Author: globaldiscourseblog

Concretise, situate, democratise: The Museum of Carbon Ruins

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Artificial grass
Grass

Paul Graham Raven is a postdoctoral researcher for Lund University, Sweden (paul@paulgrahamraven.com)

This blog relates to the Global Discourse article Paul G. Raven and Johannes Stripple: Touring the carbon ruins: towards an ethics of speculative decarbonisation

The Museum of Carbon Ruins is… well, we’re still not sure how to categorise it, in truth. Is it an art intervention? An immersive research exhibit on decarbonisation? Climate change theatre? It’s all of these things, in a way – the common thread being the creation of a space of speculation about climate change, and how we might adapt to it.

More prosaically, the Museum of Carbon Ruins (MCR) is a set of vitrines (or an antique suitcase, depending on the venue) full of familiar objects and images, which are reframed for the museum’s ‘visitors’ by researchers performing the role of curators or guides to the museum itself, which purports to ‘exist’ in 2050 or thereabouts.

If you’re wondering what the point is, you’re not the first! However, we flatter ourselves that most of the museum’s ‘visitors’ have grasped it, even if they haven’t taken away exactly the same point as one another. It’s in the nature of the thing that describing it can’t come close to reproducing it – and I might go so far as to say that’s the point. But what of speculative methods in general? Why are we academics messing around with the tools of science fiction, product design and participatory theatre? I have three answers, or three aspects of a single answer: the creation of speculative climate futures can serve to concretise the challenge, situate the consequences and democratise the discussion.

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From Anthropocene to Chthulucene – Staying with Speculation: Natures, Futures, Politics

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Portrait of Greta Thunberg

Dr Christine Mortimer is an International Teaching Fellow in Management and Organisational Behaviour, Lancaster University (c.mortimer1@lancaster.ac.uk) and Dr Malé Lujan Escalante is Lecturer in the Centre for Innovation, University of Bristol (male.lujane@bristol.ac.uk)

This blog post relates to the Global Discourse article Luke Moffat, Christine J. Mortimer & Maria Luhan Escalante: Introduction

‘We-all of us on Terra-live in disturbing times, mixed up times, troubling and turbid times’. ‘Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places’ (Haraway, Staying with Trouble).

Donna Haraway in her book, ‘Staying with Trouble’ (2016), articulates the future that we are now living in, every single one of us. Since December 2019, when the world first heard, from Wuhan in China, the news of a new pneumonia like virus, 2020 became the year that we all have been encouraged to believe that as a species we are in a global war against an unseen enemy. Through the pandemic the idea of ‘a battle with nature’ has been consistently voiced in the media, ‘Army prepares for battle against invisible enemy as Nightingale Hospital set to open.  The closing of national borders globally, echoes the events from World War 1 and 2. The news headlines for ‘frontline’ deaths are now over 2 million people. However, this does not consider the exponential numbers of people that Covid-19 has personally affected.

Within the introduction to Staying with Speculation: Natures, Futures, Politics are these words, ‘The questions of what speculation is, what it means, and what it is for, touch and trouble the pieces of work in this issue. As nature begins to “speak back” at our various misdemeanours, exploitations, and violence’s, the urgency of tackling the messy, unpredictable, volatile and multiple materials of possible futures is thrown into stark relief’. And, here we are in a place and space where nature has spoken back urgently to the ‘human-centred’ view of our relationships with this beautifully diverse ‘worlds within world’ that we inhabit, in the form of the current pandemic, which has been with us over the curation of this special edition.

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A ‘State of Emergency’ or the ‘State of Exception’? Bahrain and Covid-19

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Sanaa Alsarghali is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, An-Najah National University (s.alsarghali@najah.edu) and author of The ‘State of Emergency’ or the ‘State of Exception’: Bahrain and COVID19

In response to the covid-19 pandemic, governments across the world have had to implement emergency measures to confront the crisis. These measures have come in various forms, ranging from economic stimulus packages to establishing varying degrees of lockdown. These types of rapidly implemented measures are deemed as emergency provisions, often declared though calling a ‘state of emergency’, as they allow governments to pass regulations without going through normal legislation procedures. Whilst many of these measures are appropriate, and indeed effective, in managing the spreads of the virus, the increasing frequency of emergency power use has caused discomfort in some quarters that fear constitutional norms and democratic principles could become subverted if emergency power use becomes normalised. At its most extreme, the use of emergency powers by governments become perpetuated indefinitely, a condition of governance that has been termed as a ‘state of exception’ in which the citizenship is unaware of this prolonged state of emergency and normalisation of emergency powers.

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Season of Migration from the Oil Lake: The Economy of Hatred in the Gulf States

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D. Rashed Alrasheed (zainrashedeen@gmail.com) is Fellow at the Richardson Institute, Lancaster University and author of COVID-19 and the Hatred of Expatriate Workers in the Gulf States

In 2020, the spread of the epidemic in the Gulf States among expats has led to an increase in hate speech towards them. According to Human Rights Watch, COVID-19 had spread rapidly among foreign workers in the Gulf States because they live in small, indecent and unsanitary housing. The Gulf governments have not been able to follow measures of social distancing among expatriates because their places of residence are overcrowded and they live in isolated and poor areas.

With the outbreak of the epidemic, health authorities in the Gulf countries have published through newspapers and TV channels the numbers of new infections among foreigners and citizens in order to alleviate the citizens’ fears. However, the publication of statistics in the media to distinguish the spread of the epidemic between expatriates and citizens has led to an increase in hate speech towards foreign workers. Although there are political and social reasons for xenophobia, economic factors have a major impact on the growth of hate speech against expat workers.

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Gulf States and Islamist Responses to Covid-19: a changing relationship.

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Lucia Ardovini (lucia.ardovini@ui.se) is a Research Associate at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs and author of Gulf States and Islamist Responses to COVID19: A Changing Relationship

The outbreak of Covid-19 and its quick spread across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the Gulf is shining a light on the unpreparedness of states and societies that, long before the pandemic, were already struggling to cope with the effects of decades of social unrest, failing state institutions, interrupted political transitions, civil wars and proxy conflicts. In turn, different state reactions to Covid-19 are also exposing glaring differences in state capacity and economic resources.

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