Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COSMOVIS (Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-03-01 bis 2023-08-31
COSMOVIS explores what global environmental initiatives of the future will look like in China and Russia, two major world powers in Asia, by setting forth two key research questions: (1) How can scientists and indigenous people jointly manage climate change in regions of global climatic vulnerability and (2) What are the geopolitical causes of climate change and the policies that surround it? Two interdisciplinary research teams – the ‘China Team’ at King’s College London and the ‘Russia Team’ at the University of Manchester – have been assembled to explore these questions among indigenous populations in China and Russia. The project teams are composed of social anthropologists, historians and philosophers of science, and a philosopher of ethics. Each project member is collaborating with research partners in China and Russia, through anthropological fieldwork or qualitative interview-based research. Many of our research partners are indigenous people whose own expertise spans the natural sciences (especially permafrost studies, meteorology, forestry, and environmental science) and the social sciences (including ethnohistory, ethnology, and social anthropology). Some of our research partners are local custodians of folk culture, religious specialists, agro-pastoralists, herders, or hunters in Southwest China and Siberia. Bringing together natural and social scientists, indigenous leaders, religious specialists, and ordinary people at the ethnic borderlands of China and Russia, COSMOVIS sets out to foster the new ‘cosmological visions’ that indigenous people and scientists are currently crafting for managing climate change in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
A cosmological vision is built upon culturally specific and religious ways of knowing or being in the world, metaphysical reflections on the universe, and often certain astronomical elements – all of which indigenous people in Southwest China, Siberia, and elsewhere tend to combine with practical environmental knowledge about their own lands that has been built up over generations. Climate change in the research sites of both project teams is currently accelerating due to past and present deforestation, which feeds global market demands for wood, paper, and other forest-derived resources even as it encourages forest fires and, in Siberia, permafrost melt that is releasing carbon dioxide, methane, and mercury at rates faster than carbon capture technologies of the future are predicted to be able to manage. Novel cosmological visions that take on board indigenous environmental knowledge and animistic sensibilities of how to relate to humans, animals, plants, things, forces of nature, spirits, and sometimes even ancestors, transcendent gods, robots, or science itself are needed to uncover innovative ways of coping with climate change. Lessons gathered now from the temperate highlands and uplands of Southwest China and the boreal mountains of the Siberian Arctic will provide insights, and potentially even a roadmap, for how societies across the globe might best navigate the vicissitudes of climate change.
A cosmological vision is built upon culturally specific and religious ways of knowing or being in the world, metaphysical reflections on the universe, and often certain astronomical elements – all of which indigenous people in Southwest China, Siberia, and elsewhere tend to combine with practical environmental knowledge about their own lands that has been built up over generations. Climate change in the research sites of both project teams is currently accelerating due to past and present deforestation, which feeds global market demands for wood, paper, and other forest-derived resources even as it encourages forest fires and, in Siberia, permafrost melt that is releasing carbon dioxide, methane, and mercury at rates faster than carbon capture technologies of the future are predicted to be able to manage. Novel cosmological visions that take on board indigenous environmental knowledge and animistic sensibilities of how to relate to humans, animals, plants, things, forces of nature, spirits, and sometimes even ancestors, transcendent gods, robots, or science itself are needed to uncover innovative ways of coping with climate change. Lessons gathered now from the temperate highlands and uplands of Southwest China and the boreal mountains of the Siberian Arctic will provide insights, and potentially even a roadmap, for how societies across the globe might best navigate the vicissitudes of climate change.
Both an academic and a practical intervention, COSMOVIS fosters dialogues between indigenous people and scientists so they can mutually inform each other’s approaches to climate change. The project teams are mapping the policies and geopolitics of climate change in China and Russia, exploring how collaborations between indigenous people and scientists can benefit both parties. Members of both COSMOVIS project teams are publishing new findings on the interface between indigenous and natural scientific approaches to climate change in China and Russia from the perspectives of social anthropology, the philosophy of ethics, and the history and philosophy of science. They are working with indigenous people in Siberia and Southwest China, bringing them into conversation with scientists of climate change so that both parties can get more subtle data than often comes from working alone. COSMOVIS is setting in motion feedback loops between indigenous people and scientists, who can advocate for each other, in order to enable them to translate shared findings into visions that everyone can commit to.
Going beyond the state of the art, COSMOVIS explores how indigenous people and scientists in Southwest China and Siberia approach their environments on practical and religious terms that are best understood as ‘cosmo-ecological’. Climate change is a problem that ultimately must be managed by everyone on earth, through knowledge and practices informed by generations of living in specific landscapes, different modes of science, and diverse kinds of religion. Throwing light on the cosmo-ecologies of indigenous people in Southwest China and Siberia, the project offers them a serious place at the tables of scientific environmental discussion and planning, both within and beyond the hinterlands of China and Russia. Expected results include a number of academic monographs, articles, and edited volumes produced by the project teams based on fieldwork findings from Siberia and Southwest China, workshops held in these locations, and international conferences with indigenous research partners from these fieldwork sites. Project publications and conferences will, among other things, throw light on how scientists and indigenous people jointly manage a climate change that is shaped as much by geopolitics as it is by cosmological visions of the future.