Projects per year
Abstract
This provocation critiques the notion of long-term thinking and the claims of its proponents that it will help address failures in dominant conceptions of time, particularly in regard to environmental crises. Drawing on analyses of the Clock of the Long Now and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, the article suggests that we be more wary of the concept’s use in what we might call chronowashing. Like the more familiar green-washing, where environmental issues are hidden by claims to be addressing the problem, the article explores how these examples of long-term thinking distract from extractivism, racism, and environmental injustice, making it harder to address the complexities involved. In particular, the article discusses examples where long-term thinking provides a veneer of environmental concern that actually disconnects from the work of building more equitable forms of relation. As a contrast, the article’s author asks: What is lost when we diagnose a problem as arising due to short-term thinking and propose long-term thinking as the solution? Against chronowashed environmental time, the author argues for more complex approaches that explicitly take into account the temporalities of inequality, political organization, ethical responsibilities and much else. The article engages with approaches to time that foreground the work needed to create time and move ethically within it, including Charles W. Mills’s white time and Kyle Powys Whyte’s kinship time. The author suggests that a stronger emphasis on the temporality of community, solidarity, and coalition—versus what James Hatley and Deborah Bird Rose have described as temporal narcissism—can better foreground the kinds of work that needs to be done, particularly by those with privilege
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 403-421 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Environmental Humanities |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2024 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- long-term thinking
- future generations
- critical time studies
- futures
- time
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Is long-term thinking a trap? Chronowashing, temporal narcissism and the time machines of racism'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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The time of the clock and the time of encounter: Pathfinders for connection
Speed, C.
14/02/12 → 13/01/13
Project: Research
Press/Media
Activities
- 3 Invited talk
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Crisis and chronowashing
Michelle Bastian (Invited speaker)
6 Jun 2023Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
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Keynote: Chrono-washing, or how not to re-story time for sustainability
Michelle Bastian (Keynote speaker)
3 Aug 2021 → 6 Aug 2021Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk
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Philosophy and Ethics in Deep Time
Michelle Bastian (Invited speaker)
25 Jun 2021Activity: Academic talk or presentation types › Invited talk