Tropical Futurisms: Thinking Futures

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.24.1.2025.4197

Keywords:

Tropical Futurisms, Futures Thinking, tropical futurity, climate futures, ecological futurity, tropical materialisms, past-future, multispecies

Abstract

Tropical Futurisms situates the reading of futures in the shared yet multiple modalities of this geo-climatic zone, acknowledging the social and political complexities, technological engagements, multispecies vitalities, and cosmological plurality within tropical regions. This first part of the double Special Issue emphasizes the diversity that comes from thinking about futures by positioning them back in material ecological experiences in this time of escalating climate crisis. This issue seeks solidarity in the tropics via imagining the future together in plural forms. This praxis of tropical futurisms encompasses envisioning decolonial tropics not only by archiving the past-future but also by rebuilding worlds, including Indigenous and multispecies knowledge and experience that is conventionally not seen as belonging to the future. Considering the vibrancy of Indigenous, Caribbean and Latin American, Afro and African, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific and Tropical Australian futures, we are also interested in the ways they intersect in the tropics creating new rich and complex forms of theorizing and storytelling.

Author Biographies

Ysabel Muñoz-Martínez, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

Ysabel Muñoz-Martínez is a PhD candidate in Environmental Humanities in the Department of Language and Literature at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where she works with the transdisciplinary project Narrating Sustainability. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Letters from the University of Havana (2017), and in 2020, she received a Chevening Scholarship to complete the MLitt. Environment, Culture and Communication at the University of Glasgow (2021). She has received complementary education across Europe and the United States in institutions such as the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Cornell University, and the University of Miami. Her research interests include Caribbean culture, post/decolonial studies, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, transecology, futures, and futurisms. She writes about sustainability in the Caribbean context and now dreams of Caribbean Futures from the Nordics.

Jueling Hu, University of Fribourg, Switzerland & University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Jueling Hu is a joint PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of Fribourg and Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Hu’s research examines interspecies relations, digital media, and science fiction in Malaysian Borneo. Their interests span multispecies studies, urban geography, environmental media, and Deleuze & Guattari studies. Hu works for Swiss National Science Foundation-funded research project The Cultural Logistics of Chinese Science Fiction. They have been a visiting doctoral student at the National University of Singapore and the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Hu’s research-based audiovisual work has been exhibited via the Malaysian art hub HAUS Kuching.

Nsah Mala, University of Cologne and UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition, Germany

Nsah Mala (born Kenneth Nsah), from Cameroon, is an award-winning poet, writer, children’s author, consultant, editor and translator, journalist-communicator, futurist and foresight practitioner, and interdisciplinary scholar working in English, French and Mbesa. Research interests include comparative literature, anglophone and francophone African literatures, public and environmental humanities, literary activism/artivism, creative writing and foresight and futures thinking. He has published widely in these areas including Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere (co-edited with Nicki Hitchcott); Reading Cats and Dogs: Companion Animals in World Literature; Re-writing Pasts, Imagining Futures: Critical Explorations of Contemporary African Fiction and Theater; Ecozon@; Orbis Litterarum; Electronic Green Journal; Humanities; Peripeti; and ASAP/J. His ongoing research project on ‘Wetland Time’ is funded by the British Academy and his #CongoBasinFutures foresight workshops are supported by the School of International Futures via the Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellowship and the Cluster of Excellence Seed Funding at the University of Cologne. Nsah earned his PhD in Art, Literature and Cultural Studies, specializing in Comparative Literature and Environmental Humanities, from Aarhus University, Denmark. His thesis, ‘Can Literature Save the Congo Basin? Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Environmental Literary Activism’, won the Prix de thèses francophones en Prospective [Prize for Francophone Theses in Foresight and Futures Studies] in 2022 from Fondation 2100 and Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Radboud University, Netherlands, and the Université de Lille, France. Nsah currently works for the University of Cologne, Germany, as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Coordinator of the Cologne Hub for Planetary Wellbeing within the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition. He is also affiliated with the Universities of Lancaster and Nottingham (UK), University of Lille (France), and School of International Futures (SOIF), UK.

Anita Lundberg, James Cook University, Australia

Anita Lundberg is an adjunct Associate Professor and cultural anthropologist. Her interdisciplinary ethnographies across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia explore the intertwinings of tropical nature~culture. Anita’s awards and fellowships include: LIA TransOceanik (CNRS, JCU, Collége de France); The Cairns Institute; Evans Fellow, Cambridge University, UK; Guest Researcher, Maison Asie-Pacifique, Université de Provence, France; Visiting Fellow, Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, National University Malaysia; and Anthropologist-in-Residence, Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. She has published extensively in academic journals, editing numerous Special Issues. Anita has curated exhibitions in NY, LA, Paris, and Sydney, and her own research has been exhibited at the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, and Alliance de Française. She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow, Cambridge University, UK, has a PhD in Anthropology, an MA in Science & Technology Studies, and a liberal arts BA. After academic stints in Australia and Singapore, she now lives in Bali.

