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- Convenors:
-
Calum Wheeler
(University of Bath)
Felipe Schaeffer Neves (University of Bath)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Political change, advocacy and activism
Short Abstract:
This panel investigates the ecological limits of capitalism, exploring radical critiques and transformative alternatives to the eco-social contradictions driving environmental degradation and crisis.
Description:
In the face of multiple crises, the call for socio-ecological transformation is increasingly gaining traction, not only in academia but also in political discourse and market summits. However, the terms of this transformation remain all too often confined to techno-scientific fixes and top-down policies that fail to question the socio-ecological contradictions and colonial dynamics that drive capitalism. As Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen (2021, pp.163-4) argue, the prevailing assumption remains that “the necessary absolute reduction of resource consumption and of the strain on sinks is feasible without challenging the imperial mode of living, the political economy of capitalism, or the relationships of social forces that sustain it”.
This panel is a call for papers that recognise the necessity of radical critique to inform a transformation that is founded on social and ecological justice, identifying development as a key ideological framework through which accumulative and externalising regimes of capitalism have not only expanded over the last seventy years but continue to renew through contemporary crises in the guise of ‘green growth’ and ‘green colonialism’. We welcome theoretical and empirical research that critiques the contradictions and limitations of green initiatives and discourse, as well as explorations of alternative, ‘bottom-up’ approaches towards socio-ecological transformation in both the Global South and North, that disrupt, negate, and navigate the logic of capitalism and its expression through colonial, juridical-political, patriarchal and racial forms.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Using Nancy Fraser’s concept of boundary struggles, the rising global demands for air-conditioning are representative of emerging discourse negotiating the distribution of vulnerability during heat waves, resulting from contradictions between the foreground and background conditions of capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
Inequitable access to air-conditioning is paradigmatic of incoming (and ongoing) struggles over development exacerbated by climate change, occurring at what Nancy Fraser identifies as boundaries between the foreground and background conditions of capitalism: between the economy and ecosystem health, political power, and social reproduction. Within ecology, the construction of isolated interiors in opposition to climate-changed exteriors redistribute vulnerability through the built environment. Within the political sphere, norms produced by externalization societies and the imperial mode of living contribute to the destabilization of peripheral societies, causing them to opt-in to technologies such as air-conditioning, which individualizes security responses to climate change. Within social reproduction, air-conditioning is developed as a technology selling comfort as a consumer preference, imposing discomfort upon subaltern populations. The increasing demand for air-conditioning is thus representative of emerging discourse negotiating the global distribution of vulnerability, discomfort, and death during heat waves, mediated by access to cooling technologies.
Paper short abstract:
This paper critically examines the contradictions of eco-tourism in Indian-administered Kashmir, where mass tourism, rebranded as “green development,” perpetuates socio-ecological inequalities under the guise of sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
This paper critically examines the contradictions of eco-tourism in Indian-administered Kashmir, where mass tourism, rebranded as “green development,” perpetuates socio-ecological inequalities under the guise of sustainability. Marketed as an environmentally responsible alternative to conventional tourism, eco-tourism in the region commodifies nature, appropriates Indigenous lands, and marginalises local voices, all while externalising environmental costs onto already fragile ecosystems and communities. Operating within a militarised landscape, this model reinforces capitalist logics of accumulation, erases traditional ecological knowledge, and prioritises profit over ecological integrity. Furthermore, state policies and corporate interests align to legitimise mass tourism through greenwashed eco-tourism narratives that obscure the extractive logics of capitalism and deepen socio-economic inequalities.
This paper explores community-led contestations to mass tourism conducted under the guise of eco-tourism and green development paradigm. I do so by analysing local efforts—through journalistic reportage, opinion pieces, and activism—which challenge state-corporate narratives and amplify grassroots resistance to exploitative eco-tourism models. Additionally, oral histories and Indigenous knowledge-sharing initiatives serve as critical tools of decolonial resistance, preserving Kashmir’s ecological heritage while actively opposing imposed developmental paradigms.
