October 25, 2018, 4:30 p.m. Johnson Center, Assembly Room D
We hope you can make it to our colloquium "Cheap Nature, or, the Cultural Logic of Historical Capitalism" with our speaker, Jason W. Moore, professor of Sociology at Binghamton University.
Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian and historical geographer at Binghamton University. He is the author of Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015); editor of Anthropo- cene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (PM Press, 2016); and, with Raj Patel, author of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (University of California Press, 2017). His books and essays on environmental history, capitalism, and social theory have been widely recognized and lauded. jwmoore@binghamton.edu.
Below is a summary of his talk.
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: These are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. The latest ecological research tracks the story of these things with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings. How has modern commerce — in making these things cheap — transformed, governed, and devastated Earth? How might we think about these things at the present moment? Crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism. At this time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required, including a radical new way of understanding — and reclaiming — the planet in the turbulent 21st century.
October 23, 2018