Critical Carbon: Rethinking Energy and Heritage in the Asia Pacific
As Sheila Jasanoff has noted, climate change is often cast as being “impersonal, apolitical, and universal” when in fact, it requires quite the opposite: decarbonizing and its role in the built environment demands the “subjective, situated and normative imaginations of human actors.”1 This special issue of Future Anterior seeks to explore heritage as a realm within which such a critical imagination can be developed. We invite critiques of decarbonization discourse that use heritage as a lens for theorizing and historicizing the contemporary notions of carbon. In particular, we invite critiques that bring into focus the differences in cultural and ethical values associated with decarbonizing in the Southeast Asia Pacific region. This issue seeks to highlight theories and histories emerging within the Southeast Asia Pacific region that deploy heritage conservation in advancing more equitable understandings of decarbonization.
