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

***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

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/

 

***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

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/

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

**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/

Social Alternatives – Call for Thematic Issues

Social Alternatives

SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES – CALL FOR THEMATIC ISSUES

Dear Colleagues

Social Alternatives is seeking proposals from Guest Editors for Thematic Issues

Social Alternatives: http://socialalternatives.com/contributions

Social Alternatives is an independent, quarterly refereed journal which aims to promote and inform public debate, commentary and dialogue about contemporary social, political, economic and environmental issues.

Social Alternatives analyses, critiques and reviews contemporary social issues and problems. The journal seeks to generate insight, knowledge, and understanding of contemporary circumstances in order to determine local, national, and global implications. We are committed to the principles of social justice and to creating spaces of dialogue intended to stimulate social alternatives to current conditions.

Social Alternatives values the capacity of intellectual and artistic endeavour to prompt imaginative solutions and alternatives and publishes refereed articles, review essays, commentaries and book reviews as well as short stories, poems, images and cartoons.

The journal has grappled with matters of contemporary concern for three decades, publishing articles and themed issues on topics such as: peace and conflict, racism, Indigenous rights, social justice, human rights, inequality and the environment.

If you are interested please send expressions of interest to: julie.matthews@adelaide.edu.au or julie@socialalternatives.com

 

**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/

News From Nowhere Club: 2015 Programme

William Morris

NEWS FROM NOWHERE CLUB: 2015 PROGRAMME

Patron: Peter Hennessy                                                                      

‘Fellowship is life and the lack of fellowship is death.’ William Morris

 

PROGRAMME 2015

VENUE  Epicentre, West St. Leytonstone E11 4LJ

TIMES 7.30 Buffet: please bring something, 8.00 Talk and questions/discussion

TRAVEL Leytonstone or Stratford tube, 257 bus or Leytonstone High Rd overground and short walk

All welcome, just turn up. Free. Donations welcome. Car park.  You need to walk to the front of the building – back door is usually locked. Quiet kids welcome.

Enquiries:   0208 555 5248 or 07443 480 509   info@newsfromnowhereclub.org.

 

Saturday 10 January 2015: Bollington: Utopia in Cheshire? And Letchworth Garden City: Health of the Country, Comforts of the Town

Speakers: Jim Hoyle & William Armitage

Jim moved from Birmingham to Bollington in 2012, having fallen in love with it. He has not been disappointed. His talk will consider every aspect of this unique Cheshire town. Its history, rich cultural life, demographics and campaigns will be covered in a witty presentation……. In 1898 Ebenezer Howard, Letchworth’s founder, had a vision: through careful planning we could elevate many of the desperately poor living & working conditions in towns & villages.  Today Letchworth remains close to its original ideals. William, Board Member of Letchworth Heritage Foundation, was Managing Director of David’s Bookshop in Letchworth for 40 years.

 

Saturday 14 February 2015: The Bethnal Green Tube Shelter Disaster

Speaker: Joy Puritz

One evening in March 1943, 173 people, including 62 children, were crushed to death trying to enter a station shelter. This talk is a description of the circumstances which led to the worst civilian disaster of WWII in this country, whether it could have been avoided & if anyone was to blame. Many have thought there was a cover up. Poignant anecdotes will be related. Joy has been closely involved in the Bethnal Green Memorial Project, an oral history project organised by the University of East London & has studied witness statements taken for the Government enquiry in 1943, interviewed survivors, shown visitors around the memorial sculpture & written texts for the project’s archive & guidebook.

 

Saturday 14 March 2015: The Life of Bees

Speaker: Ian Nichols

Ian, a local beekeeper and active member and Trustee of Essex Beekeepers Association, initiated, as Annual Conference Chair in 2013, a forum on ‘Plants, Pollinators and Pesticides’, with lectures by leading experts. He has worked with prominent figures in the bee world, has done much to promote awareness of the plight of bees in the wider community & was delighted with the award of First Prize and Best in Show for his honey & photography at the Essex Show in 2014. He will give his high speed talk covering: A Short History of the Honey Bee, Life inside the Hive, Bee Products, Danger & Threats to Bees. He will also be selling his award winning honey.

