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Filming sea‐level rise: media encounters and memory work in the Indian Sundarbans
Author(s) -
Harms Arne
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.12856
Subject(s) - futures contract , dystopia , boom , collective memory , spectacle , memory work , pacific islanders , visibility , history , anthropocene , aesthetics , work (physics) , sociology , media studies , geography , environmental ethics , political science , art , engineering , anthropology , ethnic group , geology , oceanography , business , philosophy , finance , epistemology , law , mechanical engineering , meteorology
In this article, I discuss social consequences of the visualization of climate change. I focus on encounters between film crews and displaced islanders on rapidly eroding islands at the sea‐facing edge of the Indian Sundarbans. As these islands have become the epitome of global environmental damage and dystopian futures, film crews regularly travel here to produce captivating footage on degradation and displacement. I first situate the ensuing encounters in global regimes of visibility and infrastructural possibilities. Building on that, I argue that these encounters set forth what I call unintentional memory work. By virtue of being a spectacle, by enabling a return to the film subjects’ former homes, and by staging acts of remembering, film teams unintentionally induce a reworking of memories and, at times, the production of new memories. In both instances, particular pasts are prioritized and imbued with a sense of urgency and relevance to foreign film teams and global audiences. I frame these media encounters as interfaces through which global anxieties about Anthropocene futures become implicated in the fashioning of selves on remote shores.