4th BICAS Conference: New Extractivism, Peasantries and Social Dynamics, Moscow 2017
2017-10-13 08:00 - 2017-10-16 17:00 (Europe/London) | Bacchus Room, New Orleans Marriott, 555 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA, 70130, United States
New Extractivism, Peasantries and Social Dynamics:
Critical Perspectives and Debates
BRICS Initiative in Critical Agrarian Studies fourth conference
Moscow, 13-16 October 2017
A call for abstracts has been published, with a deadline of 15 June 2017.

About the conference
Over the past two decades, agrarian economies and food systems have been undergoing a profound restructuring in the wake of large-scale land investments and the increasing financialisation of capital and land. These have reinforced old and created new forms and sites of capital accumulation by local and foreign elites, and supported both old and new forms of extractivism and agroextractivism. This restructuring has contributed to the unsettling of global geopolitics in this period, the context within which the BRICS grouping of countries was established as a vehicle to pursue their collective and individual agendas.
Recently, uncertainties in global power relations have been exacerbated by the rise of variegated nationalist-populist political projects, movements or governments. Many of these are authoritarian and reactionary – as part of the reaction to, and reflection of, the failure of neoliberal globalization and its version of ‘development’. Such projects sometimes involve chauvinistic appeals to land and nation, and xenophobic violence against outsiders, however defined. Typically, the divisions of class relations are downplayed or hidden by these ideologies and practices, despite their undoubted centrality to the underlying dynamics. On the other hand, new forms of resistance and struggles by oppressed groups, including peasants and traditional communities, are also emerging. Often these involve emancipatory forms of politics, but in some cases they are rife with tensions over class, gender and other social differences. Politics in all its guises thus continues to be a fundamental factor within processes of socio-economic transformation, including agrarian change.
This conference will explore these emerging realities from the perspective of critical and engaged scholarship, in alliance with active social forces. We will seek answers to difficult questions within three main clusters of subthemes – all informed by perspectives derived from agrarian political economy, sociology, and agro-ecology:
(a) The rise of – and current troubles within – the BRICS countries and middle-income countries (MICs), and the implications for agrarian/rural transformations as key aspects of broader social changes, inside these countries and regionally/internationally.
Relevant questions include:
What are the dominant directions of transformation and social change, and are there any countervailing directions? What endogenous and exogenous forces are driving change in agrarian structures, including financialisation as a key driver of change? What are the roles of the state in the agrarian and agro-food transformations? How are state policies implicated and how do they affect the prospects for accumulation by different forms of capital? In turn, how do the interests and accumulation strategies of different forms of capital, including financial capital, shape state policies? What are the roles of other actors, including NGO and grassroots initiatives in expressing the interests of different social groups within these processes of transformation, with what impacts on the accumulation of capital?
(b) The renewed interest in what some call ‘new extractivism’ and/or ‘agro-extractivism’ – in and in relation to the BRICS countries and middle income countries and beyond – and the role of the state as part of broader agrarian and environmental transformations, and the implications for food sovereignty.
Relevant questions include:
What are the current processes and actors involved driving change and the emergence of new forms of agro-extractivism? How are local and national processes of agrarian transformation shaped by global and trans-national processes of investment, trade and inter-state relations? What new forms of agri-business capital are emerging and with what effects? What are the implications for rights to land, food sovereignty and social movements that promote food sovereignty?
(c) The rise of diverse forms of nationalist and populist movements and governments, within and outside the BRICS countries and middle- income countries, and the involvement in and reactions to such nationalist-populist projects by peasants and other rural classes.
Relevant questions include:
Can today’s forms of nationalist-populism be defined as a form of reactionary and even authoritarian politics that appeals to ordinary people while creating new exclusions, and be explained in part as a reaction to processes of social and economic change in the rural world driven by global capital? Is nationalist-populism likely to influence and shape popular and policy responses to recent forms of new extractivism, financialisation and accumulation? What effects will nationalist-populism have on efforts to promote agrarian social movements in the countryside? What are the prospects for resistance by peasants (family farmers/small scale farmers and traditional communities) and rural movements in particular?
Explorations into these sub-themes and answers to some of the proposed questions will be rooted in engaged and rigorous research and practice, and in friendly but critical debates amongst colleagues and comrades.
The challenges to advocacy work by civil society and social movement groups in relation to the issues dicussed above are enormous. A conversation on this will be an important part of the conference, anchored by the Transnational Institute (TNI, www.tni.org).
Speakers
The list of keynote and plenary speakers is currently very partial and tentative, and is evolving; it includes: Teodor Shanin (Russia), Dzodzi Tsikata (Ghana, tbi), Jayati Ghosh (India, tbi), Ian Scoones (IDS Sussex), Marc Edelman (CUNY, USA), Jan Douwe van er Ploeg (WUR, Netherlands), Henry Bernstein (SOAS, UK).
Expanded Organizing Committee:
Teodor Shanin (Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences), Alexander Nikulin (RANEPA, Moscow), Irina Trotsuk (RANEPA, Moscow), Ben Cousins (PLAAS, South Africa), Ruth Hall (PLAAS South Africa), Sergio Schneider (UFRGS, Brazil), Sergio Sauer (U of Brasilia), Ye Jingzhong (China Agricultural University, Beijing), Jun Borras (ISS, The Hague), Transnational Institute of TNI (Lyda Fernanda, Pietje Vervest, Jennifer Franco). BICAS secretariat (Juan Liu/ICTA Barcelona, Ben McKay/U of Calgary, Gustavo Oliveira/Swarthmore College, USA).

