Rights to Nature

RIGHTS TO NATURE

Conference & Call for Papers

“Rights to Nature: tracing alternative political ecologies to the neoliberal environmental agenda”.

This is a hybrid academic-activist event that aims to encourage a closer collaboration between scholars and activists working on the neoliberalisation of nature. The conference is sponsored by the GEOFORUM journal.

23rd and 24th June 2016

Keynes Hall, King’s College, University of Cambridge, UK

 

We are looking for activists and scholars engaged in environmental movements in Europe. We are interested in a wide variety of topics, including -but not limited- the privatization of natural resources and public assets, land grabbing, the dismantling of traditional forms of using natural resources, the neoliberalisation of nature (including biodiversity conservation), and expropriation of green spaces in both urban and rural areas. Instances of these movements include anti-fracking and anti-mining movements, housing struggles, anti-biodiversity offsetting initiatives, movements against the privatization of public nature assets, including forests and water, and struggles against gentrification, regeneration, urban redevelopment and/or large infrastructure projects with significant environmental impacts.

We would like to invite you to participate in the conference and also if possible to help us reaching people from outside academia that engage in this kind of work. We have some funding available to pay for travel and accommodation. We would be extremely grateful if you could pass them this information and the preliminary program and call for papers, please.

You can find the call for papers here: http://conservationandtransformation.com/2016/01/27/conference-rights-to-nature-tracing-alternative-political-ecologies-to-the-neoliberal-environmental-agenda/ and here (in the Facebook page you can also find the program): https://www.facebook.com/groups/985735908164832/

Deadline for Abstracts: 27^th March 2016

We would also like to let you know that our goal is to enable an in-depth discussion between scholars and activists and, therefore, this would be a rather small event with a limited number of participants.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/conference-rights-to-nature-tracing-alternative-political-ecologies-to-the-neoliberal-environmental-agenda

Old Nature

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Mapping Alternative Routes Out of Capitalism

MAPPING ALTERNATIVE ROUTES OUT OF CAPITALISM

See below a call for panels and papers for a section in the European International Studies Association conference, Izmir, Turkey, 7-10 September 2016.

The section seeks panels and papers on alternatives to capitalism, and how we might achieve them, both within the capitalist present and on the route to a post-capitalist society.

The deadline for proposals is 8 January 2016 and must be done online through the EISA conference tool website – https://www.conftool.pro/paneuropean2016/

Please feel free to contact us first to discuss informally ahead of submitting proposals: David Bailey (d.j.bailey@bham.ac.uk) and Phoebe Moore (p.moore@mdx.ac.uk)

Section title: Mapping Alternative Routes Out of Capitalism

Section abstract: The critical study of global capitalism and the hegemony of neoliberalism are both central to the study of international relations and international political economy. International studies has focused less, however, on questioning how (if at all) we might go beyond capitalism. This is despite global capitalism remaining dangerously unstable, not least because the global economic crisis that began in 2008 continues to linger without any obvious resolution to it. The aim of this section, therefore, is to bring together those with an interest in the rise of alternatives at varied positions along the ideological spectrum; mapping, studying, theorising, highlighting, judging and assessing practices which form contemporary alternatives to, and problems for, global capitalism. This includes pathways in local, regional and global contexts.  In particular, we note two emerging types of response, each of which expose the ever-present possibility and presence of sometimes surprising and contradictory routes outside of capitalism, as well as raising the question of technology in contemporary social change. On the one hand, we see various modified projects seeking alternative routes to social justice and rights: futurist, anti-proprietary or gift culture movements, survivalism, cooperatives, DIY culture, permaculture, experimentation with cybernetics and post-humanist ideals, as well as revived institutional interests in wellbeing. On the other hand, we see the explicit contestation of capitalism through varyingly autonomous forms of struggle: Occupy, the indignados, the Greek grassroots projects, Rojava, and, then, the electoral manifestation of some of these trends within Syriza, Podemos, Barcelona en Comú, and Jeremy Corbyn.

 

Section convenors: David Bailey (d.j.bailey@bham.ac.uk) and Phoebe Moore (p.moore@mdx.ac.uk).

