EXALT NEWS - Newsletter Archive

Our bi-monthly newsletters collect news on our events, podcast, EXALT Reading, publications and much more.

EXALT NEWS August 2022

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the August edition of the EXALT bi-monthly newsletter. This month we have an exciting Save the Date Announcement for an upcoming EXALT event. There are also lots of exciting conferences, webinars, and CFPs coming up from other organizations. In addition, our colleagues at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Sciences (HELSUS) Global South Initiative have a new blog. Last, but certainly not least, a new episode of the EXALT podcast just dropped on August 26th. The EXALT Reading section will return in our next newsletter. In the meantime, if you want to stay up to date on new articles related to extractivisms and alternatives make sure to follow our Twitter @ExaltResearch, as we try to Tweet new readings as soon as we hear about them. Thanks as always for being part of the wider EXALT community. If you want to dive into any our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy their recordings on the EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

SAVE THE DATE: Defining (Agrarian/Agro) Extractivism: A Roundtable Discussion

Date: October 21, 2022
Time: 14:30-17:00 Helsinki Time (UTC+3)
Location: exact room TBA University of Helsinki Centre Campus and on Zoom (Hybrid event)

Join us for a roundtable discussion to explore the definition of extractivisms—focusing on agrarian and agro extractivisms. The roundtable features an exciting line-up of key authors and discussants, stay tuned for more information on the panelists and discussants. The discussion will be conducted in English and simultaneous interpretation will be available in Spanish on Zoom. The English discussion and Spanish interpretation will both be recorded and made later available on the EXALT YouTube channel. There is no cost to attend either in-person or on Zoom, but registration is required. Please register by October 19 using this form. Please note there is limited space to attend in person.

Click here for the event page to learn more about the themes and purpose of the event. We will continue updating this event page as we get closer to the event.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Journal of Peasant Studies - Climate Change and Agrarian Justice Conference International Online Conference on Climate Change and Agrarian Justice

Dates: 26-29 September 2022 Time: 13.00 - 15.30 CAT/ CET each day
Register by September 24, direct link to registration.

“The way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change is a vital focus for both thinking and action. Climate change is inextricably entwined with capitalism, but how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world requires deeper analysis.” Find out more on their website.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Global Environmental Justice and Its Limits: Complexities of Time and Space

The second EHJustice Annual Conference is happening on November 3–5, 2022, at the Centre for Environmental Humanities, Aarhus University, Denmark, and online (hybrid event).

For more information about the conference and the conference themes, https://arts.au.dk/en/ehjustice/view/artikel/call-2022-ehjustice-conference-aar…

Further information about the network https://arts.au.dk/en/ehjustice/

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: The Struggle for Myanmar’s Rivers

Thursday, September 8, 2022
9:00 - 10:30 AM EDT (US East Coast) | 4:00 - 5:30 PM EEST (Finland)
VIRTUAL EVENT: Online via WebEx

“This event seeks to shed light on this dangerous situation and draw the attention of concerned citizens and policy makers in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia to an ecological crisis of key importance to the region.

Registration is free and open to the public. Guests who register will receive details for joining the Webex webinar 24 hours before the event." Register for the event here.

CFP ANNOUCEMENT: Conflicts and Development Revisited - Prospects for Peace in Times of Emergency

The Finnish Society for Development Research (FSDR) has opened the Call for Working Groups for their 2023 Development Days Conference (February 16–17, 2023, in Helsinki). The conference theme is Conflicts and Development Revisited - Prospects for Peace in Times of Emergency.

Proposals for Working Groups (300 words max, including name/email address of working group chair(s)) should be sent to info.developmentdays@gmail.com by September 18, 2022.
They welcome proposals from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, both theoretical and practice-oriented, to examine the political, economic, social, and environmental aspects of peace and development amidst current crises and emergencies, with regard to both the global North and South. Working groups can be organized as panels, roundtables, or interactive workshops. For more information and the full call text, please contact info.developmentdays@gmail.com.

NEW BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT: Just Ecological Political Economy (JEPE)

Our colleagues at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) Global South Theme have launch a new blog called ‘Just Ecological Political Economy (JEPE)’. They are very excited to be developing this space by sharing blog posts, interviews, and book reviews connected to the Global South Theme. If you are interested in the Global South and the vibrant research coming out of the Global South, they would also like to highlight their monthly webinar the Global South Encounters. Next month, join Dr. Ambe Njoh for a discussion of, ‘French Ecological Imperialism and Ecocide in Black Africa’, more details to be release soon on the GS website. Want to stay up to date? Follow them on Twitter @Helsinki_GS.