Can we all learn about how to respond to global uncertainties from pastoralists at the margins?
2017-10-25 12:30 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | European University Institute, Sala Triaria, Villa Schifanoia, Via Giovanni Boccaccio, Fiesole, Florence, 50133, Italy
European University Institute, Fiesole, Florence, Italy
Lecture by Ian Scoones at the European University Institute as part of the ERC-funded project Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins. Find out more about this project

Uncertainties are everywhere: climate change, financial crises, migration flows, infrastructure development, disease outbreaks and more. Yet contemporary institutions and policy processes are poor at responding to and embracing uncertainties, where we don’t know about either the likely outcomes or their probabilities. Too often political, procedural and professional pressures force us to ignore uncertainties, constructing problems and solutions in terms of manageable risk. In this presentation, it will be argued that this is highly problematic, and that we can learn much from those who live daily with uncertainty and make use of it as a productive resource. Pastoralists – people living largely from livestock in dryland, montane and Mediterranean regions – have long experience of responding to intersecting uncertainties. Perceptions, cultures and practices; markets and economic relations; and institutional arrangements and governance systems have co-evolved with environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Can we learn from these experiences for other contexts, where the challenges of responding to uncertainty are real, and growing? Without arguing that lessons are directly transferrable, the presentation will ask what core principles might be relevant for refashioning policies, practices and institutions, across diverse fields, in order to confront heightened uncertainties in today’s world?
The presentation launches a new ERC Advanced Grant, involving research on pastoral systems in Chinese Tibet, East Africa and Sardinia, and engaging with those in other fields grappling with uncertainty. The grant is held at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK and involves collaboration with the Global Governance Programme at EUI.
Event details (EUI website)

Precaution in the Governance of Technology
2017-10-31 18:00 - 19:00 (Europe/London) | UCL Roberts 106 LT, Roberts Building, Torrington Place, London, WC1E 7JE, United Kingdom
STEPS co-director Andy Stirling will give the Centre for Law and the Environment’s 2017 Annual Lecture, entitled ‘Precaution in the Governance of Technology’.
Details:
Tuesday 31 October 2017, 18:00 – 19:00
UCL Roberts 106 LT, Roberts Building, Torrington Place, London WC1E 7JE
Speaker: Professor Andrew Stirling (University of Sussex)
Chair: Professor Maria Lee (University College London)
Book a place
Free entry – book a place (UCL Faculty of Laws website)
About the lecture
Worldwide policy debates over governance of technology are pervaded by apparent tensions. One of the most intense and protracted sites for controversy surrounds the role of ‘the precautionary principle’ in research, regulation and international standard setting. A common – often loudly propounded – position in influential quarters of business, government and academia, is that precaution is somehow ‘unscientific’ or even ‘anti-technology’ in its implications. Such interests strongly assert the sufficiency of ‘risk-based’ decision making, treating choices among alternative directions for innovation in particular fields as if they were effectively purely technical – independent of political values, economic interests or democratic process.
It is clear that (as in any politically-salient field of scholarship or law), there exist many expedient misrepresentations or misapplications of precaution. In particular, precaution is best understood not as a notionally-definitive decision rule, but as a principle that points towards specific qualities of process. In making this case, this talk will argue that the above kinds of high-profile rhetoric around precaution are not only mistaken, but undermining both of science and democracy in governance of science and technology.
Crucial to understanding why this is so, is to appreciate that the full breadth and depths of incertitude in this field are far more profound and intractable than are routinely acknowledged in established forms of risk assessment. It is not necessarily ‘critical’ – but simply a matter of realism and rigour – to recognise that there exist many institutional pressures to suppress the typical scope and gravity of incertitude and treat it as a reduced notion of risk. The cumulative effect of this is to generate a kind of ‘organised irresponsibility’, under which consequences of neglected aspects of ‘uncertainty’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘ignorance’ are effectively externalised onto the least privileged (often most vulnerable) social groups and their environments.
Seen in this light, the diverse implications of precaution are not simply about being more rigorous about different aspects of uncertainty. They are also about being more open in seeking to balance the routine effects of powerful interests within processes of technology governance. Precaution also entails a more realistic understanding of innovation as a branching evolutionary process. Here, discouragement of one particular powerfully-backed trajectory in any given can be recognised not to be inherently ‘anti-technology’, but typically to have the effect of encouraging alternative preferable innovation pathways.
It is on these grounds that carefully deliberate application of precaution in some of its many variant forms, can help enable technology governance at the same time not only to be more rigorous about the realities of uncertainty and innovation, but also more respectful of the imperatives of social justice and democracy.

STEPS Seminar - Channing Arndt: ‘Faster Than You Think: The Global Energy Revolution and Developing Countries’
2017-12-15 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Room 221, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
STEPS Centre seminar with Channing Arndt, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute
Institute of Development Studies, Room 221, 15 December 2017
An energy revolution is underway. Driven by an enormous and unexpected downward shift in the full cost of renewable generation technologies, global investment in renewable electricity generation has exceeded investment in conventional technologies by a factor of two for the past two years. The large majority of new installed generation capacity is renewable, notably solar and wind. This ongoing energy revolution has potentially profound implications. An incomplete list includes rural electrification, solar pumping, stranded fossil fuel assets, the future of biofuels, the composition of electricity build plans, the value of regional power pools, and the pace and magnitude of global temperature rise. This talk will review salient features of the energy revolution, consider some broad implications for developing countries, and present preliminary modeling results for energy use and electricity generation build plans for South Africa.
Channing Arndt has more than 25 years of experience in development economics with seven years combined resident experience in Morocco and Mozambique. He has published more than 70 articles in leading academic journals. His recent books include Growth and Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa; Measuring Poverty and Wellbeing in Developing Countries; and The Political Economy of Clean Energy Transitions. He has taken leadership roles in major policy documents such as the design of a carbon tax for the National Treasury of South Africa, the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change for the World Bank, and the Second, Third and Fourth National Poverty Assessments for the Government of Mozambique.
Everyone welcome!