Submissions to be made here: https://www.conftool.pro/paneuropean2016/

Deadline for submissions: 8 January 2016

Conference website and more details: http://www.paneuropeanconference.org/2016/

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-alternatives-to-capitalism

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

The Rise and Fall of Cheap Natures

THE RISE AND FALL OF CHEAP NATURES

CALL FOR PAPERS

Paper session: The Rise and Fall of Cheap Natures

For the Annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, 29 March-3 April 2016

Capitalism’s greatest strength – and the source of its most pressing problems today – has been its capacity to create Cheap Natures: labor, food, energy, and raw materials. That capacity is now in question. In these sessions, we explore the manifold geographies of environmental change and capital accumulation through state-, imperial-, and capital-centered projects to appropriate natures – including human natures – as cheaply as possible.

These explorations may engage the creation – or destruction – of Cheap Natures across the spectrum of scalar and geographical emphases: regions of the Global South and Global North, from the body to the biosphere. We welcome papers encompassing (but not limited to) historical and contemporary transformations of social reproduction, commodity frontiers, hegemonic projects, scientific regimes, imperial power, and capital accumulation on a world-scale.

We especially welcome proposals that seek to transcend Nature/Society dualisms in the pursuit of new syntheses of “ecological” and “capitalist” crisis.

Deadline 16 November.

Contact: Jay Bolthouse (jebbolt@gmail.com) and Christopher Cox (crc42@uw.edu).

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternative Realities, Landscapes of Dread

Dreamscape

PRETERNATURAL ENVIRONMENTS: DREAMSCAPES, ALTERNATE REALITIES, LANDSCAPES OF DREAD

Call for Papers for a special issue of Preternature (Issue 6.1)

Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternate Realities, Landscapes of Dread

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2016.

This special issue of Preternature seeks papers that examine elements and/or depictions of the preternatural in all sorts of environments. Scholars are increasingly drawing attention to the importance of spaces and their contexts, the stories we tell about them, and our interactions with them. This volume focuses on preternatural aspects of natural and unnatural environments such as dreamscapes, alternate worlds, and eerie landscapes.

Papers should investigate the connections between preternatural environments and literary, historical, anthropological, and artistic forms of understanding. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Defining the “preternatural environment” / preternatural aspects of an environment.
• Superstition and spaces.
• Demonic domains.
• Artistic representations of preternatural environments across the ages.
• Aspects of the uncanny in various physical settings.
• The pathetic fallacy and narrative theory.
• “Unnatural” landscapes and environments.
• Bridging natural and preternatural spaces.
• Preternatural ecology and ecocriticism.
• Connections between material environments, literary narratives, and the preternatural.
• Eerie landscapes as characters or significant presences in literature, history, and culture.
• How preternatural environments inform human behaviour, or how behaviour informs preternatural environments.

Preternature welcomes a variety of approaches, including narrative theory, ecocriticism, and behavioural studies from any cultural, literary, artistic, or historical tradition and from any time period. We particularly encourage submissions dealing with non-Western contexts.

Contributions should be 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus.

For more information, see: http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_submis_Preternature.html or submit directly at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/preternature/default.aspx.

Preternature is published twice annually by the Pennsylvania State Press and is available through JSTOR and Project Muse. This periodical is also indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® (ATLA RDB®), http://www.atla.com.

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural can be viewed at: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/preternature/

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Resilience and the Anthropocene

RESILIENCE AND THE ANTHROPOCENE: THE POLITICAL ECOLOGIES OF COMPLEXITY

Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses

Call for Special Issue Abstracts

Deadline: 1 March 2016

The Anthropocene signals a new geological epoch in which humans have become a geophysical force. The possibility that human activity now produces the environments on which it depends destabilizes the image of a stable Earth that has grounded Western philosophy and politics for two millennia. Critical scholars assert that Anthropocene thinking can provoke new understandings of spatiality, temporality, ethics, responsibility and politics. As Simon Dalby (2013) suggests, a new kind of politics becomes possible when we begin to consider that the stakes include (de)forming the world we inhabit. However, Brad Evans and Julian Reid (2014) argue that the Anthropocene just as easily presents a dangerous, vengeful Earth teetering on the brink of systemic collapse – a catastrophic discourse that creates fearful subjects who desire resilience in order to survive a calamitous future. The Anthropocene’s world-deforming vision leads into a reactionary bio-politics of resilience that fashions adaptive neoliberal subjects capable of surviving whatever surprises complexity has in store.

