Cultural Imagination and Science and Technology in Climate Change Adaptation

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K12957
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Cultural anthropology
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Morita Atsuro 大阪大学, 人間科学研究科, 准教授 (20436596)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 気候変動 / 未来 / タイ / 文化的想像力 / 科学技術

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The project aims to elucidate intersection between cultural imagination and science and technology in the context of climate change. It particularly focuses on the network of practices around the Chao Phraya Delta in Thailand, which has been seen as one of the most vulnerable deltas. One of the salient features of such adaptation efforts is revitalizing and leveraging traditional forms of architecture, town panning and lifestyle, which exhibit high adaptability to flooding. In various forms of adaptation planning and experimentation, diverse experts from hydrologists and climatologists to engineers and architects to social scientists exchange their knowledge and ideas to materialize flood resilience of traditional infrastructures not only by the means of cutting edge computer simulation and modern planning and but also developing cultural imagination about possible forms of flood resilient lifestyle.

Free Research Field

人類学／科学技術論