Seminar: Ian Scoones - Can pastoralists help us respond to global uncertainties?
2018-01-09 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Seminar by Ian Scoones, Director, ESRC STEPS Centre and Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies.
Watch video of this event
Tuesday 9 January 2018 13:00 to 14:30
IDS Convening Space
All welcome

Part of the Complexity and Development seminar series
Uncertainties are everywhere: climate change, financial crises, migration flows, infrastructure development, disease outbreaks and more. Yet contemporary institutions and policy processes are poor at responding to and embracing uncertainties, where we don’t know about either the likely outcomes or their probabilities. Too often political, procedural and professional pressures force us to ignore uncertainties, constructing problems and solutions in terms of manageable risk.
In this presentation, I will argue that this is highly problematic, and that we can learn much from those who live daily with uncertainty and make use of it as a productive resource.
Pastoralists – people living largely from livestock in dryland, montane and Mediterranean regions – have long experience of responding to intersecting uncertainties. Perceptions, cultures and practices; markets and economic relations; and institutional arrangements and governance systems have co-evolved with environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Can we learn from these experiences for other contexts, such as financial systems, disease outbreak response, migration policy and critical infrastructure management, where the challenges of responding to uncertainty are real, and growing? Without arguing that lessons are directly transferrable, the presentation will ask what core principles might be relevant for refashioning policies, practices and institutions in order to confront heightened uncertainties in today’s world?
The presentation launches a new European Research Council Advanced Grant, involving research on pastoral systems in Chinese Tibet, East Africa and Sardinia, encouraging a conversation with those in other fields grappling with uncertainties. The ERC grant is led by the STEPS Centre at Sussex and involves collaboration with the Global Governance Programme at EUI, Florence, amongst others.
About the speaker
Ian Scoones is a professorial fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. He has worked for 30 years on livelihoods, land and environmental/agrarian change, mostly in Africa. On pastoralism, he co-edited ‘Rangelands at Disequilbrium’ (1993), ‘Living with Uncertainty’ (1995) and ‘Pastoralism and Development in Africa: Dynamic Change at the Margins’ (2012). He is a recent recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant, Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins (PASTRES).
About the Complexity and Development seminar series
This seminar is the third in a series that aims to share cutting-edge thinking and research being done at IDS and the University of Sussex around practically how we capture and account for complexity across a variety of sustainable development contexts.
For other related events, see the IDS website.

How are the pathways to resilience in pastoralist areas of Eastern Africa evolving?
2018-01-10 09:00 - 10:00 (America/New_York) | Forum Theatre, Level 1, Arts West The University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, Forum Theatre, Level 1, Arts West The University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, Melbourne, Australia
Webinar panel discussion organised by the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University from 9 – 10am EST, 10 January 2018.
Register here (Tufts website)
Another ongoing and severe drought in East Africa has reopened debates on the viability of pastoralism, alternative livelihoods, and ways to support resilience. The Feinstein International Center has been studying these issues for more than 20 years and has documented changes over time in this report.
Join researchers from Feinstein, Emory University, and the Institute for Development Studies for a webinar presentation on Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 9am (EST). The panelists will offer preview of this report and a conversation about what makes pastoralists resilient in Eastern Africa. The panelists will discuss:

How commercialization has driven a gradual redistribution of livestock from poorer to wealthier households
How access to markets and productive rangeland determine different pathways to resilience
How population and urban growth affect pastoralist livelihoods
Challenges to supporting diversified and alternative livelihoods for increasing numbers of people within and outside of pastoralist areas

Panelists:

Andy Catley, Research Director at the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
Peter Little, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Director of the Program in Development Studies at Emory University
Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies
Greg Gottlieb (Chair), Director of the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University

To register for the webinar click here.

A Crisis of Expertise? Legitimacy and the challenge of policymaking
2018-02-15 09:30 - 2018-02-16 15:30 (Australia/Melbourne) | Forum Theatre, Level 1, Arts West The University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, Forum Theatre, Level 1, Arts West The University of Melbourne, Parkville campus, Melbourne, Australia
STEPS Co-Director Andy Stirling will deliver the Keynote address on the final day of The 2018 Melbourne School of Government’s conference, talking about expertise and democracy: from adversarial crisis to mutualistic renewal.

ABOUT THE EVENT
The economic, social and environmental governance challenges facing contemporary societies are growing in severity, scope and complexity; yet trust in experts and established institutions is in decline. The role and legitimacy of expertise in policymaking is increasingly being called into question.
Recently, populist and anti-globalisation movements in a number of countries, and on both ‘right’ and ‘left’, have achieved electoral success, in part by playing on these doubts and by rejecting the claims of experts to specialised knowledge and authority. These sentiments are even evident among many mainstream politicians. ‘People in this country have had enough of experts’ was the view of leading UK politician Michael Gove in 2016. US President Donald Trump has called global warming ‘bullshit’ and a ‘Chinese hoax’. In Australia we have seen some parliamentarians assert that vaccination causes autism, or that climate change is a fabrication, despite strong evidence to the contrary. We have seen a special commissioner appointed to investigate ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome’ despite no expert believing such a syndrome exists.
It is time to think anew, and self-critically, about our assumptions regarding experts and expertise. In this two-day conference our focus is on policymaking which is controversial, contested and complex; which is sociotechnical and not simply technical or purely scientific. In particular, we will explore three themes and how they manifest in practical policymaking.

SPEAKERS
Professor Andy Stirling, Professor Sheila Jasanoff, Professor Robyn Eckersley, Professor Lars Coenen,

Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation in Urbanising India
2018-03-06 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London)
National Agriculture Science Complex, Pusa
Delhi, India
This event in Delhi explores how urban authorities and other parts of civil society can improve their approaches to ecosystems and the services they provide in urbanising contexts. The event involves people involved in decision-making, research and practice related to urbanisation and ecosystems.
The organisers aim to share good practice and evidence on approaches to urbanisation that take account of poverty and the importance of ecosystems, particular in Indian and South Asian contexts. The event is convened by ICLEI-South Asia and supported by the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme. More details about the event are on the ICLEI-South Asia website.
Ecosystem services are vital for peri-urban and urbanising areas, and the people who live within them. In contexts of rapid urbanisation, these services are under threat from redevelopment, pollution and overconsumption, and there are gaps in the policies and structures that should protect them. Despite these challenges, there are opportunities for local authorities and citizens to work together and join up policy with action on the ground.
Contact: F.Marshall [at] sussex.ac.uk

This event includes the launch of a new ESPA briefing ‘Making the most of ecosystem services’ which draws on research from the Risks and Responses to Urban Futures project affiliated to the STEPS Centre. It will feature contributions from researchers connected to the South Asia Sustainability Hub.

