🌖NEXT WEEK🌗
Tues April 30 18:30 (BST)
with @ana_valdi
LIVE @UCLanthropology and on ZOOM
'The supply chain capitalism of AI: a call to (re)think algorithmic harms and resistance'
Everybody welcome FREE, LIVE and online! Just turn up!
Ana Valdivia, Lecturer at Oxford Internet Institute, will be speaking LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW
**NB We can now use the front door in Taviton St again **
You can also join us on ZOOM (ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak)
My discipline, anthropology, is not seen as a “growth" discipline, and departments are being closed down. But the world needs Anthropology and Anthropologists now more than ever!
Here are my 8 reasons for this:
POSSIBILITIES
At a time of polycrisis, when the destructive fallouts of capitalist modernity are ever more apparent, anthropology highlights that there are myriad alternative ways of thinking and living; that there is so much to learn from other peoples in the world. 1/n
The most significant and valuable through it all has been the values, theory, and methods from my years explicitly learning / training / practicing anthropology. I wish more (any!) of my undergrad and postgrad students could deep dive in anthro at my university, but it doesn’t exist here as a discipline, degree, or department.
Am reading “Palestinian Walks. Notes on a vanishing landscape” by Raja Shehadeh at the moment (a Christmas present). Through the deceptively simple device of 7 walks taken over 27 years near his home town Ramallah, he offers a way into SO much (devastating) history. Also love it as it combines #PoliticalEcology with #HistoricalEcology - just my thing. A beautiful book, really recommend it. #Gaza#Palestine#Bookstodon#Walks
Anyone remotely interested in political ecology will enjoy following this event on January 26, 2024, 12:00-14:00 CET, featuring the 2023 Holberg Prize Laureate Joan Martinez-Allier and other distinguished speakers. https://holbergprize.org/en/global-political-ecology
“Selling Out for Sustainability? Neoliberal governance, agency and professional careers in the sustainable palm oil sector”
New paper by @Izadel and myself out now in @journalofpoliticalecology. It’s a critical exploration of the world of “sustainable #PalmOil” and the interactions between consultancies, NGOs, finance and corporations as well as individual career choices. 1/2
2/2 Through this focus, we hope to make a new contribution to understanding the corporate sustainability drive - in particular the role of #Consultancies, so key in all this but rarely studied as a phenomenon in themselves.
3/2 The paper is part of a Special Section on the #PoliticalEcology of professionals, originally a panel at Pollen 2020 @poleconet, organised by Sam Staddon, @FlorianeClement and Bimbika Sijapati Basnett. Thank you!
And just wanted to add that for me it's also one of several attempts to think through the perennial question: change from inside or outside? As ever, our answer is both. #EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce
Ruiz, M. A. & Santamarina, B., (2023) “Producing nature: Brand marketing of nature parks in Spain”, Journal of Political Ecology 30(1), 609–626. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5084#politicalecology
Ten days and counting until this fantastic conference kicks off in Meanjin / Brisbane and online!
Are you interested in how we can survive and thrive together as all the shit starts hitting all the fans?
Interested in how we feed ourselves? How we make decisions? How we don’t be racist? How we design for people not cars, and for heat and affordability and liveability together?
#Gorz#PoliticalEcology#Work#Capitalism: "In a system where, as Gorz puts it, “we produce nothing of what we consume, and consume nothing of what we produce,” it is up to each and every one of us, connecting with others as a collective mass, to regain control over the meaning of work and over the determination of the needs that legitimize it. This is also the way for us to question the disastrous impact that the economy is having on the environment through its blind logic of profit and growth.
Firstly, we have to get rid of the productivist ideology of work, which is promoted by employers but also by an important part of the Left, leading us to believe that work is a natural thing with its own inherent value, regardless of its economic purpose and environmental impact. Secondly, we have to move away from the injunction, promoted through advertising, to consume anything and everything, regardless of our needs or the ecological quality of the product."
#Welcome to all #Newbies! To me, the #Fediverse is at the core of a wider #Commoning movement - ever more of us realising that other worlds are possible and building these together.
2023 is 50ys since Schumacher’s #SmallIsBeautiful & this cover sums it all up: the new world is almost born and it’s happening here (paraphrasing #Gramsci) 😊
Had a nice conversation with Matt Haugen about my new book #OilBeach in his newsletter, Terrain, “exploring political ecology, planetary crises, and what is to be done”
Sorry I missed all this, Nathan! Still need to get better at not missing things on Mastodon..
Was actually trying to find out whether the call for panels or papers for #Pollen24 was open yet - I just went on the website but can't see anything yet. Such a great format to have it in #Lund, #Dodoma and #Lima all at once! #PoliticalEcology