Through empirical analysis, this paper argues that meaningful socio-ecological transformation in Kashmir must confront the intertwined legacies of colonialism, capitalism, and conflict while amplifying local alternatives that prioritise resilience and equity over profit-driven green discourse. By foregrounding grassroots resistance, cultural counter-narratives, and decolonial approaches to environmental governance, this paper contributes to broader debates on alternative pathways toward just and sustainable futures.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the site of rural households in Benin, West Africa, particularly the interplay between women’s collective work in agriculture and their bargaining power within the household. It argues that in some of the most remote parts of the world, pre-capitalist forms of economic organisati
Paper long abstract:
Recent research has shown that climate change has a disproportionate impact on the food and water security of rural populations across the Global South (Tandon et al., 2022). When agriculture is threatened, as a form of employment and subsistence, vulnerable groups face disproportionate rates of malnourishment as they manage a decrease in food supply (Khatri-Chhetri, 2020). These poor health outcomes are compounded by the higher likelihood of experiencing gender-based violence (Hayward and Ayeb-Karlsson, 2021). While evidence of this interplay is becoming more established in scholarship, there is a pressing need for climate adaptation policies that address these interrelated threats. This paper investigates the lived realities of women in agriculture in rural West Africa, specifically through a qualitative study in rural Atakora, Benin. The research reveals how shifts in climate patterns significantly affect household nutrition and food security. By viewing women's agricultural cooperatives as gendered workplaces, the paper explores the impact of changing rainfall, crop diseases, and declining yields on women's roles in both productive and reproductive activities. Findings show how women adapt by diversifying diets, which affects household bargaining power dynamics and incidence of intimate partner violence. This study highlights the adverse effects of climate change on women – and their innovative forms of adaptation – by connecting to broader issues of food and physical security, including freedom from violence in the household. It calls for the expansion of existing adaptation frameworks to take into account the lived realities of the polycrisis for rural populations in West Africa and beyond.
Paper short abstract:
The Amazon region has a history of having its territory encroached upon by outside agents seeking natural resources (Ravena & Marin, 2013). This paper discusses the Bioeconomy and Carbon Market as new paradigms that facilitate the intrusion into Amazon's traditional territories.
Paper long abstract:
As a neoliberal program, Payments for Environmental Services (PES) has emerged as a global initiative, often imposed from above in the Global South. This paper highlights how Indigenous and traditional communities assert their autonomy by resisting the encroachment of intermediaries seeking to exploit their territories for bioeconomy actives and carbon markets. Developing a digital platform in a data co-production strategy with scholars and sectoral bureaucracies, traditional people influence the public policy cycle, compelling both the state and the market to adhere to their environmental protocols. Divided into three major fields, the perspectives of the Bioeconomy presented a lexical convergence around the prefix “bio”, but they differ substantially from the point of view of the conception regarding the suffix “economy”(Birch, 2013; Bugge et al., 2016; Philp, 2018). The Bioeconomy and the carbon market constitute new and unfamiliar institutional arrangements for traditional peoples, communities, and bureaucracies. The latter requires knowledge and expertise to develop sectoral policies for both fields based on these market arrangements. In this direction, the paradigm of missions oriented towards the creation of public value (Kattel, Mazzucato, 2018) gains weight, which allows the co-production strategy to incorporate public agents (Ostrom, 2005; Halfat, Martin 2015; Kattel et al., 2019) who will ultimately be responsible, given their participation in the co-production of data, for the inclusion of the indigenous and traditional communities in the design and implementation of public policies aimed at these territories.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the political, social & material production of zones and boundaries of mining waste in Chile. I propose to qualify sacrifice zones as 'certain' spaces of development and commodity production, countered by practices and knowledges, political action, and transformative alternatives
Paper long abstract:
This article explores 'sacrifice zones': territories of degradation and socioecological injustice, caused by extractive operations and capitalist modes of production. I claim that the relevant literature has not explored the fact that they are defined as zones. Thus, this article explores the political, social, and material conditions that explain the production of semi-rural zones and boundaries of sacrifice, particularly those associated with mining waste. The case is the 'polygon of influence' of the potential collapse of "El Torito" dam, one of Chile's largest mining waste deposits. The polygon delineates the homes, land, and people that would be swept away by a tailings landslide. Its hard edges, based on technocratic "expert" knowledge, are at odds with the opaque methods used to design it, the lack of information and preparation for emergencies, and the errors in its design and implementation. This research extends the political ecology of extractive sacrifice zones, drawing on the literature on zones and borders and Scott's 'seeing like a state', which explores the interplay between centralised schemes of spatial order, and alternative, grounded, or improvised modes of knowing/living. I propose to qualify sacrifice zones as a 'certain' space underpinned by state-led development projects, global extractive pressures and 'green growth'. These hegemonic discourses and planetary circulations are made tangible through changes in land use, legal procedures, modes of governance and risk management measures. However, my findings suggest that these certainties are countered by multiple bottom-up practices and knowledges that lead to collective political action and transformative alternatives.