EXALT PODCAST: Latest episodes:

August 2022 - Usman Ashraf - Who could lose from planting billions of trees in Pakistan?

July 2022 - Sérgio Sauer - How have land struggles shaped social conflicts and extractivism in Brazil?

June 2022 - Syed Mustafa Ali & Dan McQuillan - Does Luddism hold lessons for resisting harmful tech paradigms?

May 2022 - Tim Oakes - How do big Chinese infrastructure projects impact people in China and around the world?

In August we were delighted to be joined by fellow University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies doctoral researcher, Usman Ashraf. Usman moved from the natural sciences to the social sciences and his research focuses on Chinese investment in Pakistan’s forestry sector. In particular we talked about the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation project and the subsequent 10 Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation project. We touched on the landscape changes that attend this kind of project and the impacts that these projects have on the human and other than human beings in the affected areas. He gives us insight into how the implementation of the plantations this project has specifically impacted the herding families in the area and other landless families. Our conversation undercovers the political implications of this “environmental” project and how the current narratives/processes are historically connected.

In July we were excited to present an in-depth conversation with Professor Sérgio Sauer, who works at University of Brasilia in Brazil and is a visiting scholar at University of Helsinki in Finland. We explored the landscape of land struggles in Brazil and how extractivism and social conflict has shaped Brazil. He started his career on the ground at an agricultural frontier and has worked extensively with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and questions of justice for rural inhabitants. Sérgio gives us a historically informed view of how Brazil’s agricultural geography has developed over the last 60 years. In addition, he traces out the interplay of scholarship and activism and how this plays out in resistance to extractivism.

The EXALT Podcast publishes monthly episodes focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Overcast, SoundCloud, Anchor, Google Podcasts, or RadioPublic.

EXALT NEWS JUNE 2022

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the June 2022 edition of the EXALT newsletter! In this newsletter we want to highlight the Special Forum on Extractivisms and Global Extractivism published in The Journal of Peasant Studies. We also want to highlight the recordings of the keynotes and panel session presentations from the recent “Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict” webinar.

We want to share the new Great Transition Initiative Forum 'Conservation at the Crossroads: Battle Lines and Ways Forward'. We also share the new book "Local, Slow and Sustainable Fashion: Wool as a Fabric for Change" which has contributions from some EXALT members. The newest EXALT reading is an article by Nicolás M. Perrone on Globalizations, and the most recent episode of the EXALT podcast features Syed Mustafa Ali and Dan McQuillan talking about the connections of luddism and resistance in the modern tech paradigm.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on the EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

PUBLICATION SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT: Special Forum on Extractivisms and Global Extractivism

The new Special Forum in The Journal of Peasant Studies features several contributions to current debates on extractivism. These contributions highlight different forms of extractivism in various geographic and political-economic contexts, their direct and indirect multi-scalar implications, and the global patterns and systemic changes in the pace, intensity, and value webs of multifaceted extractive operations.

The article 'Global extractivisms and transformative alternatives' by Anja Nygren, Markus Kröger and Barry Gills examines global extractivisms and transformative alternatives; addressing access to and control over resources, governance and recognition, environmental-social harms, and justice.

The article 'From extractivism to global extractivism: the evolution of an organizing concept' by Christopher Chagnon, Francesco Durante, Barry Gills, Sophia E. Hagolani-Albov, Saana Hokkanen, Sohvi M. J. Kangasluoma, Heidi Konttinen, Markus Kröger, William LaFleur, Ossi Ollinaho & Marketta P. S. Vuola examines the origins, evolution, and conceptual expansion of extractivism as an organizing concept.

The article 'A climate-smart world and the rise of Green Extractivism' by Natacha Bruna offers an interesting analysis of how contemporary accumulation is based on ‘extractivism’; where unindustrialised global South countries work as extractive hubs by supplying primary commodities and energy to industrialised countries.

The article 'Neoliberal extractivism: Brazil in the twenty-first century' by Daniela Andrade offers a critical analysis of extractivism in Brazil during the early-2000s.

The article by Julie de los Reyes provides a highly inspiring examination of the financialised practices that shaped the Pascua Lama project in Chile and Argentina, one of the most ambitious gold mining projects to be developed in mining history. We will post about the article on the EXALT social media as soon as it is published.

