About this blog
The posts on this blog address a number of different subjects related in one way or another to my research activities. These subjects are (1) The political conflict in Western Sahara, (2) modern-day climate change, (3) the relationship between human beings and the wider physical environment (i.e. “nature”), and (4) past climate changes and the emergence of the first large, complex, state-level societies (i.e. the first “civilisations”). More information on these subject areas and my interest in them is provided below.
1. Western Sahara
Western Sahara is a disputed, non-self governing territory claimed by both Morocco, which occupies some two thirds of the territory, and the indigenous Polisario independence movement, which controls the remainder. Since 2002 I have been directing a research project in the Polisario-controlled zone (known locally as the “Free Zone”). This project combines archaeology and studies of past environmental change, and aims to understand past social and cultural changes in the region within the context of the large changes in climate and environmental which have affected the Sahara in the past. In particular, the project focuses on understanding how people responded to the last period of desiccation in the Sahara between about 6000 and 4000 years ago (possibly occurring later in Western Sahara than in other Sahara regions). Further details of, and results from, this scientific work can be found on the Western Sahara Project website. The purpose of this blog is to discuss the political conflict in Western Sahara and issues related to it, and to provide a context within which to do so that is separate from the scientific work - while the logistics of working in Western Sahara demand that one navigate the complex regional politics, politics is politics and science is science. Hence the deliberate separation of science and politics by presenting the former on the official Project website, and restricting the latter to the blog, which should be seen as a vehicle for my personal views on and observations of the conflict, which do not represent any unified stance of the Project or those involved in it. If there is an official Project view on the political situation in Western Sahara, it is that the archaeology has nothing whatsoever to say about the current political situation, and that when archaeology is deployed in order to justify contemporary territorial cliams, it ceases to be archaeology and becomes nothing more than pseudo-science and propaganda. Archaeology can tell us much about ourselves and our origins, but it cannot tell us who has a right to live in a particular land. The settlement of such arguments must be based on moral, ethical and legal considerations - they cannot be resolved “scientifically”.
2. Climate change
The purpose of the posts dealing with climate change is not to provide an exhaustive treatment of climate change science, as such treatments are available in many forms elsewhere (see the IPCC or RealClimate, for example). These posts may address scientific issues now and again, as well as issues related to adaptation, but are just as likely to deal with the ideological nature of the argument about climate change. As a climate scientist I can’t really help but say something about phenomena such as the propaganda masquerading as science that dribbles incontinently from a hard-core of lobbyists bent on misleading the public about climate change for their own political, ideological or economic purposes.
3. Humanity and nature
Lately I’ve become very interested in how a society’s culture influences its attitude towards and treatment of the wider physical (or “natural”) environment. Today we face some tough choices about how we can manage the global environment in order to ensure that it is capable of supporting a growing human population. It seems to me that we are largely avoiding making these choices, and I believe that to a large extent this is due to the spread of a strain of Western philosophical discourse that sees human beings as separate from and above nature, and that views the environment as something to be overcome and exploited. This view of the environment has a long history in Western philosophy and, although it has been (and still is) widely challenged, it appears to dominate the discourse of growth on which economic development and globalisation are currently founded. The idea of humanity as separate from, and dominant over, a variously passive or actively malign natural environment, may be contrasted with other world views that see humanity as intimately connected with nature, and human beings as having “social relations” with elements in the natural environment, an environment with which human beings must negotiate and interact in order to maintain their societies. The point here is not to advocate a return to some naturalist, eden-like golden age, but to address the philosophical and cultural barriers that prevent us from managing our environment in a way that enables us to preserve and accommodate the natural systems on which we ultimately depend.
4. Civilisation and climate change
No entries here yet - watch this space….
Comments
Please post comments under the relevant blog entries - I’ve disabled comments on the “About” pages as these have been subject to rants in support of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. Such rants are very welcome, but please post them under the relevant blog entries - i.e. the ones that have moved you to post a comment in the first place.