 

Saturday 11 April 2015: ‘The most lovable figure’: George Lansbury and East End politics

Speaker: Professor John Shepherd

‘The most lovable figure in modern politics’ was how A.J.P. Taylor described Christian socialist and pacifist, George Lansbury. At 73 the former rebel in 1932 took over the helm of the Labour Party of only 46 MPs in the Depression years. Throughout a remarkable life, the immensely popular Lansbury remained an extraordinary politician of the people, associated with a multitude of crusades for women’s enfranchisement, social justice and universal disarmament. He was twice jailed for his political beliefs in 1913 over ‘votes for women’ and during the 1921 ‘Poplar Rates Revolt,’ when 30 Labour councillors willingly went to prison in defiance of the government, the courts and their own party leadership. Lansbury never sought personal wealth, travelled everywhere by public transport and made his family home in impoverished East London. His final years were spent in a tireless international crusade, including visits to Hitler and Mussolini in 1937, to prevent the drift towards another world war.

 

Saturday 9 May 2015:  Permaculture: Working with Nature

Speaker: Ros Bedlow

Take a walk in Epping Forest. Trees, grasses, fungi, birds, insects, squirrels, foxes, all going about their business. Things change, but the forest keeps going: sustainable in the true sense of the word. What is it about an ecosystem like this that keeps it going & can we learn anything from it? Permaculture, developed in Australia in the 1970s as a response to agricultural practices which were degrading the land, was based on observation of nature & provided a framework for designing sustainable food growing systems. Ros has taught permaculture since the 1980s  & is particularly interested in the way permaculture ethics & principles can be applied to groups, communities, indeed to any system, to increase their sustainability.

 

Saturday 13 June 2015:  “It’s the Monarchy, Stupid”: Why the Crown is the Biggest Obstacle to Constitutional Reform

Speaker: Graham Smith

The monarchy is the keystone of the British constitution & the source of political & royal power, the wellspring of the establishment’s culture of pomposity & authority.  Yet it is wrong in principle, wrong in practice & bad for British politics, the antithesis of the democratic spirit that drives ever-growing demands for reform & the biggest obstacle to the radical reform Britain needs.  Arguments about devolution, localism & city mayors miss the point: the democratic revolution must happen in Westminster first. Without a seismic shift in our political system’s  foundation, all else is tinkering at the edges of a fundamentally flawed system. Graham is the Chief Executive Officer of Republic campaign.

 

Saturday 11 July (part of the Leytonstone Festival): “All’s Well”: A Musical Journey to Antarctica

Speaker/ Performer: Jake Wilson

In 2012, guitarist & songwriter Jake Wilson released “All’s Well”, a collection of songs marking the centenary of the deaths of Captain Scott & his polar party on their return journey from the South Pole. In 2013, Jake received unique permission to travel to Antarctica & perform his songs in the actual hut where Scott & his team lived & worked before setting out for the Pole. Jake will be talking about Scott & his companions, performing his songs & discussing his own extraordinary musical expedition to Antarctica.  For more information:  http://www.jakewilsonmusic.com

 

Saturday 8 August 2015:  ‘It Happened Here’

Speaker: Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow, the British film restorer, historian & director recently awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime services to cinema, will talk about his first film It Happened Here, co-directed with Andrew Mollo when both were teenagers: a counter-factual history of Britain under Nazi occupation in the closing year of World War Two. Often described as the best amateur film ever made, superb in its authenticity & attention to period detail, it contained scenes in which genuine British Nazis were allowed to expound their views, leading to its being misinterpreted & condemned by many as pro-Nazi.  Kevin, who visited Hamburg in 2014 for the film’s first public showing in Germany, will talk & show us excerpts of his film.