Thus two concepts have been central to the shifting dynamics of power and agency under the political ecology of complexity: the Anthropocene and resilience. And yet, resilience techniques do not produce uniform effects. The deployment of resilience always occurs within particular socio-ecological contexts striated by multiple conflicts and tensions. Resilience intervenes in, and is inflected by, these contextually-specific relations. Ben Anderson’s (2015: 62) call to recognize that ‘‘resilience’ names a fractured, multiple, empirical field rather than a series of generic characteristics’ means that not only will resilience be something different in different times and places, it will also produce uneven and potentially unintended effects as well. Thus, there is no guarantee that resilience interventions will necessarily reinforce neoliberal order; they could just as well catalyze new ways of harnessing complex life’s potentiality. The bio-politics of resilience may attempt to constrain and regulate adaptability, but these constraints are plastic, malleable, and can thus be broken, cast aside or even re-molded into weapons.

This special issue of Resilience: Policies, Practices and Discourses will explore the indeterminate political ecologies opened by the Anthropocene and resilience. It takes seriously the call from Dalby, Evans and Reid, Anderson and others to think through the different ways politics might be thought, practiced, and analyzed through the malleable worlds of the Anthropocene and the complex life of resilience thinking. We invite abstracts from across the disciplines that offer empirically driven, theoretically informed papers that engage with the Anthropocene and resilience to explore the shifting forms of geo-politics and bio-politics that reinforce and challenge neoliberal political ecologies. Abstracts may touch on these themes in any number of fields, including but not limited to climate change adaptation, disaster management and development, international relations, environmental security, or urban development and security.

 

References

Anderson B (2015) What kind of thing is resilience? Politics 35(1): 60-66.

Dalby S (2013) Biopolitics and climate security in the Anthropocene. Geoforum 49: 184-192.

Evans B and Reid J (2014) Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously. Cambridge: Polity Press.

 

Submission Instructions

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted to Kevin Grove (Aberystwyth University, kevinjgrove@gmail.com) and David Chandler (University of Westminster, D.Chandler@westminster.ac.uk) by 12 October 2015.

Deadline for invited full submissions will be 1 March 2016.

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Dangerous Times Festival 2015

Crisis

DANGEROUS TIMES FESTIVAL 2015

Ways to Change the World

Saturday 27^th & Sunday 28^th June

Rich Mix

35-47 Bethnal Green Road

LONDON E1 6LA

Website: http://dangeroustimes.net

Dangerous Times is an annual festival of radical discussion, debate, music, comedy, art.

Participants include: David Harvey, Lindsey German, Natalie Bennett, Tariq Ali, Owen Jones, John Rees, Francesca Martinez, Danny Dorling, Jeremy Corbyn, Clare Solomon, Kate Hudson, Chris Nineham, Ava Vidal, Kate Hudson, Katherine Connelly, James Meadway, Sam Fairbairn

Registration: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dangerous-times-festival-2015-tickets-15710379167

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Thinking Beyond Capitalism

Capitalism No

THINKING BEYOND CAPITALISM

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

June 24-26, 2015, Belgrade

Abstract Submission Deadline: April 10 2015

Call text: http://instifdt.bg.ac.rs/conference_capitalism.html

The conference Thinking Beyond Capitalism is part of a week-long series of events, entitled Reflections on Capitalism (June 22nd – 27th 2015). Reflections on Capitalism will include public discussions, roundtables and plenary lectures. All events are open to the public.

