, digital humanities programs, and partnerships with arts organizations.

In its pilot phase, Humanities for the Environment has been animated by questions about the role of the humanities in the Anthropocene, a concept being accepted by a growing number of scientists, which suggests that we have entered a time in which human activity is significantly reshaping the geological future of the planet. In response, the projects featured on the website examine how long-standing definitional protocols of the humanities should be reshaped within a time of planetary crisis and change. To date, the HfE international collaboration has produced scalable and replicable research and pedagogical projects as well as books, articles, media, and conferences that promote environmental humanities methodologies and content. These materials can all be found on the HfE website.

In the second phase of the project, initiated after an international meeting was held in Tempe, Arizona, in May 2015, a new 2.0 website was launched and a new agenda to expand the network of Observatories. The website development team, led by Professor of Environmental Humanities, Joni Adamson, at Arizona State University, is continuing to add new materials that aim to facilitate the creation of Observatories in Asia and Africa. The conferences, projects and publications of each new Observatory will be featured on the website.

Although located around the world, each Observatory is guided by some “Common Threads” that can be found on the website’s landing page. These shared ideas inform the outlooks, community projects and scholarship of the large group of international scholars networked globally through the HfE project. They include:

The role of humans

We recognize the role that humans have played in transforming?the?chemical, physical and biological processes of the Earth’s atmosphere, land surfaces and oceans?at an ever-increasing pace, leading?a wide range of scientists to propose that we are now living in?the Anthropocene,?a term that is catching the public's imagination, as it suggests that human activities have ramped up to become a geological force as significant as volcanic outbursts or meteorite impacts, and?requiring us to take responsibility and action?for the future of the planet and its inhabitants.??

Interdependencies

We acknowledge human interdependence with the natural world and seek in our work to re-envision concepts of justice to promote planetary health and reflect humans’ interconnection with other species.

The centrality of the Humanities

We honor the long history of arts and humanities disciplines in discussions of environmental risks, losses, and opportunities. That history demands the centrality of the arts and humanities in integrative platforms for developing policy and for addressing environmental issues in civil and academic life. We offer humanities-based practices that nurture collaboration and tap the creative potential of uncertainty in new collaborations among humanists and engineers, business leaders, government officials, and scientists.

Humanities innovations

We seek alternatives to dated notions of progress that focus solely on the future. Instead, we support innovative notions of human prospects shaped equally by the past, present, and the future. We study intertwined human and ecological histories and reassess human value systems with regard to the natural world and concepts of progress and success. We recognize various ways of knowing, including place-based and indigenous knowledges, as crucial to developing new approaches to human purpose and motivation.

Wicked problems

We propose to tackle the wicked problems presented by environmental challenges with humanities methodologies and content. Such problems have multiple causes, no single answers, and no quick technological fixes, and they often result from the actions of those who must solve them.

Environmental literacy

We consider environmental literacy, including knowledge of non-Western environmental precepts and practices, key to the broader objectives of the Humanities for the Environment initiatives. We ask that such literacy be required at all levels of education.

HfE Observatories are designed to be purposefully modular, with component parts and programming loosely integrated with other Observatories, but each engages with these common threads while also creating distinct projects, foci, audiences, methods, archives and arguments that investigate the contributions of the Anthropocene humanities to global discussions of accelerating social and environmental change.

*Link About This Article

Humanities for the Environment international website:

http://hfe-observatories.org

Common Threads:

http://hfe-observatories.org/common-threads/