 

Saturday 12 September 2015: James Pound, Rector of Wanstead, Natural Philosopher and Astronomer

Speaker: Dr John Fisher

In 1707 James Pound survived a massacre at an outpost of the East India Company near Cambodia. He navigated a small ship through pirate-infested waters. In 1709 he was appointed Rector of Wanstead by Sir Richard Child. Pound, a Fellow of the Royal Society, sought a solution to the problem of determining the longitude at sea, before the Longitude Prize was instituted. From 1710 Wanstead became a leading centre of scientific research. Pound worked with Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton. Pound’s nephew, James Bradley, became the first to demonstrate that the Earth was in motion. The work at Wanstead led to the solution of determining longitude at sea. Dr John Fisher lives in Forest Gate, was a factory worker without any educational qualifications, was one of the first Open University students and later lectured in the history of science at Imperial College, London.

 

Saturday 10 October 2015: Walking with Passion: A One Way Ticket to Jarrow

Speaker: Carole Vincent

Journeying from Jarrow to Trafalgar Square, a group of people from all walks of life came together in August 2014, planning to walk an historic route first taken by the Jarrow March for Jobs on 2 October 1936. However, this was the first of its kind to enlighten communities on route of the devastating privatisation of our NHS & to muster support for the ‘Call999fortheNHS’ Campaign. Carole tells her story of those three weeks & why she walked the 300 miles.

 

Saturday 14 November 2015: Trauma, Grief and Resilience in Gaza

Speakers: Dr Mohamed Altawil and David Harrold

What does it means to be a child in Gaza? You may be surprised by answers from Dr Mohamed Altawil & David Harrold of Palestine Trauma Centre (UK) who work with a trauma centre in Gaza helping children & families. The situations are often harrowing; but the people, especially the children, can be inspiring. Mohamed & David will show the work of the trauma team, recite some poetry & discuss future prospects for these wonderful children who have experienced eight years of siege & four brutal invasions.

 

Saturday 12 December 2015: The Direct Path to Enlightenment

Speaker: Vanaraji

How can we live in a better world? Changing our mind changes the world. The teachings of the Buddha help us change how we think & give us a new perspective on life that leads  to freedom from suffering, for ourselves & others. Vanaraji, an Ordained Buddhist in the Triratana Buddhist Order, will give an overview of Buddhist principles & practices that free us from mundane consciousness & help us experience more vividly the Enlightened world.

 

**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

 

Historical Materialism London Conference 2014: Climate Change Stream – Call for Papers

Neoliberalism

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM LONDON CONFERENCE 2014: CLIMATE CHANGE STREAM – CALL FOR PAPERS

Call For Papers: Climate Shange Stream at the Eleventh London Historical Materialism Conference, 6-9 November 2014

As business-as-usual continues, annual growth of global CO2 emission now three times higher than in the 1990s, it is becoming abundantly clear that the capitalist mode of production is unable to stave off perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced by civilisation: catastrophic global warming. Rather, it is hurling humanity into the fire with maximum force. Yet capital remains a non-entity in established climate change discourse and politics: unquestioned, unexamined, rarely as much as mentioned. This stream at the HM annual conference 2014 will seek to cast light on the many ways in which the workings of capital raise the temperature of our present and future. Marxist analysis has recently proved a fertile source of critique in this field, but much work remains to be done, on levels of theory as well as of urgent praxis.

What mechanisms are driving the ever-increasing combustion of fossil fuels? How can historical materialist approaches serve to identify the vested interests of business-as-usual? The ecological implications of capitalist development are only now becoming apparent: this might require a rethinking and recalibration of Marxist theories, from the founding fathers to more recent currents (e.g. autonomist Marxism, political Marxism, world-systems theory, feminist Marxism: what do they have to offer; how do they need to be updated?). Dangerous impacts of climate change have already become part of daily life, but they strike unevenly along lines of class, gender, race, location in the world-economy: can patterns of vulnerability be understood – and altered – without a little help from the Marxist tool-box? As people suffer from the heat, capital is not only surviving but thriving, developing new ways to profit from adaptation and false solutions. This calls for application of all the instruments of critical political economy. Given the speed with which the window for meaningful mitigation is closing, any break with current trajectories would certainly require dramatic upheavals: are some of the old precepts of revolutionary Marxism slated for an unexpected comeback? How, for instance, would it be possible to cut CO2 emissions by 5% per year – as science tells us is necessary – without comprehensive planning of the economy? While the scientific community rings the alarm bells ever louder, climate movements are spreading across the world, though nowhere as fast and extensively as needed. With COP-20 in Paris in 2015 on the horizon, strategies for more effective mobilisation should be on top of the agenda.

