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- Convenor:
-
Edward Liebow
(American Anthropological Association)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Movement
- Sessions:
- Thursday 17 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
An international initiative, World on the Move: 100,000 Years of Human Migration offers a traveling museum exhibition, interactive online content, and accompanying public events to change public conversations about migration and displacement, a shared human experience that connects us all.
Long Abstract:
An international initiative, World on the Move: 100,000 Years of Human Migration offers a traveling museum exhibition, interactive online content, and accompanying public events to change public conversations about an often difficult topic—migration and displacement. World on the Move brings together the state of knowledge about migration and displacement to interact with diverse audiences and reframe the ways in which we think - and talk - about migration. World on the Move will challenge people to consider the scale, composition, and time-depth of human population movements, the ways in which research on migration and displacement have been used (and misused) to support public policy, and the lived experiences of individuals, families, and communities on the move. We use the central organizing principle of the "Crossroads," placing the visitor at a vantage point where their field of vision encompasses stories, images, and objects moving past in a number of directions, rather than what might considered a more divisive approach taken in many other museums and exhibitions about migration that often set newer arrivals apart from those who arrived earlier. We wish to emphasize instead that migration is a shared human experience that connects us all. We invite participants. We invite presentations about other exhibitions and public programming focused on migration and displacement issues to exchange ideas on participatory planning processes, representations, themes, activities, and evaluations of visitor experiences.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 17 September, 2020, -Ilan Kelman (UCL and UiA)
Paper short abstract:
Wider and deeper understandings of migration/displacement and immobility are often absent from discussions of climate change forcing population movements, inhibiting public engagement on this topic. Axioms are proposed for distilling a complex issue into straightforward communication categories.
Paper long abstract:
Many communities are being told that they need to prepare for migration/displacement due to climate change, with several initiatives currently ongoing or being discussed. Frequently, the discourse centres around "climate refugees" or "climate change refugees" without factoring in wider and deeper understandings of migration/displacement and immobility. Evident nuances, subtleties, and provisos are too frequently bypassed, despite them pervading choices and lack of choices for migration/displacement and immobility which might sometimes connect to aspects of contemporary climate change, but which do not necessarily do so. The keys for understanding the intersection or lack thereof between climate change and migration/displacement/immobility tend to be resources and choices to make decisions rather than climate change per se as an inevitable and sole forcer of population movements. Yet such details and descriptions are not always conducive to public engagement regarding climate change impacts on migration/displacement/immobility while countering populist demonization of migrants. Drawing on the wide literature, policies, and practices regarding climate change and migration/displacement links, axioms are proposed for distilling a complex issue into straightforward communication categories showing how migration has always been a basic human condition, sometimes influenced by changes to the climate.
James Deutsch (Smithsonian Institution)
Paper short abstract:
The Beringian crossroads has long served as a passageway between Asia and North America. Folkloristic materials such as creation myths and migration narratives from the Aleut, Athabaskan, and Inuit peoples help illuminate the geographical dimensions of the human migration through Beringia.
Paper long abstract:
The traveling museum exhibition "World on the Move: 100,000 Years of Human Migration" (anticipated to open in 2021) makes clear that people have always been on the move, and that migration is a shared human experience that connects us all. Geography plays a central role in the exhibition, particularly through the use of four key crossroads—defined as intersections where people from different places meet and where consequential decisions are made about moving. One of those crossroads is Beringia, which has long served as a passageway between the continents of Asia and North America. Under very different environmental conditions from today, Native peoples crossed Beringia by land and by sea to places all along the Pacific Coast of the Americas.
This paper will utilize the discipline of folkloristics to better understand the geographical dimensions of the human migrations through Beringia. The focus will be an analysis of creation myths and migration narratives among the Aleut, Athabaskan, and Inuit peoples—much of which was collected by anthropologists and folklorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These folkloristic materials supplement and complement other forms of anthropological and geographical evidence, such as what has been gathered through archaeological and linguistic investigations. The folkloristic materials offer rich resources for illuminating the shared humanity of the prehistoric and protohistoric peoples at the Beringian Crossroads.
Edward Liebow (American Anthropological Association)
Paper short abstract:
The Crossroads device replaces the usual story of latter day arrivals adjusting to established settings. The exhibition visitor will have a vantage point from which they regard multiple movements without the othering, highlighting how everyone has a migration story somewhere in their family history.
Paper long abstract:
Most exhibitions about migration and displacement put the visitor at a destination where they consider who was there earlier, who came later, how these later arrivals adjusted to new surroundings, and how the hosts adjusted to the late-comers. We propose the "Crossroads" device, where the exhibition visitor has a vantage point from which they regard multiple movement flows without the othering, highlighting how everyone has a migration story somewhere in their family history. The traveling exhibition, a project also involving the Smithsonian, the National Geographic Society, and the American Library Association, aims to bring current scholarship to light and help change the public conversation about migration and displacement. While commonly framed as a modern-day crisis, we know that human populations have always been on the move. Gathering, hunting, and pastoral nomadism involved patterns of seasonal and multi-year migratory cycles. Commerce, contact, conflict, and natural disasters have propelled further movement, sometimes voluntarily but often under duress and coercion. Our treatment of this history will highlight a range of responses, intentionally framed broadly, reflecting the grand historical scope of the story of human migration. The framing device of the Crossroads fixes the visitor's gaze on movements across the landscape over time, whether seeking economic opportunity, refugees & asylum seekers fleeing conflict and avoiding harm, coerced by traffickers, enslavement, or displaced by gentrification, natural disasters, and global environmental change.