World Ecology 2018 – 4th Annual Conference of the World-Ecology Research Network in Helsinki, Finland, 15-18 August
Over the past two decades, large-scale resource extraction has returned to center stage in the political economy of capitalism – and in the resistance to it. Called “extractivism” by scholars and activists, resource extraction in the 21st century has assumed new prominence in an era of unusually high commodity prices and the widespread questioning of fossil fuel infrastructures. Far from limited to resource and energy question, recent extractivisms have linked up with manifold forms of land grabbing and cash-crop agriculture to create new agrarian questions of survival and justice in an era of runaway climate change. Crucially, many Indigenous Peoples, peasants, workers, and other groups have confronted the extractivist projects. Many of them have not only opposed place-specific projects but questioned the Nature/Society dualisms that have framed and legitimated the racialized, gendered, and colonial domination that has been fundamental to capitalism’s environmental histories. We are witnessing a new wave of challenges to capitalism as an ontological formation – a new ontological politics that confronts capitalism as a world-ecology of power, re/production, and nature.
Extractivisms, Social Movements and Ontological Formations is the fourth annual conference of the World-Ecology Research Network. We invite papers on the widest range of topics addressing the new extractivism, its political economy and political ecology, and movements against extractivist projects. We also welcome proposals for thematic sessions. Proposals from artists and activists are encouraged. Papers off-topic but relevant to the world-ecology conversation are also welcome.
Possible topics include:
– Indigenous movements and extractivist projects.
– Social reproduction and extractivism.
– The financialization of commodities
– Land grabbing
– Representations of extractivism, class, and capital
– Extractivism in the Global North
– Environmental histories of resource and energy extraction
– Imperialism and the Search for Cheap Natures
– Labor movements and the labor process in extractive sectors
– The feminist political economy and political ecology of extraction
– Extractivism and climate change.
– Race, racism, and racial formation in extractivist projects and processes.
– Commodity frontiers
– Global extractive industries and their politics
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Please use this link found at: http://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/world-ecology-2018 to submit an abstract for an oral presentation, a panel session, a workshop session or a poster presentation.
Important Dates:
October 25, 2017 Call for Papers opens
February 1, 2018 Abstract submission deadline
June 1, 2018 Poster abstract submission deadline
August 15 – 18, 4th Annual Conference of the World-Ecology Research Network, Helsinki, Finland