International conference: 'Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World'
2018-03-17 08:00 - 2018-03-18 18:30 (Europe/London) | Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands
17-18 March 2018
International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)
The Hague
Netherlands
Authoritarian populism is on the rise, boosted by support from rural areas. This conference examines why, and explores the alternatives: the social and political processes in rural spaces that are resisting or responding to regressive, authoritarian politics.
Organised by the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI)

Article series: Jump straight to a list of articles published in openDemocracy by speakers at the conference
Visit the conference website (ISS.nl)

Programme
Download programme (PDF)

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Blog posts
Confronting authoritarian populism: building collaborations for emancipatory rural resistance
Sergio Coronado, 23 March 2018 (ISS Blog)
Video: Live stream
Selected plenary sessions at the event will be livestreamed on the ISS.nl website.
View the livestream

Social media
Twitter: For the event, use the hashtag #ERPI2018 and follow @TheERPI
Facebook: Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative

Conference papers
In preparation for the conference, the organisers have compiled a number of papers and essays submitted by researchers and scholars across the globe.

Conference papers: Asia-Pacific
Conference papers: Europe
Conference papers: Americas
Conference papers: Americas (2)
Conference papers: Africa
Conference papers: International

About the event
The Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) focuses on understanding the rise of ‘authoritarian populism’ in rural settings across the world, as well as the forms of resistance occurring and the alternatives being built. New exclusionary politics are generating deepening inequalities, jobless ‘growth’, climate chaos, and social division. The ERPI is focused on the social and political processes in rural spaces that are generating alternatives to regressive, authoritarian politics.
In debating these themes, this international conference will contribute to ERPI’s aim to provoke debate and action among scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers from across the world who are concerned about the current situation, and hopeful about alternatives.
The organisers aim to bring together around 300 researchers and activists from across five continents. ERPI small grant holders will present research insights, and debates will focus on mobilizing alternatives, generating new research-activist networks across the world.

Articles

Articles by speakers and organisers on the online magazine openDemocracy explore the issues around the conference.
Confronting authoritarian populism: the rural dimension
Ian Scoones, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Lyda Fernanda Forero, Ruth Hall, Marc Edelman, Wendy Wolford, and Benjamin White
29 January 2018
Hindu authoritarianism and agrarian distress
Achin Vanaik
5 February 2018
Why #DefendAfrin? Confronting authoritarian populism with radical democracy
Amber Huff, Salima Tasdemir, and Patrick Huff
12 February 2018
Sacrifice zones in rural and non-metro USA: fertile soil for authoritarian populism
Marc Edelman
19 February 2018
Islamophobia gastronomica – on the food police, rural populism and killing
Raj Patel
26 February 2018
Authoritarian elitism and popular movements in Brazil / Élites autoritarias y movimientos populares en Brasil
Wendy Wolford and Sergio Sauer
5 March 2018
The demise of emancipatory peasant politics? Indonesian fascism and the rise of Islamic populism
Laksmi Savitri, Devi Adriyanti, Hanny Wijaya, Ciptaningrat Larastiti, Abdul Rahman, and Benjamin White
9 March 2018
How populism directed against minorities is used to prop up Myanmar’s ‘Democratic’ revival
Khin Zaw Win
12 March 2018
After the peace agreement, authoritarian extractivism persists as rural development in Colombia
Lyda Fernanda Forero and Danilo Urrea
14 March 2018
State, corporate and chiefly power is being contested from below in South Africa
Ruth Hall
14 March 2018

Speakers
Plenary speakers include:
Burak Gürel (Koç University)
Laksmi Adriani Savitri (Samadhya Institute)
Eduardo Gudynas (Latin American Center of Social Ecology)
Natalia Mamonova (The Institute of International Affairs, Sweden)
Andries du Toit (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape)
Zack Exley (Justice Democrats/Left Right Forward)
Achin Vanaik (Transnational Institute)
Dzodzi Tsikata (University of Ghana)
Khin Zaw Win (Tampadipa Institute)
Rebecca Tarlau (Pennsylvania State University)
John Gaventa (Institute of Development Studies)
Stha Yeni (Tshintsha Amakhaya)
Sofia Monsalve (FIAN International)
Karin Nansen (REDES/Friends of the Earth Uruguay)
Raj Patel (University of Texas at Austin)
Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper)
Becky Bond (The Big Organizing Project)
Marc Edelman (City University of New York)
Henry Saragih (Serikat Petani Indonesia/La Via Campesina, tbc)

About the ERPI
The Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) was launched during 2017 as a response to the rise of authoritarian populism in different parts of the world. Our focus is on the rural origins and consequences of authoritarian populism, as well as the forms of resistance and variety of alternatives that are emerging.
Participating institutions include the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Cornell University, the City University of New York (CUNY), the Institute of Development Studies, the ESRC STEPS Centre, PLAAS, and the Transnational Institute (TNI).

When the Wolf Guards the Sheep: Green extractivism and confronting the industrial machine
2018-03-21 12:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | Room G22, Jubilee Building, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, United Kingdom
As part of the Politics of Nature reading group, Dr Alexander Dunlap, co-hosted by the CGPE and STEPS centre, presents a seminar on the merits of an anarchist political ecology in assessing extractive projects and charting new directions in (re)imagining ecological, unruly and dignified futures.

Drawing on case studies of Europe’s largest opencast coal mine, the Hambach mine in Germany, and wind parks in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region (Istmo) of Oaxaca, Mexico, the seminar examines corporate/state strategies of greening resource extraction and repression. This seminar calls for scholars to challenge their statist and industrial subjectivities, while developing strategies to deal with corporate/state counter-mobilizations to undermine the current trajectory of ‘progress’. This means working to maximize ecological and social harmony, while aiming for total liberation against the imposition of market-based environmentalism, ‘green extraction’ and corporate-state projects of social control, ecocide and social death.

Emancipatory rural politics I: contextualizing authoritarian populism and emancipatory rural politics
2018-04-10 08:00 - 21:40 (America/Chicago) | Bacchus Room, New Orleans Marriott, 555 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA, 70130, United States
STEPS Member Amber Huff will chair a Panel Conference at The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2018.

