Theme:
3. The Life of Archaeological Heritage in Society
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
?Doing Good with Archaeology?: Social Sustainability and Activistic Practices to Transform People's Lives and Support Flourishing Communities
Content:
This session addresses archaeology’s role in supporting social sustainability, addressing inequalities and promoting human rights and dignity. It presents evidence of how archaeology can shape and have positive and negative effects on wider social and human capital. It addresses the transformative role that archaeology and archaeologists can have, and how by coming together as a collective archaeologists can reposition their work to impact and address wider sustainable development goals and global challenges.
There is a growing body of evidence on the potential of archaeology as a path to positively impact social fabrics and people's lives. Archaeology is increasingly being recognized as a potent tool to be applied in countering the growing global mental health crisis, and tackling sustainable development goals, including wellbeing inequality. The session explores the role archaeology can play in addressing and countering social issues and challenges; considering how it can benefit social and human capital, and how activist practices can support human rights and dignity, inclusiveness, equality, connection and cohesion. Pushing beyond public benefit measures, the session explores how archaeology can contribute to shaping better societies, at local to global scale; considering how and why archaeology can reconcile collective trauma, contribute to conflict resolution and appeasement, and be a medium of empowerment.
The aim of the session is to provide a safe space for self-critical reflection, promoting an open discussion of uncertainties, unresolved issues and even failures, in order to move beyond the proof of concept stage and explore the underlying mechanisms of archaeology as a social force to positively improve people's lives, and support communities to flourish.
The session aims for diverse theoretically and practice based presentations, as well as explorative reflections on the wider perspectives of socially activist practices in archaeology. We encourage experienced scholars and early career researchers with bold ideas to contribute.
Keywords:
social sustainability, resilience, human rights, human capital, wellbeing
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Francesco Ripanti (Ireland) 1
Co-organisers:
Faye Sayer (United Kingdom) 2
Andres Dobat (Denmark) 3
Linda Monckton (United Kingdom) 4
Affiliations:
1. Trinity College Dublin
2. University of Birmingham
3. Aarhus University
4. Historic England
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