Lost World of the Nearby: Minimal Ethics on Govan Graving Docks

Abstract

This article considers what it means to do engaged geohumanities research on a fated landscape. The focus falls on a rewilded ruined landscape in the city of Glasgow, Govan Graving Docks, a significant cultural landscape that now faces contested commercial redevelopment. The article describes a repertoire of salvage-research practices that were staged on the docks between 2013 and 2014, first, to better understand the communities, ecologies, and enduring bonds that stood to lose out to the redevelopment, and second, to make real differences on the ground during a period of environmental volatility and uncertainty. These practices were emergent, urgent, collaborative and public facing, and strongly influenced by Zylinska’s “minimal ethics for the Anthropocene,” which identifies modes of working for contexts in which life is under threat. By identifying the particular challenges that the fated landscape presents to the invested researcher, and the methodological resources that are available to sustain research in contexts of destruction and uncertainty, this article seeks to extend geohumanities capacities to respond to the dispossessions, extinctions, and alienations wrought by the Anthropocene, with a proposal for a creative pragmatics, that can be put to work in instances of local environmental change.

本文考量何谓在命运多舛的地景上参与地理人文学研究。本文聚焦格拉斯哥市的加文刻版码头重新荒野化之衰败地景——此一显着的文化地景，当下正面临争夺的商业再发展。本文藉由描绘2013年至2014年间，在该码头上演的所有抢救研究行动，首先更佳地理解输给再发展的社区、生态和持续的联系；接着在环境反覆无常和不确定的期间，创造实际的影响。这些行动是新兴的、急迫性、协作且面向大众的，并且受到瑞林斯嘉（Zylinska）的“人类世的最低限度道德”的强烈影响，该概念指认出为生命受到威胁的脉络工作之模式。本文藉由指认命运多舛的地景对投入的研究者呈现的特定挑战，以及在毁灭和不确定性的脉络中持续进行研究的可取得之方法论资源，企图延伸地理人类学的能力，以回应人类世所造成的驱逐、灭绝和异化，并提出能够在地方环境变迁境况中加以运用的创造性实用法。

Este artículo está enfocado en el significado de emprender investigación de geohumanidades comprometidas sobre un paisaje condenado. La atención se concentra en un ruinoso paisaje revertido al estado silvestre de la ciudad de Glasgow, Govan Graving Docks, un paisaje cultural importante que ahora enfrenta un proceso competitivo de desarrollo comercial renovado. El artículo describe un repertorio de prácticas de investigación de rescate que fueron desplegadas en los muelles entre 2013 y 2014 para, primero, entender mejor las comunidades, ecologías y lazos perdurables que se mantuvieron para a la postre sucumbir ante el desarrollo renovado, y, segundo, para generar diferencias de una realidad en el terreno durante un período de volatilidad ambiental e incertidumbre. Estas prácticas se destacaron como emergentes, urgentes, colaboradoras y frenteras, y estuvieron fuertemente influidas por la “ética mínima del Antropoceno” de Zylinska, que identifica modos de trabajar para contextos en los que la vida está bajo amenaza. Identificando los retos particulares que presenta al investigador dedicado el paisaje condenado, lo mismo que los recursos metodológicos disponibles para sostener la investigación en contextos de destrucción e incertidumbre, este artículo busca extender las capacidades de las geohumanidades para responder por las desposesiones, extinciones y alienaciones acarreadas por el Antropoceno, con una propuesta de pragmatismo creativo que pueda ponerse en acción en los casos locales de cambio ambiental.

Key Words:

• crafting methods
• critical vitalism
• fated landscape
• minimal ethics
• uncertainty

• 打造方法
• 批判生机论
• 命运多舛的地景
• 最低限度的道德，不确定性

• métodos artesanales
• vitalismo crítico
• paisaje condenado
• ética mínima
• incertidumbre

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to Hayden Lorimer, Deborah Dixon, Hester Parr, Maria Fusco, Erin Despard, Minty Donald, and Kenny Roberts; Jimmy and Tam in Govan, and all the other Graving Docks’ enthusiasts who made me feel welcome; and the Galgael Trust, the Glasgow Natural History Society, BSBI Scotland, and all the steely participants who joined for public events on the docks come rain and shine. Thanks also for the kind and insightful comments of three referees.

Notes

1. At the time of writing, the developer’s vision still awaits planning permission. On 25 March 2017 the developers exhibited their final proposals at the Riverside Hall for public comment, before an “in principle” planning application was submitted to Glasgow City Council in April.

2. Clyde Waterfront was a strategic growth coalition operating between 2003 and 2014, formed of the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow City, Renfrewshire, and West Dunbartonshire Councils. In a visioning document published in 2004, “The Clyde Waterfront Regeneration Plan: A River Reborn,” Clyde Waterfront outlined a development strategy to transform the River Clyde into a “world-class” center for business and tourism, so that it might again become an “economic powerhouse and an international symbol of success.” The plan can be found at http://www.clydewaterfront.com/media/5527/clyde%20waterfront%20regeneration%20p lan.pdf.

3. On 29 December 2003, the Herald Scotland reported that dangerous chemicals had been leaked into the river as a result of large-scale fly tipping in an online article entitled “Mountains of Refrigerators Found Dumped in the Clyde.” See http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12524202.Mountain_of_refrigerators_found_dumped_in_the_Clyde_Fears_over_danger_posed_by_chemicals/.

4. In Appendix 7 of a business plan published in 2014 entitled “Improving the Water Environment,” Scottish Water reported that its sewage works have “storm overflows which discharge untreated combined waste and surface water to water bodies during periods of heavy rain—this prevents the sewer network from being overloaded and causing flooding.” See http://www.scottishwater.co.uk/assets/about%20us/files/strategic%20projections/appendix7improvingthewaterenvironment.pdf.

5. The Clyde River Foundation blog about the challenges faced by fish life in the River Clyde as a result of pollution. The fish kills of 2014 were reported in a post entitled “River Clyde fish kill near Glasgow Green.” See http://www.clyderiverfoundation.org/river-clydefish-kill-near-glasgow-green/.

6. The term fated landscape is used here to convey a sense of certain peril, a context in which intervention might seem pointless and vastly diminished by other agencies (an idea that the term threatened landscape, for example, does not capture).

7. Buglife, a UK organization dedicated to the conservation of invertebrate, have written a detailed record on the characteristics of the Hobo spider. See https://www.buglife.org.uk/bugs-and-habitats/hobo-spider.

8. National Geographic has undertaken extensive research on the values of BioBlitz research. See http://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/bioblitz.

9. In a BBC Radio 4 documentary broadcast on 17 October 2015, entitled “Open Art, Master Rock,” Fusco described how she has woven together the geological, mythological, and technological histories of a mountain Ben Cruachan in her experimental radio play “Master Rock.” In 1959, the Tunnel Tigers from Donegal arrived to blast out Ben Cruachan to house a hydroelectric power station within the mountain. Fusco described these men as “walking monuments” on account of the silicosis that many developed making the world’s most renowned tunnels. This is a slow degenerative disease caused by tiny particles of dust that line the lungs.

10. The fate of North Kelvin Meadow can be followed on their blog post. See https://northkelvinmeadow.com/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth Olden

RUTH OLDEN is a part-time lecturer in the School of Architecture and Landscape at Kingston University, London, KT1 2QJ, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include landscape, memory, community resilience, and the postindustrial city.