ABOUT THE EVENT
Deepening inequalities, socioeconomic exclusion, persistent poverty, fractured identity and loss of esteem are all features of rural areas today. All of these characteristics have been associated to differing degrees with the crises of ostensibly ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (Fraser 2017) and the rise of regressive and often contradictory forms populism (Scoones et al. 2017). ‘Authoritarian populism’ (Hall 1979, 1998) describes a broad politics, resonant with appeals to ‘the people’ and characterised by the rise in prominence of discourses of aggressive protectionism and nationalism, growing concern over the ‘other’ and a radical deregulation of private industry, while at the same time utilising state powers to privatise resources and services and increase surplus for a minority. Using conceptual tools of political ecology alongside other approaches from critical social science and radical practice, papers presented in this session explore the historical and political-economic roots the current conjuncture, the emergence of and responses to authoritarian populism in different forms and rural settings throughout the world. In different ways, presenters address key questions: How are political cultures produced, contested and resisted in diverse rural spaces? Amidst these politics, how do tensions play out along the intersecting axes of social difference like race, class and gender? How are rural landscapes and experiences shaped by and also shaping these wider politics? How is ‘emancipation’ envisioned? What is lost in dominant media narratives? This session is part of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI).

SPEAKERS
Amber Huff, Christopher Neubert, Justa Mayra Hopma, Karina Benessaiah, Wendy Wolford

RELATED EVENTS
This Session is followed by a second panel session Emancipatory rural politics II: resisting, mobilizing and creating alternatives.

Emancipatory rural politics II: resisting, mobilizing and creating alternatives
2018-04-10 10:00 - 23:40 (America/Chicago) | Bacchus Room, New Orleans Marriott, 555 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA, 70130, United States
The second Panel Conference at The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2018.

ABOUT THE EVENT
The current political conjuncture has given rise to new forms and manifestations of ‘authoritarian populism’ (Hall 1979, 1998) with wide-reaching implications (Scoones et al. 2017). In this session, we ask what alternative politics – and political-economic practices – also emerge at this conjuncture. What are ‘emancipatory’ possibilities or ‘alternative’ rural politics in practice in settings that may simultaneously seem to have been left behind by globalized capitalism, yet represent the new (last?) frontiers of enclosure, extraction and financialization? Informed by insights from political ecology, alongside other approaches and methods from critical social science and radical practice, presentations in this session explore relationships between historical and contemporary rural struggles, forms of resistance and mobilization, and practices of imagining and creating alternatives, encouraging a comparative conversation. How are new alliances being built between urban and rural movements, within and outside mainstream political formations? How and why do informal, unruly styles of politics intersect with or reject more formal organized movements and electoral and institutional politics? How have conflict and violence both closed down and opened up new spaces for the development of new forms of resistance, mobilization, and practices of imagining and creating emancipatory alternatives? How are power, class, the state, participation, citizenship, institutions and democracy conceptualized or contested? This session is part of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI).

SPEAKERS
Levi Van Sant, Sayoni Bose, Eloisa Berman-Arevalo, Sara Black, Loka Ashwood,

RELATED EVENTS
This panel follows a session on Emancipatory rural politics I: contextualizing authoritarian populism and emancipatory rural politics chaired by STEPS member Amber Huff .

Workshop: Maps, Measures and Narratives for Transdisciplinary ‘Grand Challenge’ Research
2018-05-01
Tuesday 1st May
UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, London
This full-day workshop will consider the capacity of research communities, such as but not limited to those supported by The Nexus Network, to deliver inter- and transdisciplinary research.
The workshop offers an opportunity for those engaged in such research to explore and pilot innovative methods for evaluating their own researcher capabilities, and the capacities of their research networks.
The workshop is convened by the ESRC Nexus Network, in which the STEPS Centre is a partner. STEPS co-director Prof Andy Stirling is among the participants in the workshop.
More information: The Nexus Network

Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability: 14 - 25 May 2018
2018-05-14 08:00 - 2018-05-25 17:00 (Europe/London)

STEPS Annual Lecture: Kate Raworth
2018-05-14 17:30 - 19:00 (Europe/London) | Jubilee Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SL, United Kingdom
Economics as if we wanted to survive the 21st century
The economist Kate Raworth, author of the bestselling book Doughnut Economics, gave the 2018 STEPS Annual Lecture at the University of Sussex. This is the only public event of the STEPS Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow446ym9Tjc[/embedyt]

About Kate Raworth
Kate Raworth is a renegade economist focused on exploring the economic mindset needed to address the 21st century’s social and ecological challenges, and is the creator of the Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.
She is a Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, where she teaches on the Masters in Environmental Change and Management. She is also a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
Her internationally acclaimed idea of Doughnut Economics has been widely influential amongst sustainable development thinkers, progressive businesses and political activists, and she has presented it to audiences ranging from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement. Her book, Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist was published in April 2017.

Report from Rojava: Revolution at a Crossroads
2018-05-31 18:30 - 21:30 (Europe/London) | Friends Meeting House, Ship St, Brighton, BN1 1AF, United Kingdom
This free public event features panellists Lloyd Russell-Moyle (MP, Kemptown Brighton), Elif Sarican (Kurdistan Students Union UK), Simon Dubbins (UNITE the union) and Janet Biehl (writer and artist, translator of ‘Revolution in Rojava’ and ‘Sara: My Whole Life Was a Struggle’) who discuss their experiences on delegations to northern Syria / Western Kurdistan and what they have learned about the successes and challenges facing the ‘Rojava Revolution’ on the ground.
The event is co-sponsored by the ESRC STEPS Centre, Brighton Kurdistan Solidarity, the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign TU Group and the Kurdistan Students Union, UK.
For more information, see the Facebook event.