References

Ang, A. (2023). What’s Tropical about Nick Joaquin’s Tropical Gothic? Heat and Corporeality in “The Summer Solstice” and “The Dying Wanton”. Kritika Kultura, (41), 9–32. https://archium.ateneo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2045&context=kk

Armiero, M. (2021). Wasteocene. Stories from the Global Dump. Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108920322

Arnold, D. J. (2014). The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856. University of Washington Press.

Benitez, C. J. R., & Lundberg, A. (2022). Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities. eTropic: electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929

Berlant, L. (2016). The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(3), 393-419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775816645989

Cameron, F. R. (2011) Saving the ‘disappearing islands’: Climate change governance, Pacific island states and cosmopolitan dispositions. Continuum, 25(6), 873-886. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2011.617879

Canina, M., Bruno, C., & Monestier, E. (2022). Futures Thinking. In The Palgrave

Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_272-1

Césaire, A. & Roussi, S. (Eds) (1978). Tropiques II. Jean-Michel Place.

Chan, K. (2023). Future Tropics. Gasworks. Retrieved February 19, 2025, from https://www.gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/kent-chan-2/

Chang, J.-H. (2016). A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315712680

Chao, S. (2022b). (Un)Worlding the Plantationocene: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence. eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 165–191. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838

Chattopadhyay, B. (2021). Manifestos of Futurisms. Foundation, 50(139), 8-23.

Clayton, D. (2021). Tropicality and the Choc en Retour of Covid-19 and Climate Change. eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the Tropics, 20(1), 54–93. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3787

Clayton, D. & Bowd, G. (2006). Geography, tropicality and postcolonialism: Anglophone and Francophone readings of the work of Pierre Gourou. Geographical Space, 35(3), 208-221. https://doi.org/10.3917/eg.353.0208

Comaroff, J. (2007). Ghostly topographies: Landscape and biopower in modern Singapore. Cultural Geographies, 14(1), 56-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474007072819

Country, B., Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., Lloyd, K., Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B., Maymuru, D., & Sweeney, J. (2016). Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space. Progress in Human Geography, 40(4), 455-475. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515589437

Dartiguepeyrou, C. & Saloff-Coste, M. (Eds.). (2023). Futures: The Great Turn. ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Davis, W. (2024). I Will Burn Tuan’s House: Tobacco, Opium, and the Villa Patumbah. ABE Journal. https://doi.org/10.4000/13937

Demos, T.J. (2023). Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, Justice-to-Come. Sternberg Press.

Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press.

Esprit, S. (2024). “Reimagining the Heartland: Rhizomatic Engagements with Home, Futures and Decoloniality.” Norwegian University of Science and Technology [Public Lecture]. https://ntnu.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f6d791b0-25c6-4665-8e39-b1860129bf64

Ferly, O., Zimmerman, T., & Deckman, J. R. (2023). Poetics and Politics of the Chronotropics: Introduction. In O. Ferly & T. Zimmerman (Eds.), Chronotropics: Caribbean Women Writing Spacetime (pp. 1-24). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32111-5_1

Figueroa, E. (2019). Fly me to the Moon. https://youtu.be/K8gDR0JJk_o?si=RZzoyRqqOxoe-oDy

Garrard, R., & Carey, M. (2020). Beyond images of melting ice: Hidden histories of people, place, and time in repeat photography of glaciers. In Before-and-After Photography (pp. 101-122). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103424-9

Gidley, J. M. (2017). The Future: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Glowczewski, B. (2022). Black Seed Dreaming: A Material Analysis of Bruce Pascoe’s “Dark Emu.” (A. Lundberg, Trans.). eTropic: electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21 (2), 77-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3925

Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159-165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934

Harvey, S.S. (2008), Mapping spectral tropicality in The Maid and Return to Pontianak. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 29, 24-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9493.2008.00317.x

Hichert, T., & Schultz, W. (2024). Futures studies methods: a typology and guide to research design. In Handbook of Futures Studies, (pp. 329–359). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035301607.00030

Iheka, C. (2021). African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics. Duke University Press.

Jae, K. (2023). Decolonizing Futures Practice: Opening Up Authentic Alternative Futures. Journal of Futures Studies, 28(1). Accessed on 14/02/2025. https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/2023-2/vol-28-no-1-september-2023/decolonizing-futures-practice-opening-up-authentic-alternative-futures/

Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed, and What It Means for Our Future. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199337668.001.0001

Kohler, K. (2021). Strategic Foresight: Knowledge, Tools, and Methods for the Future. Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zürich. https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000505468

Kristóf, T., & Nováky, E. (2023). The Story of Futures Studies: An Interdisciplinary Field Rooted in Social Sciences. Social Sciences, 12(3), 192. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030192

Lawrence, M., Homer-Dixon, T., Janzwood, S., Rockstöm, J., Renn, O., & Donges, J.F. (2024). Global polycrisis: the causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement. Global Sustainability, 7(6).