Although this stream focuses on climate change, that particular problem cannot be extricated from the ecological totality that is capitalism, and so we welcome contributions on related issues of ecology as well.

Themes of papers may include:

Global capital circuits and their dependency on fossil energy
The history of fossil fuel consumption and production
Urbanisation, global cities and global warming
Obstacles to a transition from fossil to renewable energy
Strategies for radical emissions reductions
The politics of international climate change negotiations
Planned economy as an emergency solution
Geoengineering, carbon trading and other capitalist forms of climate change management
Climate justice movements
Local environmental struggles worldwide and their links to climate justice
Ecologically unequal exchange and imperialism in a warming world
Uneven and combined development and vulnerability to climate change
Neoliberal capitalism as an ecological regime
Catastrophe as a category of Marxist thought / pitfalls of catastrophism
Working-class environmentalism, past and present
Climate change and gender
Peasants’ movements
Advances in ecological Marxist theory (second contradiction, metabolic rift, capitalism as world-ecology…)
Whatever happened to peak oil?
Climate jobs and trade union struggles
Revolutionary subjects in a warming world
Marxist perspectives on climate change science

Please register your abstracts here before May 15: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual11/submit

 

**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 on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

Energy, Environment, Culture: Call for Papers

Culture

ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE – CALL FOR PAPERS

The Institute on Culture and Society: The Banff Centre for the Arts — June 13-17, 2014

The Institute on Culture and Society (ICS) invites the submission of papers on topics related to Marxism, critical theory, and Marxist views of literature. Submissions are welcome from all humanities and social scientific perspectives. Full submission details can be found at the end of this call.

Supplementing an ongoing engagement with Marxism, ICS 2014 welcomes submissions on this year’s special topic: “Energy, Environment, Culture” (EEC). This topic aims to facilitate discussion that moves beyond standard disputes over energy politics in Canada in order to develop sophisticated knowledge about the global relations, ecological realities, social reproduction, and community impacts of energy.

From debates on harnessing wind and solar power to the environmental effects of the tar sands, energy and power have a complex and under theorized connection to culture, politics, and society. Energy is understood in economic terms as the name for an input into market activity that can take a variety of forms and which is necessary for steady-state growth. In environmental thought, too, energy serves as a placeholder for a range of activities, practices and objects with inconsistent theoretical and scientific content. In both cases, energy is seen as fundamental to social life, even if the depth of its significance to the operations of society, and its role in implementing and maintaining particular sets of relationships across diverse communities, is poorly understood. What insights can Marxism lend ecology? Further, what insights can a Marxist-Feminist political economy develop in ecological thought? Approaching these problematics from a humanities perspective, we suggest innovative workshop, panel, and paper proposals on any of the following:

Energy and Globalization
 – regional economies, energy distribution, and the political climate of international markets
– the transnational and global relationship between eastern, western and northern economies in Canada vis-à-vis Pacific and Southern American partners and cultures
– cultural symptoms of energy and globalization or internationalism
– cultural and environmental interactions in energy intensive regions
– the interregional and provincial flows created by energy infrastructures and cultural development

Energy and Ecology
– updates to the established approach to energetics
– “New Materialisms” and the renewed interest in non-human agency in ecological research
– redirections of familiar environment vs. economy binary
– the diverse materialisms that link economics, energy, and ecology

Ecology and Marxist Feminism
 – practical, community- driven knowledges about energy systems and sustainability
– primitive accumulation (as an ongoing process coterminous with capital accumulation), gender, and the environment
– the work of Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Maria Mies and Silvia Federici
– capitalism, gender, and ecology
– social reproduction and/as energy
– the new work on gender and reproduction coming out in the journals Endnotes and Lies

ICS is run in consecutive sessions to encourage a developing conversation and increase potential research outputs and collaboration. Toward this end, participants are strongly encouraged to stay for the entirety of the conference. Significant subsidies will be available to graduate students and the underemployed.

