WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 68% (MEDIUM) 00:00:03.300 --> 00:00:08.700 the more you read recent environmental anthropology you might get the impression that 00:00:08.700 --> 00:00:16.800 we've become obsessed with ruins. Here's a few examples there are books about rubble and about 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:25.000 Debris and about the ruins of capitalism and about waste Landing is one example are which is a way 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:32.049 of discursively creating places that can be ruined and there are NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:00:32.049 --> 00:00:38.400 many other examples as well so much so that recently some have proclaimed stuff like this that 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:47.400 Anthropology seems has become a science of ruins, and another similar trend is this which is writings on 00:00:47.400 --> 00:00:54.200 the end of nature and this has been especially a popular trope within environmental history it seems 00:00:54.200 --> 00:01:01.950 like ruins and end times are really fascinating to us right now and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:01:01.950 --> 00:01:09.500 so what does it mean to look at something as a ruin according to do Dawdy we seem to have a fascination 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:16.600 with ruins and attraction to ruin and we have been occupied with ruins there's this 00:01:16.600 --> 00:01:24.800 romantic view of ruins that plays a role in modernity itself she argues and the Contemporary 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:31.300 anthropology of ruins meanwhile has sought to resist romanticising ruins NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:01:31.300 --> 00:01:37.400 Our anthropological story of ruins as Dawdy puts it politically dystopic we write about 00:01:37.400 --> 00:01:43.800 ruins to criticise things to criticise things such as modernity and capitalism and colonialism and for 00:01:43.800 --> 00:01:50.200 contemporary anthropology it might seem like we seek out ruins because they confirmed to us our 00:01:50.200 --> 00:01:56.400 theories of modernity and capitalism the ruins of modernity might appear to confirm for us those 00:01:56.400 --> 00:02:01.950 theorists say that modernity was always just this story that people told themselves NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:02:01.950 --> 00:02:08.000 the story of progress and need to clear cut dividing lines which glossed over everything 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:18.500 that didn't fit. Ruins might point to the end not of nature but of the delusion that we can 00:02:18.500 --> 00:02:24.900 separate ourselves from nature or it might point to not the end of the world but the end of the 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:28.050 delusion of endless progress NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:02:28.050 --> 00:02:34.950 and we seem to be drawn to ruins now it's like a trainwreck we just can't take our eyes off of 00:02:34.950 --> 00:02:42.200 we watch the ruins of modernity within the holistic macabre fascination as if to say look we 00:02:42.200 --> 00:02:45.899 were right all along it's all going to shit NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:02:45.899 --> 00:02:55.100 so ruins can point to an end of modernity as this vision of the world but there's also a risk in our 00:02:55.100 --> 00:03:02.500 fascination with ruins it may play right into modernity's most dominant vision of time and so 00:03:02.500 --> 00:03:08.800 modernity's ways of thinking about time rest on the idea of a sudden temporal break that 00:03:08.800 --> 00:03:16.100 modernity is defined by a break in the flow of history and decisive point where pre-modern NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:03:16.100 --> 00:03:22.500 Turns to modern after which nothing is the same anymore and this by the way is the temporal break 00:03:22.500 --> 00:03:27.900 that's also reflected in and upheld by the division of labor between different fields like 00:03:27.900 --> 00:03:33.400 archaeologists who study Antiquity and social and cultural anthropologists in the Contemporary 00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:40.200 world and most anthropologists and archaeologists Dawdy claims still explicitly or implicitly 00:03:40.200 --> 00:03:46.350 subscribed to this modern image of time along with the assumption that modernity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:03:46.350 --> 00:03:53.600 is qualitatively distinct and different from what came before it. So the fascination with the ruins 00:03:53.600 --> 00:04:00.800 of modernity might introduce another such sudden temporal break not to the beginning point of 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:08.250 modernity or where modernity started this time an endpoint where progress ends so the ruins of modernity 00:04:08.250 --> 00:04:15.600 might point to the end of modernity but when making that end as sudden temporal break it becomes an 00:04:15.600 --> 00:04:16.399 endpoint within NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:04:16.399 --> 00:04:20.300 Modernity's own logic of time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:30.100 ruins then tell a story about time ruins point to the past, the present, and the future at the same 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:39.000 time and Dawdy has done research on life in the urban ruins of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:45.100 she writes the following and the ruins of Katrina like oneself elsewhere simultaneously evoked the 00:04:45.100 --> 00:04:50.950 past when a structure was once whole and complete the present as a state of decline NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:04:50.950 --> 00:04:58.000 abandonment or it front to Nature and the future as a stage setting for dystopia or more 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:06.700 rarely Utopia. We can say the same thing about ruin landscape and ruin nature they evoke a past 00:05:06.700 --> 00:05:14.000 when an environment was whole and complete a present of Decline and degradation and the future of 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:20.950 dystopia this ruin narrative while it does point to the end of progress and it disturbs NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:05:20.950 --> 00:05:27.300 that notion that we should strive for endless progress it is also and I quote Dawdy 00:05:27.300 --> 00:05:33.900 fundamentally linear in imagining end times as the terminus of a trajectory it works within 00:05:33.900 --> 00:05:42.600 modernities linear time and I really I think that a lot of people think about the environment in 00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:50.850 this way today through this linear imaginary of time they imagined Landscapes to be somewhere on this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:05:50.850 --> 00:05:58.300 near timeline that's already set this is like the filter that we see Landscapes through, and the 00:05:58.300 --> 00:06:04.500 problem is according to Dawdy if we think about ruins in this way we re-inscribe them 00:06:04.500 --> 00:06:12.500 modernities logic of time it becomes really becomes too linear it seems like yeah there's 00:06:12.500 --> 00:06:18.400 something within this Landscapes that are predestined it becomes almost eschatological almost 00:06:18.400 --> 00:06:20.850 millenarian says Dawdy at one point NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:26.950 which I take to suggest that when we describe these landscapes as a ruin there might be a 00:06:26.950 --> 00:06:31.700 risk that we aren't really talking about these Landscapes as much as we are solely using them as a 00:06:31.700 --> 00:06:40.300 new character to populate this age all Christian tale about end times and new beginnings NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:06:40.700 --> 00:06:47.850 but there is a different alternative there is a different way to make ruins tell a story about time 00:06:47.850 --> 00:06:54.700 they don't necessarily need to be re-inscribed modernities linear vision of time. We can look at a 00:06:54.700 --> 00:07:00.300 ruins in a different way one that avoids linear time when it does not rest on the modernity's 00:07:00.300 --> 00:07:08.600 assumptions about time, and this is where Dawdy draws inspiration from steampunk and the clock Punk 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:11.049 and science fiction and so what NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:07:11.049 --> 00:07:18.350 is steampunk or clock punk I bet some of you know it already and if you Google 00:07:18.350 --> 00:07:25.000 steampunk you get a lot of this Halloween costumes that are sort of old-timey Gothic looking and you 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:33.600 get a lot of like clockwork stuff and industrial looking stuff and mechanical stuff gears 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:41.050 and cogs and that sort of stuff and an intricate old time looking Machinery then everything has NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:07:41.050 --> 00:07:47.200 the same kind of brown color scheme and so this is an aesthetic but it's also a genre of 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:53.100 Science Fiction and it might also be seen as kind of a cultural commentary a commentary that is a 00:07:53.100 --> 00:08:02.900 criticism of modernities cult of newness as Dawdy puts it. So steampunk displays a mixing of the old 00:08:02.900 --> 00:08:10.400 with the new and in science fiction steampunk refers to works that describe worlds where futuristic 00:08:10.400 --> 00:08:11.050 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:08:11.050 --> 00:08:19.200 Technologies mixed with all-time me Aesthetics and Technologies and another word for that is 00:08:19.200 --> 00:08:26.700 associated with steam punk music is retro-futurism which points to this mixing of the 00:08:26.700 --> 00:08:33.000 old and the new right and so imagine the time machine but it's made with cogs and wheels and 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:40.799 Clockwork and stuff and it's typically is 19th century stuff the age of the steam engine and 00:08:40.799 --> 00:08:41.000 Mixed NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:48.250 In with futuristic stuff and clock punk I believe is even older stuff like the age of 00:08:48.250 --> 00:09:00.200 machinery and mechanisms mixed in with the futuristic technology. You 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:06.300 all know this stuff rather and the Netflix show the Umbrella Academy has elements of Steampunk and 00:09:06.300 --> 00:09:11.000 West World and also the Hunger Games and also some of those NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:18.100 Studio Ghibli films like Hal's Moving Castle I'm sure some of you have seen that a 00:09:18.100 --> 00:09:27.400 these are all movies with steampunk elements but for our purposes our 00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:37.400 academic purposes steampunk or clock punk shows an anti modern folding of time as 00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:40.950 Dawdy says it's a play with mixture NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:09:40.950 --> 00:09:49.000 of Futures and pasts it's a way of entangling different points in time in a nonlinear fashion 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:57.100 cycling back of the past into the future a future in the guise of the past an imaginary recycling 00:09:57.100 --> 00:10:03.900 of time so steampunk and clock Punk highlights the possibility the time May function differently than 00:10:03.900 --> 00:10:08.099 modernity's linear progressive version of time. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:10:08.099 --> 00:10:14.300 so what would clock punk anthropology be? well it would be an anthropologist that seeks actively 00:10:14.300 --> 00:10:21.400 to subvert linear time and to avoid modernities progressive time and it would be as as Dawdy 00:10:21.400 --> 00:10:28.500 points an anthropology of revolution without the mythical sense of rupture revolution as to 00:10:28.500 --> 00:10:34.700 revolve rather than to be born again revolution as a cycle something from the past towards the 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:36.450 future NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:10:36.450 --> 00:10:44.100 but what would clock punk environmental Anthropologist look like? Dawdy doesn't 00:10:44.100 --> 00:10:50.400 say so this is my interpretation and I think there are two things or perhaps one thing with two 00:10:50.400 --> 00:10:58.500 parts and that one thing is to avoid placing Landscapes on linear Progressive timeline and it would 00:10:58.500 --> 00:11:06.100 be to look at the Landscapes we study and not imagine them in our minds to be as NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:11:06.100 --> 00:11:16.450 Somewhere along a line going from pristine and natural to degraded present to completely ruin future 00:11:16.450 --> 00:11:25.599 and it will be perhaps to see landscapes not as a line as Dawdy points out 00:11:25.599 --> 00:11:35.000 and there are two parts to how one can go about trying to accomplish this I think and one part is to 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:36.050 try and avoid NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:11:36.050 --> 00:11:42.900 thinking that a landscape or environment had a starting point and to avoid imagining that 00:11:42.900 --> 00:11:50.900 there must have been some kind of Wilderness Point outside of history and and the second aspect is 00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:57.700 to try to see try to not see a ruined landscape as an endpoint and I think this second one is far 00:11:57.700 --> 00:12:04.400 more difficult for us to accept then the first one where we sort of know that environments 00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:05.700 didn't have NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:11.600 starting point but it's it's really difficult I think for us not to think about Landscapes around 00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:18.700 the world today is approaching some finality as on the way to being destroyed it's very difficult 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:24.500 for us not to look at a disappearing Glacier for instance like this in Iceland and not place 00:12:24.500 --> 00:12:30.849 it on a linear progressive modern timeline that moves toward an end point NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:12:30.849 --> 00:12:38.100 and you see the plaque here which is from from the funeral for the Glacier in Iceland it does 00:12:38.100 --> 00:12:45.400 exactly that it places the glacier on this linear timeline it evokes the past when the glacier 00:12:45.400 --> 00:12:51.800 was whole and complete a present in which is disappearing and an end point this dystopian end 00:12:51.800 --> 00:12:57.200 point future in which there are no glaciers at all and this is not to say that they're necessarily 00:12:57.200 --> 00:13:00.950 Wrong in anticipating that glaciers will disappear NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:13:00.950 --> 00:13:07.300 but to put it too bluntly Perhaps it is modernity's fault that they think about it like they do in 00:13:07.300 --> 00:13:12.100 this linear way progressing towards an end point.