Leal Filho, W., et al. (2023). When the alarm bells ring: Why the UN sustainable development goals may not be achieved by 2030. Journal of Cleaner Production, 407(137108). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137108

Leow, J. (2020). Reading New Asian Tropicalities in Contemporary Singapore. positions: asia critique, 28(4), 869-904. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/772336

Liboiron, M. (2021). Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478021445

Lundberg, A. (2021). Balinese Dancer wearing a Gas Mask: Climate Change and the Tropical Imaginary. In C. Warren & D. Clayton (Eds). Special Issue: Climate Change, COP26 and the Crucible of Crisis. Scottish Geographical Journal RSGJ. 136 (1-4), 91-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/14702541.2020.1858589

Lundberg, A., Vasques Vital, A., & Das, S. (2021). Tropical Imaginaries and Climate Crisis: Embracing Relational Climate Discourses. eTropic: electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(2), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.2.2021.3803

Milojevica, I. & Inayatullah, S. (2015). Narrative foresight. Futures, 73, 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.007

Minkkinen, M. (2020). Theories in Futures Studies: Examining the Theory Base of the Futures Field in Light of Survey Results. World Futures Review, 12(1), 12-25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1946756719887717

Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso.

O’Neill, S. (2022). Defining a visual metonym: A hauntological study of polar bear imagery in climate communication. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47(4), 1104-1119. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12543

Ortiz, F. (1995). Cuban counterpoint, tobacco and sugar. Duke University Press.

Piguet, E., Kaenzig, R., & Guélat, J. (2018). The uneven geography of research on “environmental migration.” Population and environment, 39, 357-383. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-018-0296-4

Quicho, A. (2022). Tropical Futurism Envisions the Climate of Our Fate. Wired, Jan 9. https://www.wired.com/story/futurism-climate-change-tropics-art/

Rose, D. B. (2013). Slowly - Writing into the Anthropocene. TEXT, 20, 1–14.

Roy, S. S. (2018). Linking gender to climate change impacts in the global south. Springer.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Random House.

Schultz, W. L. (2015). A Brief History of Futures. World Futures Review, 7(4), 324-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1946756715627646

Schmid, C. (2018). Journeys through planetary urbanization: Decentering perspectives on the urban. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(3), 591-610. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818765476

Sinamai, A. (2022). Ivhu rinotsamwa: Landscape Memory and Cultural Landscapes in Zimbabwe and Tropical Africa. eTropic: electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21 (1), 51-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3836

Son, H. (2015). The history of Western futures studies: An exploration of the intellectual traditions and three-phase periodization. Futures, 66, 120-137. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328714002079

Taylor, T. J., Lavender III, I., Dillon, G. L., & Chattopadhyay, B. (2024). The Routledge Handbook of Cofuturisms. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429317828

Terry, N. et al. (2024). Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: Introducing the Entangled Time Tree. Environmental Science & Policy, 151(103615). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103615

Tsing, A.L., Deger, J., Saxena, A. K., & Zhou, F. (2021). Feral Atlas. Stanford University Press. https://feralatlas.org/

United Nations General Assembly. (1987) Report of the world commission on environment and development: Our Common Future. United Nations General Assembly.

United Nations (2024). Pact for the Future, Global Digital Compact and Declaration on Future Generations. Summit of the Future Outcomes Document. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sotf-pact_for_the_future_adopted.pdf

Van Dooren, T., Kirksey, E., & Münster, U. (2016). Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 8(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3527695

Wolford, W. (2021). The Plantationocene: A Lusotropical contribution to the theory. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 111(6), 1622-1639.

Wong, M. E. (2022). Visualising “Asia as Future” through speculative Southeast Asian aesthetic urban futures. ARI Scope. National University of Singapore. Retrieved February 19, 2025, from https://ari.nus.edu.sg/ariscope/visualising-asia-as-future-through-speculative-southeast-asian-aesthetic-urban-futures/

Zane, D. (2025). Your phone, a rare metal and the war in DR Congo. BBC. Accessed on 13/02/2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn01k8948v1o

eTropic logo

Downloads

Published

2025-03-14

How to Cite

Muñoz-Martínez, Y., Hu, J., Mala, N., & Lundberg, A. (2025). Tropical Futurisms: Thinking Futures. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 24(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.24.1.2025.4197

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 1 (2025): Tropical Futurisms: Thinking Futures

Section

Introduction to Special Issue

License

Copyright (c) 2025 CC-BY

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.

2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.