Impact of Climate Change on the History of Ethnic Heritage Communities

In this poster session, I would like to present case studies with initiatives and teaching resources that we’ve developed during the first two years of an NEH-funded project, Shop Girls to Show Girls: Teaching Resources on New York’s Working Class at Community Colleges, currently in progress at Fashion Institute of Technology. Our faculty members and students are working-class professionals with careers in creative industry. As historians, we wanted to explain why they have a series of part-time jobs and so many layoffs throughout their previous or current workplace. In this dialogue, we came across an area neglected by urban communities: heritage crafts and performances communities in exurban or rural areas. Either in metropolitan areas like New York in the United States or Osaka in Japan, many heritage crafts communities are established an operated beyond 50-100 miles away from major cities. People employed in heritage crafts and performances communities are also working-class people.

How did these artists, craftsmen, and performers feed themselves? As we approach survival of heritage crafts communities, we came across issues of global warming, climate change, and sustainable industrialization. Procurement of raw materials and human capital is a vital component. As heritage crafts and instruments of heritage performances rely on natural ingredients like plant-based or animal-based substances, working-class people in heritage crafts and performances communities are more susceptible to environmental changes.

With these questions in mind, scholars and instructors in this three-year NEH-funded project want to launch a conversation called Impact of Climate Change on the History of Ethnic Heritage Communities. In the poster session, we want to get anecdotes and local resources from scholars and audiences of AHA on their interpretation of heritage crafts and performances communities in various states of the United States. In turn, the poster by this NEH group will draw attention to case studies of political ecology and environmental activism for the livelihoods of heritage communities from a global perspective. These case studies address the destruction of communities and the commercialization of heritage crafts along with other strategies of keeping the historical craft traditions alive.