Future ordinaries: assembling place-based knowledges and literacies in real and imagined harmscapes

Abstract

This paper explores the role of the everyday in real and imagined responses to climate-changed landscapes emerging from South African and UK-based activities in a project exploring local knowledges and resilience. We explore photographs and captions created by co-researcher residents in three climate-stressed settlements in South Africa. We then use participant-generated stories created in the UK to explore imagined future landscapes. We demonstrate important commonalities between the real and the imagined, and between Global South and Global North, including three key dynamics to involved in responses to harmscapes of the present that also animate imagined futures: intra-community relations, the development of place and landscape literacies and adaptations. Our process reveals the centrality of the ordinary to both present realities and future imaginaries.