Public event: Meeting Energy - EASST 2018 conference panel
2018-07-26 17:30 - 19:00 (Europe/London) | Lancaster Town Hall, Dalton Square, Lancaster, LA1 1PJ, United Kingdom
Lancaster Town Hall, Dalton Square
Lancaster LA1 1PJ
STEPS member Prof Andy Stirling (SPRU) is among the panel for this public event on energy, as part of the annual EASST conference. The other panellists are Gillian Kelly and João Camargo, and the meeting is chaired by Maggie Mort of Lancaster University.
From the website:
“With a Science and Technology Studies sensibility we will see energy as an actor by exploring technologies and materials of energy and how they engage, imagine, undermine or support, think and plan with and through, energy systems. We aim in this meeting to pin down the category ‘energy’; to ground it, by making visible some of the practices, strategies and encounters between humans and things, that are often hidden in political rhetorics. We do this by starting with some hidden encounters between civil and military nuclearities, then we consider some embodied resistances to the violence of fracking and then widen to the experiences of activists and campaigners in the climate justice movement.”
The event is free, but space is limited.
The conference is organised by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).
Full details (EASST2018 website) / Facebook event page

The Sustainable Development Goals: What are they and will they make a difference?
2018-08-04
STEPS Co-director Ian Scoones will be delivering a talk in ‘The Lyceum’ tent at Wilderness festival on Sat Aug 4 (hosted by the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex)
At the end of 2015, the world signed up to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These were to be universal, covering all of humanity. No-one was to be ‘left behind’. Following on from the UN High-Level Political Forum on the SDGs in mid-July, this talk will ask what are these goals, and what potential for change do they offer? Do the global goals offer an opportunity to focus on the political transformations required to achieve sustainable development, both north and south?

Transformations to Sustainability programme workshop
2018-09-21 08:00 - 2018-09-24 17:00 (Europe/London) | Fukuoka, Japan
Researchers from two STEPS-related projects will attend this workshop, which brings together the projects of the Transformations to Sustainability (T2S) programme.

The Pathways Network, now in its final year, will share findings and insights from its series of ‘Transformation Labs’ around the world.
The TAPESTRY project, which began in 2018, explores how transformation may arise ‘from below’ in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty.

Transforming Power Relations: Insights from the Transformations to Sustainability programme
2018-09-25 14:20 - 16:20 (Europe/London) | Fukuoka, Japan
A panel session at the World Social Science Forum 2018 in Fukuoka, Japan, which includes contributions from the Pathways Network.

Pathways to Sustainability - Understanding Sustainability Challenges and Key Research Needs
2018-10-10
Nairobi, Kenya
This event, hosted by the Africa Sustainability Hub, explored sustainable development challenges and priorities for the African continent. Topics include the role of research and partnerships, what research is needed, priority funding areas and opportunities for Africa.

Media coverage of the event
Video coverage

NTV, Kenya – YouTube
Capital FM news – YouTube
Brandplus TV Kenya – YouTube

Other online coverage
Anchor Big Four agenda on research to avoid guesswork – experts
Joseph Muraya, Capital FM, 10 October 2018 (full article)
Boost universities’ research capacity, experts tell State
Mark Oloo, The Standard, 14 October 2018
Social media

What are Africa's biggest sustainability challenges and key research needs? This morning in Nairobi we're discussing science, innovation, partnerships and funding, at a workshop hosted by @ASH_Excellence https://t.co/trVv5X9sIF#AfricaSusDev
— STEPS Centre (@stepscentre) October 10, 2018

View all tweets with the hashtag #AfricaSusDev.

Event details
Invited speakers included:

Dr Joanes Atela, Africa Sustainability Hub / ACTS
Prof Shem Wandiga, Chancellor, Egerton University
Prof Hamadi Boga, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture
Dr Ochieng Odero, DFID EA Research Fund
Dr Richard Munang, UN Environment Africa
Dr Eng Ahmed Hamdy, African Union
Dr Grace Mwaura, African Academy of Sciences
Dr Roy Mugiira, National Commission of Science, Technology & Innovation
Dr Kaburu Ciugu, African Academy of Sciences
Prof David Ockwell, STEPS Centre/University of Sussex
Prof Madara Ogot, University of Nairobi
Dr Michele Leone, IDRC
Dr Roselida Owuor, National Research Fund
Prof Izael Da Silva, Strathmore University
Dr Adrian Ely, STEPS Centre/SPRU, University of Sussex
Prof Andrew Stirling, STEPS Centre/SPRU, University of Sussex
Dr Anabel Marin, CENIT, Argentina
Prof Ritu Priya, JNU, India
Dr Yang Lichao, BNU, China
Prof Hallie Eakin, Arizona State University

The event also shares findings of the STEPS Global Consortium’s Pathways Network, which has explored the use of social innovation methods to address socio-ecological challenges in six sites around the world.
The publication T-Labs: A Practical Guide, which shares methods and case stories from the network, will be launched at this event.
The event, hosted by the Africa Sustainability Hub, is aimed at policy-makers, funders and development practitioners, and will involve an international group of participants, including members of the STEPS global consortium.
For more details contact F.Imbali@acts-net.org.

'A New Politics From The Left' - Book launch seminar with Hilary Wainwright
2018-10-31 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom
31 October 2018 at 1.00 – 2.30pm
Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Chaired by John Gaventa, IDS
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAOpMurI510[/embedyt]
Millions of people passionately desire a viable alternative to austerity, authoritarianism and fear. They reject both corporate capitalism and an elite political system over which they have no control, but they are sceptical of the traditional weapons of the left: seizing state power and devising top-down solutions. They are inventing a new politics based on principles of participatory democracy, cooperation and self-government.
In this urgent and original polemic, activist and academic Hilary Wainwright shows that this new politics must start from sharing the tacit knowledge and creativity of each individual.
Power should not be exercised as domination, the imposition of paternalistic rule by well-meaning experts, but as a collaborative exercise in nurturing and asserting the transformative capacity of the many.
Hilary Wainwright is an academic and radical activist who co-edits the magazine Red Pepper and is a fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI).
This event is part of the STEPS Centre’s Transformations series.

Transformations: our theme for 2018
Faced with a series of social and environmental stresses and shocks, there are urgent calls for radical, systemic change. But, as past and present experience show, this can take many forms. What does it take to make sustainability transformations emancipatory (caring), rather than repressive (controlling)?
Find out more about our theme for 2018 on our Transformations theme page.