Confirmed Speakers:

Confirmed speakers for the Reflections on Capitalism include: Anselm Jappe (Collège international de philosophie, Paris), Alex Demirovic (Universität Frankfurt am Main), Catherine Samary (Université Paris Dauphine), Chiara Bonfiglioli (Center for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula), Claus Offe (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin), Danijela Majstorović (University of Banja Luka), Dominique Lévy (CNRS, Paris), Gezim Krasniqi (SSEES-University College of London), Giuseppe Masturzo (International University College Torino), G. M. Tamás (CEU, Budapest), Gérard Duménil (Université Paris 10, Paris), Hauke Brunkhorst (Universität Flensburg), Ivana Pantelić (Institute for Contemporary History, University of Belgrade), Kristen Ghodsee (Bowdoin College, Brunswick), Laurence Fontaine (CNRS, Paris), Ljubica Spaskovska (University of Exeter), Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin), Mi slav Žitko (University of Zagreb), Mladen Lazić (University of Belgrade), Rainer Kuhlen (Department of Computer and Information Science University of Konstanz), Simon Susen (City University, London), Toni Prug (Queen Mary University of London), Ugo Mattei (University of California, Hastings College of the Law / Università di Torino), Vedran Džihić (Austrian Institute for International Affairs, University of Vienna), Wolfgang Merkel (WZB, Berlin Social Science Centre), Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institute for Social Research, Cologne), Yann Moulier-Boutang (Université Technologique de Compiègne), Zoran Janković (Cégep de Saint-Laurent, Montreal).

 

Program Committee:

Petar Bojanić, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

Laurence Fontaine, CNRS, Centre Maurice Halbwachs/ENS, Paris

Mladen Lazić, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade

Toni Prug, Queen Mary University of London

Catherine Samary, Université Dauphine, Paris

1. M. Tamás, Visiting Professor, CEU, Budapest

Mislav Žitko, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

 

Organization of the conference:

The conference is organized by the Group for the Study of Social Engagement, unit of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, with support of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Scientific and Technological Development, Institut français de Serbie, Center for Advanced Studies (Rijeka, Croatia), Balkan Trust for Democracy, Goethe Institute, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Singidunum University, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for Eastern Europe, The German Marshall Fund, Cultural Center of Belgrade, Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (Belgrade).

 

For information on the time schedule, organization and future events, follow us on:

e-mail: ifdt.capitalism@gmail.com

Facebook: facebook.com/instifdt

Twitter: twitter.com/ifdt_beograd

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-reminder-thinking-beyond-capitalism-belgrade-24.6-deadline-10-april

Beyond Capitalism

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

The Failure of Capitalism

Two Events with Michael Lowy

Michael Lowy

TWO EVENTS WITH MICHAEL LÖWY

Haymarket Books presents two events with Michael Löwy

 

Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution

April 3 * 7 pm * CUNY Graduate Center rm 9204, 365 5th Ave in Manhattan

Transit: 34th St-Herald B/D/F/M/N/Q/R, Penn Station 1/2/3/A/C/E, 33rd St 6

The ideas of Karl Marx are proving to be as relevant as ever in explaining the chaos of capitalism, growing inequality, and the oppression of people in this country and around the world.

But Marx was not just a theorist. He was also an agitator and organizer. He was interested in understanding the world in order to change it.

Join us for this talk and discussion with Michael Löwy on the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx, based on his book The Theory of Revolution in Young Marx.

Co-Sponsored by the Grad Center ISO and Haymarket Books. More info and RSVP at Facebook.

 

Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe

April 4 * 5:30 pm * The Commons Brooklyn, 388 Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn

Transit: Bergen F/G, Hoyt-Schermerhorn A/C/G, Nevins St. 2/3/4/5, Atlantic Ave D/N/R

Ecological catastrophe and the preservation of a natural environment favorable to human life are incompatible with the expansive and destructive logic of the capitalist system.

Join a conversation with Michael Löwy exploring some of the main ecosocialist proposals and some concrete experiences of struggle, particularly in Latin America, including:

Before the Flood: The Political Challenge of Ecosocialism

Ecosocialism and Democratic Planning

Ecosocial Struggles of Indigenous Peoples

Chico Mendes and the Brazilian Struggle for the Amazonian Forest

This event will celebrate the release of Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe, Löwy’s fourth book with Haymarket.