We welcome submissions of papers, panels, pecha kucha presentations, roundtables, reading groups, and more. Please submit proposals of no more than 400 words in length, including title and affiliation, to mlgics2014@gmail.com. Panel or roundtable proposals should be introduced by a 100 word rational. If geared towards a specific stream, submissions should indicate which stream it most strongly relates to.

All submissions must be received by the 14th of March, 2014.

Please let us know if you would be interested in having childcare arranged.

The Banff Centre is a world-renowned facility supporting the creation and performance of new works of visual art, music, dance, theatre, and writing.

ICS 2014 is sponsored by ARIEL, Mediations, Reviews in Cultural Theory, the Marxist Literary Group, The University of Alberta (U of A) Faculty of Arts, U of A English and Film Studies, U of A Kule Institute for Advanced Study, ConcordiaUniversity, St. Francis Xavier, YorkUniversity, and the Banff Centre.

 

The Banff Centre: http://www.banffcentre.ca/

 

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

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

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Political Ecology and Environmental Sociology

Harvesting

POLITICAL ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY

CALL FOR PAPERS: Political Ecology and Environmental Sociology: Towards Productive Engagement or Sustaining the Contract of Mutual Indifference?

DIMENSIONS OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY, CONFERENCE ON NATURE/SOCIETY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY February 27 – March 1, 2014 University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Alan Rudy, Damian White, Christopher Oliver and Brian Gareau

The political ecologist Piers Blackie has observed in a stock-taking of political ecology that “a review of Environmental Sociology, a textbook by Hannigan, finds no mention of Political Ecology and yet most of its contents might well be claimed as Political Ecology” (Blackie, 2008: 772). One could similarly work through many political ecology textbooks and find little or no discussion of environmental sociology. Given the ritualistic appeals to “inter-disciplinarity” in the environmental social sciences, how can we account for the extra-ordinary disengagement between political ecology and environmental sociology? How can these seemingly overlapping and aligned sub-disciplines largely ignore each other? Why has political ecology taken socio-natural hybridity, post-human ethics and non-equilibrium ecologies so much more seriously than US environmental sociology has? Why is it that understandings of the relationship between capital and ecology are widely divergent between environmental sociologists and political ecologists? Are both fields increasingly disabled by their dis-engagement with each other?

Attempting to do justice to the diverse amalgam of movements, institutions and disciplines that have contributed to the many methods and foci involved, this panel will explore this strange contract of mutual indifference from a number of perspectives, e.g.

1.    Northern attitude and policy research relative to Southern development and ethnographic studies;

2.    Durkheimian empiricist, realist Marxist and neo-Malthusian approaches contrasted with relational Marxist, materialist feminist and post structuralist currents;

3.    Critical takes on risk society and the democratization of the state versus bureaucratic management derived from risk science-based policy;

4.     Local and lay knowledge leading in directions quite different than those of green neoliberalism;

5.    The primary roots of US environmental sociology in rural sociology versus political ecology’s founding of political ecology in European development geography.

The panel will consist of a series of short pieces (3000 words) en route to an open discussion. The aims of the panel will be to gain great understanding of the blockages that prevent broader engagements between political ecology and environmental sociology. It will also consider how we might imagine more productive relations between political ecology and environmental sociology.

Please submit proposed title and abstract to Alan Rudy alan.rudy@gmail.com Damian White dwhite01@risd.edu, Chris Oliver christopheroliver@uky.edu and Brian Gareau bgareau@gmail.com by December 1^st 2013

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

Education, Environmental Health, and Social Justice

Education is Not for Sale

EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

CALL FOR PAPERS

Education, Environmental Health, and Social Justice

Guest Editors: David Hursh & Camille Anne Martina

 

This special issue of Policy Futures in Education (www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE) will focus on the relationship between environmental health, social justice, and education.