Decolonial Transformations: Imagining, Practising, Collaborating
2018-10-31 13:00 - 2018-11-02 18:30 (Europe/London)
This event, arising from a collaboration between the University of Sussex and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), aims to create a space for conversations and collaborations around the theme of Decolonial Transformations.
Venue: University of Sussex, Falmer campus
Register: Prior registration is necessary to attend.
Event description:
This workshop provides a space for conversations and collaborations around the theme of ‘Decolonial Transformations’. The world we currently inhabit has been structured significantly by imperial and colonial rule. While colonization was resisted over the longer durée, the decolonization movements of the last seventy years consolidated and institutionalised these efforts. This has led to the beginning of a fracturing of the colonial world order. This fracturing remains incomplete.
Coloniality continues to be pervasive as a structuring force in the world, often manifesting as the modernist control of nature and civil society, racialised divisions of labour, Eurocentric social theories, global governance regimes that institutionalise asymmetric relations (in trade, natural resources and capital), racialised migration regimes, disqualification of ‘non-Western’ modes of knowing, demonization of specific identities and xenophobia, and the silencing and erasure of subaltern histories. While struggling against these forms of coloniality, there is an urgent need for imagining and realising transformations that can help build alternate decolonial worlds and sustainable futures.
A key aim of the workshop is to think about and discuss how to move recent conversations around coloniality and decolonial transformations forward, linking academic scholarship with art, activism, and everyday life. This workshop brings together scholars, artists, students and activists to collaboratively imagine and reflect upon decolonial processes. It aims to further cooperative engagement in and among movements aimed at decolonial transformations, for realising educational justice, ecological regeneration and pluriversal futures.
The workshop will include a variety of different events and forums over two and a half days, including panel discussions, interviews, interactive and participatory workshops, and creative spaces and performances. The afternoon workshops will be streamed to bring together work in Scholarship, Art, and Activism.
This workshop is a collaboration between SOAS and the University of Sussex. We welcome you to join us in 3 days of conversations and collaborations on ‘decolonial transformations’.

Links

Event website
Detailed programme

Discussion: Transformations to Sustainability
2018-11-01 15:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London) | Room 115, Jubilee Building, University of Sussex
This event will discuss transdisciplinary methods, global collaborations and the politics of transformative action for sustainability, drawing on experiences from around the University of Sussex campus. Through making meaningful connections between a variety of areas and projects, we aim to understand the strengths of Sussex work on transformative change and identify opportunities to build on them. This afternoon meeting presents the opportunity for Sussex and IDS colleagues and invited guests to discuss the following:

The notion of ‘transformations’ (to sustainability) and the analytical contribution that different kinds of researchers can play in understanding them
The potential political role that inter/transdisciplinary research can play in contributing to transformations and how this varies across different disciplines, cultures and contexts
Challenges of international collaborative research of the kind practiced by the STEPS Centre and others on campus, and currently supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Invited contributors from schools across campus will reflect on their own work and offer insights from different disciplinary and institutional perspectives.
STEPS colleagues will introduce the work that has been carried out under the Pathways Network in the context of the first year of the ESRC transition funding (2018), in which we have adopted ‘Transformations’ as the thematic focus of our work. Adrian Ely will report on the network’s research on transformations around food and agriculture, water and sanitation and energy and climate.
Confirmed speakers:
Andy Stirling (SPRU, STEPS Centre)
Adrian Ely (SPRU, STEPS Centre)
Melissa Leach (IDS)
Joseph Alcamo (Geography, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme)
Catherine Will (Sociology, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, Sussex European Institute)
Rajith Lakshman (Health and Nutrition Cluster, IDS)
This event is part of the ESRC STEPS Centre’s programme for 2018, focusing on the theme of ‘Transformations’.

Faced with a series of social and environmental stresses and shocks, there are urgent calls for radical, systemic change. But, as past and present experience show, this can take many forms. What does it take to make sustainability transformations emancipatory (caring), rather than repressive (controlling)?
Find out more about our theme for 2018 on our Transformations theme page.

Argentine Congress of Open and Citizen Science (CIACIAR)
2018-11-02
CIACIAR (Congreso de Ciencia Abierta y Ciudadana en Argentina) was a one-day congress held at the University of San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The event was convened by CENIT and Cientópolis, and sponsored by STEPS Latin America.
The event was attended by more than 200 people among researchers, scientists, disseminators of science and technology, and university students from Buenos Aires, La Plata, Rosario, Córdoba, Río Cuarto and Mendoza.
Blog: The challenges of open science by Muriel Tosi, 7 November 2018

More information
The CIACIAR event website (in Spanish) has full details of the event, including programme details.
View the event website

Dalit women’s narratives of the Green Revolution in rural South India
2018-11-06 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Room 119, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Room 119, Institute of Development Studies
Library Road, Falmer
BN1 9RE, UK
Speakers:

Divya Sharma (Research Fellow, SPRU)
Saurabh Arora (Senior Lecturer, SPRU)

Since the 1960s, the dominant narratives of the Green Revolution (GR) in India have focussed on state-led agricultural intensification through groundwater extraction, hybrid varieties of rice, synthetic agrochemicals and mechanisation. These narratives have also centred on mapping impact in terms of yield productivity, incomes, or inequalities across regions, class and caste. Historically marginalised and oppressed Dalit cultivators and workers enter these narratives as beneficiaries of the rising demand for labour, an increase in wages, and availability of work in the expanding non-farm economy. In critical narratives of the GR, they are victims of pesticide poisoning, de-skilling, and caste-based discrimination.
We offer an alternative set of narratives, based on life histories of two Dalit women in Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu. Employing intersectionality, we explore how gender, class and caste together shape non-linear trajectories of poverty and well-being. The ways in which the women articulate memories of critical events show how they actively shaped agrarian and rural transformations, and how they relate to changing ecologies, including depleting groundwater, variable rainfall patterns and eroding village commons.
These intersectional narratives, absent from dominant and critical histories of the GR, foreground everyday politics around socio-material practices of farm work and care. Challenging the dominant techno-centric narratives, they draw our attention to marginal cultivation and food practices, changing relations with land, negotiation of labouring arrangements, as well as changing conceptions of risk. We argue that such narratives are crucial for moving beyond policies and politics of engaging with the ongoing agrarian crisis in India, which remain centred on landowning farmers.
This research is part of the ESRC-DFID project Relational Pathways: Mapping Agency and Poverty Dynamics through Green Revolutions that aims to understand the pathways in and out of poverty for farmers and workers in Kenya and India constituted by changing technologies, natural resources and social worlds.