Paper short abstract:
Health could be conceived as a system driver for policy action in the times of climate change. The development policy needs to harness one health approach in practice to forge eco-social contract and promote sustainable development.
Paper long abstract:
In the light of climate change and aftermath of COVID 19 pandemic, the mutual relationship between health and development is in question. The growth model of economic development, for its aggressive role over nature (and natural resources), has strong association with biodiversity loss and severe impacts on public health safety and security ranging from environmental risks to repeated emergence of infectious diseases. To this end, theoretically it is to contend that intervention in health is an operative means to 'not only' achieve human development as ends for contributing to economic growth. It is the economic reasoning that made the health intervention (both in content and design) to be limited to the organisation of medical care management by encompassing the human body as the primary subject of intervention. The underpinnings of wider determinants of health (such as, social, ecological, technological etcetera) could make health intervention theoretically a viable policy action to directly contribute to the goals of sustainable development. In this regard, a pilot study was done Sundarbans Medicine in the Sundarbans of Bay of Bengal, both in Bangladesh and India, to renew the social contract with an ecological pact. The study experiments the One Health as an approach of system catalyst for promoting sustainable development by ensuring the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment. It concludes that the linkages between human, animal and ecosystems services (such as, water, soil, air and etcetera) are required to map and monitor mutual relationship between health and sustainable development.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines housing occupations in São Paulo and how they operationalise radical repair, care, and political mobilisation as an alternative framework to navigate capitalist logics of private property, commodification and propensity for growth.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores how grassroot insurgent practices against socio-economic exclusion can serve as a framework for facing the simultaneous crises of inadequate housing and environmental collapse. Towards this, it studies the ideological and operational elements of the housing rights movements in São Paulo, which mobilise houseless populations to occupy abandoned state-owned spaces and pressure the state to provide adequate housing. These sites, called ocupações, become spaces for collective inhabitation through labour of their residents across various stages of creating material and social life from the vestiges of the city. By observing life in ocupações and through discussions with members of the movement in diverse roles, this paper unpacks everyday and longitudinal responses amidst simultaneous crises at individual and communal scales. More specifically, it highlights the radical practices of repair, care, and maintenance alongside political education to recognise the realities of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016) as a mode of challenging and navigating the components of private property, commodification and propensity for growth (Harris & Delanty, 2023) within capitalism amidst the backdrop of colonial and racial Brasil. Furthermore, this discussion complicates these insurgent negations of capitalism by questioning the extent to which capitalism can be challenged as the struggle for inclusion into urban apparatuses becomes entangled in notions of sustainment, growth, and success in the urban realm.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses historical patterns around changing energy systems and their socio-political and economic impact. It argues that in periods of changing energy systems, political grievances emerge that shape the rise of nationalism in the 19th century as they did the far right in the 21st.
Paper long abstract:
Discussions around the killing of the internal combustion engine in the current political climate signal significant socio-political changes to unfold, as in the case of the historical precedents. This paper argues that in periods of changing energy systems, political grieves form or surface and generate political crises, from the rise of nationalism in the 19th century to the far-right in the 21st. By analysing historical patterns shaped around changing energy systems and their socio-political and economic impact, this paper underlines the current debate on shifting from fossil fuel to electric as another change in energy systems and highlights expected political consequences. It hopes to call other scholars to develop further discussions seeking solutions to the rise of the far-right around changing energy systems.
From coal to fossil fuels, the 19th-century energy systems change shaped industrialisation, labour movements, protectionist measures and deindustrialization around the concerns on exploitation, labour rights, free trade imperialism, and various forms of Islamisms around the Persian Gulf and the greater Mediterrenean. The discovery of oil deepened this chasm. While economic imperialism deepened socio-political grievances between industrialised Western Europe and the emerging Modern Middle East, it also deepened socio-political grievances in industrial economies, heightening the existing class conflict and uneven development. Layers of inequality shaped in times of changing energy systems had global and domestic implications, requesting reevaluation of what globalisation is in the context of change in the energy systems and the economic and socio-political integration and disintegration it formed.