The Promise of Planetary Health: a comparative study of progressive textile agriculture in the UK, USA and India

The clothing and textiles industries are collectively among the world’s largest polluters, estimated to be responsible for 20% of global industrial water pollution and 10% of global CO2 emissions annually. Since much of the damage occurs during the growing and processing of materials, examining alternative approaches to industrial agriculture such as organic and regenerative agriculture, permaculture and agroecology – via the experience of those engaged in these approaches at the start of the supply chain – is essential. My 5-year Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship project at All Souls College aims to investigate whether the adoption of regenerative agriculture in socioeconomically diverse contexts, signals a sea change in how textiles materials could be grown more sustainably and ethically in the future, while also revitalising local economies. Further, I aim to improve understanding of how social, environmental and economic sustainability functions within alternative food and fibre networks and whether local action might ‘trickle-up’ and impact the textile industry at scale. To do this I will carry out ethnographic research across three continents in the UK, USA, and India with textile farmers experiencing varying extremes of climate, infrastructural and economic instability.

Revisiting Amami Ōshima’s social-ecological heritage through the lens of an American photo archive

This project returned an important photographic collection of colour images and film taken at the time of the US Occupation of Japan, based in the archives of the University of Syracuse, NY, USA, to its originating community on the island of Amami Ōshima. The collection, made by American anthropologist Douglas Haring between 1951-52, contains visuals of Amamian nature, social and cultural life, industry and land management that reflects the intimate engagement that the Amamian people have historically cultivated with their environment. Using archival and empirical research, we returned the visual archive via a community-curated exhibition, which opened to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the return of Amami to Japan from the American Allied Forces on 25th December 1953. The exhibition will tour across thirteen venues throughout the Amamian islands and Kagoshima until April 2024. The project seeks to establish how everyday relationships with natural resources have changed in the 70 years since the photographs were taken and to consider how economic development and geopolitical interventions have disrupted Amami’s ecological heritage. This ongoing project is a collaboration between myself, Prof. Kei Kawai and Emeritis Prof. Sueo Kuwahara based at Kagoshima University and the Amamian community. It has financial and logistical support from Kagoshima University, the Wide Area Office Association of the Amami Islands, the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Permission to use these photos has been granted by: Douglas Haring Papers, University Archives, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.