The relationship between the built and natural environment and human health is often misunderstood and under-appreciated. Improving our health requires that we examine how our everyday activities such as product and energy use (biomass and fossil fuels), agricultural and industrial practices, and transportation methods increase our exposure to toxic substances and contribute to climate and other environmental changes. In addition, environmental health is an issue of social justice. Sadly, individuals who live in poverty or are from a racial, ethnic or religious minority are more likely to live in unhealthy environments and carry a greater body burden of toxic exposures (Agyeman, 2013; Agyeman, Bullard & Evans, 2003).

Responding to environmental health issues and inequalities requires more than individual solutions, it requires community and governmental responses. Therefore, we need to explore what reforms and policies could be implemented to mediate and resolve these health inequalities.

Lastly, this requires informing all citizens through popular media and formal and informal education about the relationship between the environment and human health. What questions need to be posed and how do we respond to them?

We invite submissions from a wide range of fields, including but not limited to public and environmental health, anthropology, sociology, environmental sustainability, education, political science, health policy, and philosophy, connecting environmental health, social justice, and education.

 

DAVID HURSH (PhD) is a professor of education at the Warner Graduate School of Education at the University of Rochester, USA
CAMILLE ANNE MARTINA (PhD) is a research assistant professor in the Departments of Public Health Science and Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical School, USA

 

Submissions are due March 1, 2014,
and should be sent to the Guest Editors:
dhursh@warner.rochester.edu and camille_martina@urmc.rochester.edu

 

References

Agyeman, J. (2013) Introducing Just Sustainabilities: policy, planning, and practice. London: Zed Books.
Agyeman, J., Bullard, R. & Evans, B. (Eds) (2003) Just Sustainabilities: development in an unequal world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

Psychology, Environmental Studies and Education Conference

Education

PSYCHOLOGY, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AND EDUCATION CONFERENCE

Call for Abstracts

Global Conference on Psychology Researches

Sentido Zeynep Golf & Spa Resort and Hotel

Belek, Antalya, Turkey

6 – 8^th November 2013

 

Abstract Submission Deadline: 3^rd September 2013

President: Profgessor Dr. Tulay Bozkurt

Further detail on Website: http://www.gcpr.info

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

Confronting the Climate Crisis

CONFRONTING THE CLIMATE CRISIS

A conference bringing together climate scientists, trade unionists and environmental activists

11am – 5pm Saturday 8 June 2013
London Metropolitan University, 277-281 Holloway Road, LondonN7 8HN

Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have passed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. This means we are facing an environmental crisis of the most serious magnitude. Despite this threat, action from governments is limited. Unwilling to challenge the profits of the largest corporations, politicians would rather see the world burn than take serious action on climate change.

At the same time working people are facing an unprecedented assault on their jobs and services. In the name of austerity governments are trying to make ordinary people pay for the crisis caused by the bankers. We are told that we can no longer afford public services and our jobs, pay and conditions are under attack.

The Campaign Against Climate Change is campaigning for One Million Climate Jobs as a solution to the climate and economic crises. Their trade union group is hosting a conference to bring together leading climate scientists, trade unionists and environmental campaigners to discuss how best we can fight to stop global warming and create jobs.

The conference is also designed to brief trade unionists on the latest climate science. It will address questions such as “what is the significance of the Arctic ice melting” and “why is our weather strange”? Other workshops will discuss the fight for climate jobs and how trade unions can work with other campaigners over these issues.

Speakers include world renowned scientists Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr. Richard Allan. They will be joined by Joan Walley MP, the chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, Manuel Cortez, Gen. Sec. of the TSSA, Chris Baugh, Ass. Gen. Sec of the PCS, Andreas Ytterstadt, Chair of the Union of Concerned Scientists Norway and Dr. Lara Skinner of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy in America.

This is a unique opportunity for trade union activists to discuss the threat of climate change and get involved in the wider environmental movement. The conference is supported by the FBU, CWU, TSSA, PCS. UCU and UNITE unions.