Can pastoralists help us to respond to global uncertainties?
2018-11-21 15:30 - 17:30 (Europe/London) | College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China
Seminar by Ian Scoones, ESRC STEPS Centre director, at the College of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Peking University
Uncertainties are everywhere: climate change, financial crises, migration flows, infrastructure development, disease outbreaks and more. Pastoralists – people living largely from livestock in dryland, montane and Mediterranean regions – have long experience of responding to intersecting uncertainties. Perceptions, cultures and practices; markets and economic relations; and institutional arrangements and governance systems have co-evolved with environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Can we learn from these experiences for other contexts, such as financial systems, disease outbreak response, migration policy and critical infrastructure management, where the challenges of responding to uncertainty are real, and growing?
This event is related to the PASTRES project.

Understanding Uncertainty and Climate Change: Views from India
2018-11-29 12:30 - 14:00 (Europe/London) | Convening Space, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
**THE DATE OF THIS EVENT HAS CHANGED**
Seminar with Lyla Mehta, Shilpi Srivastava and Lars Otto Naess
Research Fellows, IDS
The scale and impacts of climate change remain deeply uncertain. This is particularly true at the local level, where climate related uncertainties combined with accelerated growth trajectories often exacerbate social and political inequities and the vulnerabilities of marginalised communities. Policy makers and scientists tend to draw on quantitative assessments, models and scenario building to understand and capture uncertainty, often disconnected from how local people – particularly those living at the margins – make sense of and cope with uncertainty.
This seminar will discuss findings from an ongoing project in three sites in India (Kutch, Sundarbans and Mumbai), funded by the Research Council of Norway, focusing on how uncertainty is understood and experienced from ‘below’ by the lived experiences of local people, how it is conceptualised and represented from ‘above’ by climate scientists and experts and how the ‘middle’ – civil society, NGOs, academics – can potentially function as brokers between the ‘below’ and ‘above’.

This seminar relates to the ongoing project on Climate change, uncertainty and transformation hosted by NMBU (Norway), which builds on the earlier STEPS Centre project Uncertainty From Below.
The event is part of the Climate and Development seminar series convened by the Institute of Development Studies.

STEPS Seminar - Bioleft: experimenting with an open source seed system in Latin America
2019-01-24 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Room 100, Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Falmer, BN1 9RE, United Kingdom
Room 100, Institute of Development Studies
Brighton, UK
Everyone welcome
Speaker: Anabel Marin (CENIT/STEPS America Latina)
This seminar reports on work carried out in the STEPS America Latina hub as part of the ‘Pathways’ Transformative Knowledge Network.
In her talk, Anabel Marin will outline the sustainability challenges facing Argentinean agriculture and describe the processes of research, engagement and innovation that have contributed to the development of Bioleft, an open and collaborative system for seed innovation.
Video

About the speaker
Anabel Marin is a researcher specialising in innovation and development. Her initial training is in economics and she has a master’s degree in development and a PhD in science and technology policy studies (Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex). Between 2007 and 2008 she worked as a Research Fellow at SPRU. Since 2010, she has been a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. She also leads several research projects in Latin America about sustainability in agriculture and the future of seeds. She is a member of the STEPS America Latina hub and co-lead of the Pathways Transformative Knowledge Network.
The seminar is hosted/chaired by Adrian Ely (SPRU/STEPS Centre)

Relevant links:

Bioleft – official website
Pathways Network
STEPS America Latina

Agency and social-ecological system (SES) pathways: The Transformation Lab in the Xochimilco SES
2019-02-11 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/London) | Room 101, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton
Room 101, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK
13:00 – 14:30
Speaker: Mario Siqueiros-García (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/STEPS North America hub).
All welcome

Slides

Agency and social-ecological system (SES) pathways: the Transformation Lab in the Xochimilco SES from STEPS Centre

About the seminar
Xochimilco is a wetland in the southern part of Mexico City. It is part of a system of lakes in the basin of Mexico and has been used for agriculture for centuries. Xochimilco once fed the Aztecs, and is still very productive today. However, now the area is under great urban pressure and degradation. The Xochimilcas (local farmers and residents) have a strong attachment to this land, and a long history associated with it. The degradation of the wetland, as well as the changes in the use of land, are setting a trajectory that is rapidly evolving and is not sustainable. In this context, those who are concerned for the future of the Xochimilco social-ecological system bear a sense of loss and despair.
For two years, J. Mario Siqueiros-García, as part of the STEPS North America hub, worked with local farmers, residents from irregular urban settlements, and academics in a Transformation Laboratory (T-Lab), as part of the Pathways Network. The project aimed to re-frame and identify novel ways for promoting individual agency and understandings of the Xochimilco social-ecological system, and provide a space for exploring the conditions that foster collective agency. Drawing on the learnings from this T-Lab experience, this seminar will explore more deeply the connection between the concept of agency and the Xochimilco landscape as a social-ecological system. Mario will argue in favour of a process ontology that seems to correspond with the pathways approach, in which agency and the social-ecological system as a unit, play a central role.
About the speaker
Mario Siqueiros-García is an Ethnologist with a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology, an Advanced Studies Diploma and a PhD degree in the Philosophy of Biology. From 2011 to 2014, he worked at the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) of Genomics Department of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN) in Mexico City. Since 2014, he has been working as a Research Associate in the Department of Mathematical Modeling of Social Systems at the Institute for Applied Mathematics and Systems Research (IIMAS) of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). From a complex systems perspective, Mario is interested in the philosophical and theoretical understanding of the relationship between culture.