Co-Sponsored by the System Change Not Climate Change; the Ecosocialist Coalition and Haymarket Books. More info and RSVP at Facebook.

 

Michael Löwy is is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher, and emeritus research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). His books, including On Changing the World and The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development, have been translated into twenty-nine languages.

* * *

Any questions? Write: jason@haymarketbooks.org

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/michael-loewy-on-karl-marx-revolution-and-ecosocialism

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

For a New Year! For a New World! Nowruz Spring Celebration

Happy Nowruz!

FOR A NEW YEAR!  FOR A NEW WORLD!

NOWRUZ SPRING CELEBRATION

SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2015

7:00-10:00 PM

Westside Peace Center

3916 Sepulveda Blvd., near Venice Blvd. (free parking in rear)

Suite 101-102, press #22 at door to get into building

Culver City (LA area)

 

SPEAKERS AND PERFORMERS:

Brief remarks:

Kevin Anderson, author of “Marx at the Margins”:

Marx’s Concept of a New Society

Marcelo M., student activist:

Glimmers of the New Society in the Environmental Movement

Brief responses from audience

 

Mansoor M., Iranian cultural worker:

Introducing Nowruz

Live Performance by “Mansoor and Friends,” Iranian-Latin Fusion Music/World Music

Food, conversation, and enjoyment will follow, alongside the music.  (Cash donation requested based upon income, but no one will be turned away.)

Nowruz (Persian New Year) celebrates spring and renewal across a number of cultures, from Iran and Kurdistan to Afghanistan and Los Angeles.  This event will link the spirit of Nowruz to the worldwide quest for a renewal of society that would overcome and replace capitalism and other forms of oppression.  Doing so will require hard work, hard thinking, and a celebratory, global humanist spirit.  That is what we will be evoking at this event.

Sponsored by the West Coast Chapter, International Marxist-Humanist Organization

More information: arise@internationalmarxisthumanist.org and http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/

Here is URL for meeting for Facebook, Twitter, etc: http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/events/los-angeles-for-a-new-year-for-a-new-world-nowruz-spring-celebration

Join our Facebook page: “International Marxist-Humanist Organization: https://www.facebook.com/groups/imhorg/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

World Society, Planetary Natures: Crises and Sustainability in the Capitalocene and Beyond

The World Society Foundation

WORLD SOCIETY, PLANETARY NATURES: CRISIS AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CAPITALOCENE AND BEYOND

CALL FOR PAPERS

World Society, Planetary Natures: Crisis and Sustainability in the Capitalocene and Beyond

Binghamton University, July 10-11, 2015

An international conference sponsored by the World Society Foundation

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

• Christian Parenti
• Harriet Friedmann
• Larry Lohmann
• Doug Henwood
• Tony Weis
• Sasha Lilley
• Jason W. Moore

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS EXTENDED TO MARCH 15, 2015

TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT, PLEASE REGISTER HERE: http://goo.gl/forms/fLL348cSPG

Since 2008, a broad consensus has emerged among scholars of global change: ours is an era of “converging crises.” Popularly expressed in the language of “triple crisis” – climate, energy, and finance – there is considerable uncertainty as to how these crisis-tendencies fit together, and if they are nearly so independent as the language of convergence suggests. If many scholars view the unfolding turbulence of the 21st century as an era of multiple crises, others have turned towards a different way of seeing crisis. This emerging alternative seeks to unify dimensions of human and extra-human natures in the world history of the present – as in the distinctive approaches of the Anthropocene and world-ecology perspectives. Through this different way of seeing, a crucial question has taken shape: Are we living the Age of Humans (the Anthropocene) or the Age of Capital (Capitalocene)?

World Society, Planetary Natures seeks to bring together scholars of global social change and global environmental change in the pursuit of new syntheses of “political economy” and “political ecology,” broadly conceived. The conference therefore privileges a double engagement: 1) with the core concerns of world-historical and global studies; and 2) with a broader multi-disciplinary community focused on global environmental change, past and present.

