The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault
This article examines how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene function at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), otherwise known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. Recent explorations by scholars of security have suggested that different ways of seeing, understanding, acting in, and imagining the worl...
Published in: | Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space |
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Online Access: | http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/ http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/1/37706.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 |
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ftunivdurham:oai:dro.dur.ac.uk.OAI2:37706 2023-05-15T15:06:03+02:00 The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault Harrington, C 2023 application/pdf http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/ http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/1/37706.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 unknown Sage dro:37706 issn:2514-8486 issn: 2514-8494 doi:10.1177/25148486221145365 http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/ https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/1/37706.pdf This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). CC-BY Environment and planning E : nature and space. , 2023 [Peer Reviewed Journal] Article PeerReviewed 2023 ftunivdurham https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 2023-01-26T23:26:06Z This article examines how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene function at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), otherwise known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. Recent explorations by scholars of security have suggested that different ways of seeing, understanding, acting in, and imagining the world are necessary to adequately respond to complex crises in the Anthropocene. The dissolution of the nature/culture divide and the existential risk from planetary threats are said to require new and creative formations of security. Buried in the Norwegian high Arctic, the heavily fortified SGSV was built in 2008 as a planetary-scale, ‘deep-time organisation’ that would forever secure a wide variety of plant seeds and their genetic makeup against regional or global upheavals. The article argues that his seed ‘ark’ materialises three Anthropocene security imaginaries: apocalypse, hope and escape. The prevalence and use of these imaginaries reveal the stability of long-held security logics and challenge the widely-held belief in the innately transformative properties of the Anthropocene concept for security. Instead, the SGSV demonstrates the difficulty in overcoming a collective mindfulness that fixes security to eternal forms even in the midst of unprecedented threats, interventions and technology. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Svalbard Durham University: Durham Research Online Arctic Svalbard Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 251484862211453 |
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Open Polar |
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Durham University: Durham Research Online |
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ftunivdurham |
language |
unknown |
description |
This article examines how imaginaries of security in the Anthropocene function at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), otherwise known as the ‘Doomsday Vault’. Recent explorations by scholars of security have suggested that different ways of seeing, understanding, acting in, and imagining the world are necessary to adequately respond to complex crises in the Anthropocene. The dissolution of the nature/culture divide and the existential risk from planetary threats are said to require new and creative formations of security. Buried in the Norwegian high Arctic, the heavily fortified SGSV was built in 2008 as a planetary-scale, ‘deep-time organisation’ that would forever secure a wide variety of plant seeds and their genetic makeup against regional or global upheavals. The article argues that his seed ‘ark’ materialises three Anthropocene security imaginaries: apocalypse, hope and escape. The prevalence and use of these imaginaries reveal the stability of long-held security logics and challenge the widely-held belief in the innately transformative properties of the Anthropocene concept for security. Instead, the SGSV demonstrates the difficulty in overcoming a collective mindfulness that fixes security to eternal forms even in the midst of unprecedented threats, interventions and technology. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Harrington, C |
spellingShingle |
Harrington, C The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
author_facet |
Harrington, C |
author_sort |
Harrington, C |
title |
The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
title_short |
The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
title_full |
The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
title_fullStr |
The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
title_full_unstemmed |
The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault |
title_sort |
eternal return: imagining security futures at the doomsday vault |
publisher |
Sage |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/ http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/1/37706.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 |
geographic |
Arctic Svalbard |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Svalbard |
genre |
Arctic Svalbard |
genre_facet |
Arctic Svalbard |
op_source |
Environment and planning E : nature and space. , 2023 [Peer Reviewed Journal] |
op_relation |
dro:37706 issn:2514-8486 issn: 2514-8494 doi:10.1177/25148486221145365 http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/ https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 http://dro.dur.ac.uk/37706/1/37706.pdf |
op_rights |
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221145365 |
container_title |
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space |
container_start_page |
251484862211453 |
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1766337708465061888 |