Registration is £10 waged, £5 unwaged. You can book online at: www.climatetradeunion.eventbrite.com

More information at www.campaigncc.org or contact 079 585 35231

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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

Public Services Review (Europe) – Issue 24

Public Services Review

PUBLIC SERVICES REVIEW (EUROPE) – ISSUE 24

The latest issue of Public Service Review: Europe (Issue 24) is now online.

The impressive foreword is by President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz discussing European integration and later articles cover in-detail key public policy areas such as finance, defence, education, culture, regional policy, transport. The section Environment, Agriculture and Energy opens with Janez Potoènik’s assessment of positive outcomes from Rio+, followed by in-depth coverage of environment, agriculture, energy and maritime issues.

In addition, Health is represented by a number of searching articles on oncology, women and children’s health, ageing and elderly care, nursing and mental health. The exciting Research, Innovation and Science section begins with Director General of the EC’s Joint Research Centre Dominique Ristori who advocates the power of science for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. There is stimulating and broad content under this heading – Research, Innovation and Science – including digital agenda, eHealth, neuroscience, engineering, space, chemistry and social sciences, as well as focuses on European countries such as Lithuania, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic.

Below you will find links to relevant sectors in the publication as well as a key article within each. Please click the respective sector links for more editorial articles. We hope that you will enjoy reading the issue…

Special Feature

Framework for the future
European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget Janusz Lewandowski tells Editor Jonathan Miles how the EEU’s draft budget is innovative yet responsible…

Overview
Losing currency?
The UK must remain a key player in efforts to solve the euro crisis, warns Lord Lyndon Harrison, Chairman of the EU Sub-Committee on Economic and Financial Affairs…

Finance
A social shift
Northern Ireland Finance Minister Sammy Wilson considers the finance priorities for the social economy and the funding opportunities in the sector…

Defence
Liberating Lithuania
Lithuanian Minister of National Defence Rasa Juknevièienë details why the independence afforded by smart and green energy production will aid their defence policy agenda…

Education and Skills
Graduating for growth
The Northern Ireland Executive’s Minister for Employment and Learning Dr Stephen Farry describes the significance of its first higher education strategy…

Multilingualism
Strong languages
Bernadette Holmes, President of the Association for Language Learning, calls for a new paradigm for economic and social recovery in the EU…

Special Focus: Education in Sweden
Learning without limits
European universities have much to gain by affording students from further afield the same opportunities as those from Europe, believes Tautgirdas Ruzgas, of Malmö University…

Culture, Arts and Heritage
Culture club
Director General for Education, Training, Culture and Youth Jan Truszczyñski outlines how the European Commission is promoting the continued circulation of works of culture…

Regional Policy
Pushing funding further
Is England getting the maximum benefit from ERDF? Clive Betts, Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee of the House of Commons, investigates…

Transport
A sobering thought
Chief Superintendent Pasi Kemppainen, President of the European Traffic Police Network TISPOL, shares new thinking in protecting Europe’s roads from drink-drivers…

International Development

From strategy to strength
Minister of International Development Heidi Hautala highlights Finland’s commitment to meeting MDG and ODA targets, and why she believes smart aid is based on human rights…

Industry and Entrepreneurship
Visitors welcome
Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission, discusses efforts to maintain Europe’s place as the world’s leading tourist destination…

Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion
Renewed and improved
Northern Ireland Social Development Minister Nelson McCausland outlines his ambitions to take regeneration and housing projects in the country to an even higher level…

Health and Safety
Safer together
Christa Sedlatschek, Director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, explains why collaboration in risk prevention makes businesses more competitive…

Environment, Agriculture and Energy
Emissions controlled?
European Environment Agency’s Climate Change Analyst Ricardo Fernandez provides insight into the changing levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU…

Health and Social Care
A state of transformation
Edwin Poots, Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland, outlines his department’s plans to develop services that have the individual at their heart…

Research, Innovation and Science
From potential to policy
Dominique Ristori, Director-General of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, advocates the power of science for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy…

 

**END**

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

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