The conference pursues three major goals. First, we encourage a serious intellectual cross-fertilization between scholars engaged in the study of global social change and those engaged in the study of global environmental change. Second, the conference will facilitate a sustained exploration of the relations unifying the differentiated moments of 21st century crisis. These include not only the “triple crisis” argument, but comprise a wide range of crisis tendencies – such as food, inequality, employment, and social reproduction – as well as to the emergent possibilities of “commoning.” Third, the conference welcomes creative elaborations of globalization – in its manifold historical and contemporary expressions – as “ways of organizing nature.” In contrast to seeing neoliberalism as acting upon global natures, this alternative encourages a view of globalization as developing through the web of life. Such an alternative rethinks aspects of recent (and longue durée) world history as new human-environment configurations in which humans make environments, and environments enter into the constitution of power, re/production, and inequality. This entails the socio-ecological reconstruction of taken for granted “social” phenomena, such as the Washington Consensus, financialization, the European Union, or the rise of the BRICS. To investigate, analyze, and narrate historical change as if nature matters – as producer no less than product of capital and power – implies a much more decisive shift than commonly recognized: in our theoretical frames, methodological choices, and narrative strategies.

TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT, PLEASE REGISTER HERE: http://goo.gl/forms/fLL348cSPG

We welcome papers, panels, and proposals related – but not restricted to – the following topics:

• The Financialization of Nature: Commodities, Carbon markets, Conservation, etc.
• One, Two, Many “Sovereignties”: Food, Land, Energy, and Beyond
• Planetary Urbanization
• Cheap Labor, Unpaid Work, and the Crisis of Human Natures
• Green Catastrophism and the Theory of Global Crisis
• Narratives of Nature, Crisis, and Capitalism
• Modernity and Climate Change
• Scientific Revolutions and Capitalist Natures
• Class Dynamics of Agro-Ecological Change, North and South
• Crises: Social, Ecological, or World-Ecological?
• Ecology and Imperialism
• The ‘Long’ Green Revolution: Renewal or Demise?
• Culture as Ecology
• Green Keynesianism and the Myth of Sustainability
• Industrialization and the Production of Nature
• Anthropocene or Capitalocene?
• New (and Old) Practices of Commoning
• World-Literature and World-Ecology
• Value, Nature, and Ontological Politics
• Environmental Histories of Capital, Empire, and Commodities
• Commodity Frontiers, Past and Present
• The Environment-Making State
• Markets, Trade, Investment: Does Nature Matter?
• Nature as Accumulation Strategy
• Crises of Social Reproduction
• Neoliberalism’s Crises… or Not?
• Surplus Humanities
• Climate and Capitalism: Two Crises or One?
• Nature and Hegemony
• Ecological Exhaustion and War

We welcome proposals for individual papers as well as paper sessions and panel discussions. TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT, PLEASE REGISTER HERE: http://goo.gl/forms/fLL348cSPG

Inquiries may be sent to: planetarynatures@gmail.com.

Venue: The conference will be held 10-11 July, 2015 at Binghamton University (USA). As a family friendly conference we are able to extend conference pricing for food and lodging to participant families, and we are arranging childcare for those who may need it.

Travel grants: The World Society Foundation sponsors a small number of travel grants for postgraduate students, young researchers, and for participants from Africa, Asia, Latin-America and Eastern Europe (ISA country categories B and C). Travel grants will be allocated on the basis of a competitive assessment of full papers (of about 8.000 words) submitted. Deadline for submission of papers for travel grants is March 15, 2015. Applicants receiving travel grants will be notified before 15 April, 2015.

Publication: Outstanding conference papers will be published in a conference volume.

Conference Sponsorship: The main sponsor of the conference is the World Society Foundation (Zurich, Switzerland). In addition the conference is co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology, University of Neuchâtel, the Department of Sociology, Binghamton University, the World-Ecology Research Network. For more information on the World Society Foundation and its activities, please check out the web site: http://www.worldsociety.ch/.

