sallyleggo |
Climate Change and the Museum sector Ten Reflections from the Hot Science, Global Citizens symposium |
2011.05.18 00:47:21 | |
[Article by Bob Hodge] These ten points are intended to bring together many individual points made by various participants, organised to promote and integrate thought and action. Each point begins with a proposition, which is expanded into a brief discussion, followed by ideas for and about museums and science centres as sites for action. The reflections draw on Symposium contributions from Fiona Cameron, Dawn Casey, Graham Durrant, Seb Chan, Elaine Heumann Gurian, myself, Frank Howarth, David Karoly, Lynda Kelly, Emlyn Koster, Declan Kuch, Wayne LaBar, Giles Lane, Tara Morelos, Brett Neilson, Saffron O'Neill, and Juan Salazar, with special thanks to Mike Hulme.
Tags: #hotscience | climate change | hot science global citizens | reflections | Bob Hodge Comments 24 | Hits: 9030 | Read more... |
lyndakelly |
Public Lecture: Restructuring climate policy for a partisan era |
2011.05.04 06:31:39 | |
Professor Mike Hulme, Restructuring climate policy for a partisan era Thursday 5th May Turner Hall, TAFE, Maryann Street, Ultimo 5.30pm Drinks, 6pm Lecture
I suggest that our ultimate goal is not to ‘stop climate change’. We have mistaken the means for the end. Our goal is surely to ensure that the basic human needs of the world’s growing population are adequately met; that we move towards a development paradigm where we are living within our techno-ecological means and not beyond them; and that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from a changing climate - distinguishing whether those risks and dangers are natural or not is hardly the point. It is not more certain scientific predictions that we need; nor a charismatic leader to arise from ‘the east’; nor grand dreams of creating a global thermostat in the sky above. It is what Sheila Jasanoff has referred to as the ‘technologies of humility’ – ‘disciplined methods to accommodate the partiality of scientific knowledge and to act under irredeemable uncertainty’ - that will offer us the best prospects for taming the risks of climate change. Tags: #hotscience | climate change | Mike Hulme | hot science global citizens Comments 28 | Hits: 2588 | Read more... |
lyndakelly |
Affect as a modality for change |
2011.05.04 06:05:00 | |
Scott East, Centre for Cultural Research, UWS: Affect as a modality for change
It is common to acknowledge that audiences connect with museums in various ways, but what does this mean for a museum seeking to be socially relevant? Museums often see their role as delivering quality information and education. Drawing on research around contemporary museum exhibitions, the paper explores the multi-sensory experiential spaces of these exhibitions where quality information and logic are only a few of the things at work. Engaging with the risky and fickle-world of responses requires active experimentation and responsiveness rather than a check-list approach of good practice. Provocatively the paper will suggest the space of museums already contains the directions needed for change. Tags: #hotscience | climate change | hot science global citizens Comments 42 | Hits: 3994 | Read more... |
lyndakelly |
Museums and the Global Governance of Climate Change |
2011.05.03 21:24:34 | |
Associate Professor Brett Neilson, Centre for Cultural Research, UWS: Changing Institutional Climates: Museums and the Global Governance of Climate Change
In the build-up to the United Nations climate conference held in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, Connie Hedegaard, the chairperson of the event and current European Commissioner for Climate Action, declared that any failure to reach a political agreement at this meeting would be ‘not just about climate’. Such an outcome, she said, would show ‘the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century’. This paper interrogates the relevance of this statement for the global governance of climate change in the light of the outcomes of the Copenhagen conference.
If the institutions that comprise the ‘global democratic system’ are inadequate to meet the challenge of climate change, what are the new institutional forms that must emerge to face this task? Focusing on the role of museums and their relations with publics, social movements and electronic networks, the paper suggests that the emergence of such new institutional forms requires mutual interactions between existing social institutions and decentralized networks committed to practices of social collaboration and political experimentation. Tags: #hotscience | climate change | hot science global citizens Comments 27 | Hits: 1951 | Read more... |
lyndakelly |
Why we disagree about climate change |
2011.05.03 21:21:25 | |
Our Symposium Keynote speaker, Professor Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia Climate change is not “a problem” waiting for “a solution”. Complex, or “wicked”, issues such as climate change do not get solved by doing better science or by finding technological fixes. Rather, climate change becomes an idea and as it travels through our various social worlds it engages with the full parade of human endeavours, conflicts and imaginative creations. Based on some of the ideas contained in my recent book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, this lecture dissects this idea of climate change – where it came from, how we study it, what it means to different people in different places and why we disagree about it. We disagree about the significance of the risks it poses. We disagree about who is responsible for causing these risks. And we disagree about what should be done about climate change – and by whom.
There is no single voice that speaks for climate. The lecture also develops a different way of approaching the idea of climate change and of working with it. Rather than seeing “stopping climate change” as the universal project around which the world must be mobilised at all costs, the idea of climate change gives us new resources – new insights, new vocabularies, new myths – which can be used creatively in our bewildering diversity of human projects. We must use the idea of climate change to open up new spaces for dissent, innovation and change, rather than seek to align the world in search of one unattainable utopia. Tags: #hotscience | climate change | Mike Hulme | hot science global citizens Comments 26 | Hits: 2092 | Read more... |