Organizing Committee: Christian Suter, Université de Neuchâtel; Diana C. Gildea; Jason W. Moore, Binghamton University

KRISIS

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Working Worlds

Stuff

WORKING WORLDS

Call for Papers:

Working Worlds explores the world-making capacities of the work of art. The conference seeks to reimagine the artwork as a space of compossibility in which multiple worlds, both real and potential, past and future, coexist. The present conference invites papers to intermix different scales of worlds, from the world in miniature to a world in collapse. Recent debates in art history have emphasised the artwork’s potential to represent global phenomena: conflict, ecological catastrophe and the flows of capital. Lost in these discussions is the fact that the artwork may also be understood as a world in and of itself. The artwork is of this world, but it is not reducible to it. From the sculptural practice of Camille Henrot to the performances of Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, attention paid to the particularity of the artwork reveals its potential to actualize speculative fictions in which worlds are formed and collapsed. Though the period addressed by the conference finds its beginnings with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an event that for many heralds the era of globalisation, Working Worlds also invites papers that draw lines of continuity between the modern and the post-modern, and thereby seek to challenge existing narratives that draw too firm a line between these historical periods.

 

Working Worlds proposes three panels with topics not exclusively related to:

1. The work of the artwork / worldmaking / the artwork as theory
2. Artistic labour / digital labor / artwork as situation / artwork as event / cognitive mapping
3. Institution / artworld / capitalism as global process

 

Speakers should be prepared to present papers for 25 min followed by a discussion. Please send 300 word abstracts by February 26th to: Andrew Witt and Rye Holmboe, workingworlds2015@gmail.com The conference will be held on the 16th of May, 2015.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/call-for-papers-working-worlds-may-16-2015-university-college-london

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‘Time and Space in the Social Universe of Capital’ – by Michael Neary and Glenn Rikowski, now at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/10545768/Time_and_Speed_in_the_Social_Universe_of_Capital

Transversal Practices: Matter, Ecology, and Relationality

Transversality

TRANSVERSAL PRACTICES: MATTER, ECOLOGY, AND RELATIONALITY

EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS

VI Conference on New Materialism

27–29 September 2015

The Victorian College of the Arts

The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.

 

Extension on Call for Papers

New deadline – 16 February 2015

Abstracts for academic papers, creative proposals and experimental and/or experiential laboratorium are invited from scholars/writers/artists/scientists. Please submit a 250-word abstract or proposal with a title, keywords and technical requirements along with a short 100 word biography via the Newmats2015 website template.

Submit your abstracts online at: http://www.newmats2015.net

 

Confirmed Keynotes:

A/Professor Erin Manning, SenseLab, Concordia University, Canada

Professor Hayden Lorimer, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Professor Brian Martin, Deakin University, Australia

 

Transversal Practices focuses on how things, subjects, collectives, politics and disciplines are in the making; how they take-form and transform in relation to other elements, both human and nonhuman. Transversal Practices are concerned with ecologies where intensities of movement are aligned with and embrace hands-on attitude and artistic, scientific, ethnographical, philosophical and activist praxis.

We offer three keywords to inspire thinking and to carve out the specificities of practice. Matter refers to ubiquitous, vibrant and continuous becoming that is one of the central concerns of New Materialism: practices are always material, and surprising in nature. Ecology indicates an open and continuously transforming system, which depends upon how its components relate to each other. Relationality, for its part, is the moving principle of being in the world, or with the world. We become in relation to others. We co-emerge, as do artworks, ideas and collectives.

We welcome contributions that address, for example, the following questions:

How do transversal practices work and how can we account or conceptualise them?

What kind of methodologies do they necessitate, or call for?

We encourage critical approaches that transversally cross the following: collectivity, corporeality/incorporeality, materiality/immateriality, indigeneity, individual/group subjectivity, knowledge-production/onto-epistemologies, language, temporality, transdisciplinarity, processes of making art/philosophy/ activism, and the three Ss—spatiality, sociality and the sensorium. All conference submissions will be referred with opportunities to submit completed papers for a refereed publication.

Enquiries about the conference can be directed to: admin@newmats2015.net

Newmats2015 conference is sponsored by the Faculty of the VCA and MCM at the University of Melbourne in co-operation with ISCH COST Action New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter.’

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

 

‘Time and Space in the Social Universe of Capital’ – by Michael Neary and Glenn Rikowski, now at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/10545768/Time_and_Speed_in_the_Social_Universe_of_Capital