If you are interested in these themes, during the EXALT 2020 Symposium, we hosted a discussion on the theme of Global Extractivisms and Alternatives with Anja Nygren, Barry Gills, Natacha Bruna, & Julie de los Reyes. Click here to see the session recording on our YouTube channel.

WEBINAR RECORDINGS: Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict

On June 17, 2022, EXALT was proud to co-host a one-day Zoom webinar, "Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict". We are happy to share the links to the recordings of the panel sessions & keynotes below.

Keynotes:

Alexander Dunlap - What is Green Extractivism? Exploring Past Research and New Frontiers

Andrea Brock - Making coal sustainable? How nature conservation, corporate power and state violence create green extractivist fantasies in the German Rhineland

Judith Verweijen - Reflections on Green Extractivism and Violence

Panels:
1. The Green Mining - Violence Nexus
2. The Entanglements of Green Extractivism, Militarism & Conservation
3. The Coloniality of Green Extractivism
4. The (Geo)Political Ecology of Green Extractivism & Land Control
Check out the conference program and the abstract book for full details on each of the panel session. You can also find all sessions on our YouTube Channel and on the EXALT website.

FORUM ANNOUNCEMENT: Great Transition Initiative Forum 'Conservation at the Crossroads: Battle Lines and Ways Forward'

The new Great Transition Initiative Forum 'Conservation at the Crossroads: Battle Lines and Ways Forward' explores contending paradigms for radical action in order to find new directions for conservation. The Forum includes various contributions that discuss the themes of utopia, radical consensus, deep change and indigenous practices, among others. In their opening essay, Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher advocate a path of “convivial conservation”, rooted in democratic processes, engagement with nature, and post-capitalism.

READ MORE ABOUT THE KEYNOTES HERE.

Panels:
1. The Green Mining - Violence Nexus
2. The Entanglements of Green Extractivism, Militarism & Conservation
3. The Coloniality of Green Extractivism
4. The (Geo)Political Ecology of Green Extractivism & Land Control

FIND THE FULL WEBINAR PROGRAM & MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PANELS HERE.

EXALT NEWS APRIL 2022

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the April 2022 edition of the EXALT newsletter! In this newsletter we present two upcoming EXALT events: a one-day webinar conference "Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict" and a co-learning event "Education as if People and Planet Mattered". We are happy to share the project "After Extractivism" by the Berliner Gazette. We also highlight activities organized by the EXALT partner Global Tapestry of Alternatives in the World Social Forum, and an upcoming WERN conference.

We highlight new, extractivism-related research literature: a book review by Alexander Dunlap on Human Geography, and open-access publications by Barry K. Gills & S. A. Hamed Hosseini on Sustainability Science and by Beril Ocaklı & Jörg Niewöhner on Geoforum. We present the EXALT reading of the month, the open access article collection by the EXALT partner Journal of Peasant Studies, and the most recent EXALT podcast episode Why are plantations so destructive? with Tania Li.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Our next regular newsletter will be released in June 2022, but please keep an eye out for a bonus issue in May 2022! Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

WEBINAR: GREEN EXTRACTIVISM & VIOLENT CONFLICT

EXALT hosts a one-day webinar conference "Green Extractivism & Violent Conflict" on June 17, 2022. This exciting conference features three plenary speakers, and 16 exciting papers across 4 panels. There is no fee to participate, but registration is required. Please click here to register for the conference.

This webinar conference will explore the multifaceted connections between ‘green extractivism’ and violent conflicts. The speakers will offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into the ways ‘decarbonization’, ‘green growth’ and climate change mitigation policies shape and are shaped by dynamics of conflict and violence.

You can find the webinar program & more information on the webinar webpage.

EVENT: EDUCATION AS IF PEOPLE AND PLANET MATTERED

We live in times of multiple concurrent crises. Both the climate emergency and the pandemic are forcing us to rethink how human life can be arranged in relation to all other life. Persistent inequality and exploitation of both human and non-human life make visible the violence embedded in the dominant “normality”. Responses to the current crises need to be both immediate and guided by practices for deep transformation in the long-term. In this task, education continues to have a crucial role.

In this event we will discuss and explore ways to transform education, teaching and learning in universities in relation to the multiple socio-ecological crises and global inequality. We will hear from two brilliant researchers and educators about the work they do in educating “as if people and the planet mattered”. Emphasis is given to collective re-imagination, but also to the practical tools and ways of teaching that participants can incorporate in their own work in higher education.

Signing up to the event has closed, but the talks will be recorded and shared via EXALT social media channels. For more information about the event, please see the event webpage.

PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT: AFTER EXTRACTIVISM

The Berliner Gazette (BG) 2022 project “After Extractivism” is a text series BG is developing in cooperation with more than 50 activists, researchers, and cultural workers. The project is aimed at learning from the post-Cold War transition from "communism" to capitalism and proposes combining 'just transition' claims with claims for 'environmental justice' in the context of the present economic and ecological crises that are increasingly intertwined and fuel each other.

The project proposes the following questions: How can we build our future on the legacies and claims of those who, yesterday as today, have been plunged into existential hardship by the ecological-economic complex? And how can we make such struggles a source of inspiration for a common cause?

See the project website here.

ACTIVITIES BY THE GLOBAL TAPESTRY OF ALTERNATIVES AT THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The Global Tapestry of Alternatives will once again have an active presence at the World Social Forum. This year the forum takes place both in-person in Mexico City and online. The GTA will be organising and participating in various activities that are open to join for everyone, either in-person in Mexico or online.

In one of the sessions organized by GTA, networks of radical alternative initiatives in Colombia, Mexico and India will describe the criteria and processes they use to consider something 'alternaitve'. In view of the attempts by nation-states and corporations to 'greenwash' themselves, it is crucial to be able to distinguish genuine alternatives from these. While the focus will be on these three regions, the dialogue would be relevant to the rest of the world too. Click here to see the session page.

See more information about all the activities on the GTA website.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: World-Ecology Research Network Conference

The World-Ecology Research Network Conference "Working Environments, Unruly Natures" will take place in Bonn between 8th-10th of June 2022. This year's conference is hybrid with in-person, virtual, synchronous, and asynchronous sessions. Highlighted by recent calls for a Green New Deal and Degrowth, the conference will explore the intimately connected – and profoundly global – dimensions of work, workers, and life across the long history of the capitalist world-ecology.

You can register for the conference here.

BOOK REVIEW: Interrogating Ecocide: Welcome to the Political Economy of Existences

By Alexander Dunlap (Human Geography)

Human Geography has published a book review written by Alexander Dunlap on Markus Kröger's new open access book Extractivisms, Existences, and Extinctions: Monoculture Plantations and Amazon Deforestation (Routledge). The book explores the existential redistributions that extractivist frontiers create, going beyond existing studies by bringing into the English-language discussion much of the wisdom from Latin American rural and forest communities' understandings of extractivist phenomena, and the destruction and changes in lives and lived environments they create.

Read the book review here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Pluriversality and beyond: consolidating radical alternatives to (mal-)development as a Commonist project

By Barry K. Gills & S. A. Hamed Hosseini (Sustainability Science)

This visionary open access article addresses contradictions in the 'pluriverse' of radical alternatives to maldevelopment, and proposes an integrative framework for fostering productive convergences among its forces. This fourfold framework describes how to promote sustainable convergences and solidarities, in a way that goes beyond temporary pragmatic coalitions and alliances.

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Making and Unmaking Gold as a Resource. Resistant Socionatures in Maidan, Kyrgyzstan

By Beril Ocaklı & Jörg Niewöhne (Geoforum)

Beril Ocaklı, who joined us on the EXALT podcast in March 2021, has recently co-published a paper in Geoforum on gold extractivism. In this insightful article, Ocaklı and Niewöhner engage the resistance to gold extractivism in sociomaterial terms trying to understand the dynamics of ordinary citizens’ activism. Based on multi-stage interdisciplinary research, they trace and reconstruct the socionatural conditions and practices that have culminated in Maidan’s decade-long struggle to unmake gold as a resource in their territory. Focusing on resource materialities, their valuations, and governance, the article presents an historico-geographical analysis of making and unmaking of a resource frontier.

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: Article collection by the editors of Journal of Peasants Studies

To celebrate the launch of their new website, the editors of the Journal of Peasant Studies have released a selection of articles that will be open access until May 31, 2022. The articles, explore some of the most urgent themes in critical agrarian studies including among others, rural resistance and the practices of protest and struggle, agrarian movements and popular resistance to corporatisation, critical perspectives on climate, sustainability, and finance, agroecology, and COVID-19.

Read the articles here.

EXALT Podcast

Latest episodes:

March 2022 - Tania Li - Why are plantations so destructive?

February 2022 - Teivo Teivainen - Do Finnish companies act like colonial powers in Uruguay?

January 2022 - Janne Salovaara - What is "sustainability" trying to sustain?

In March we were delighted to be joined on the EXALT podcast by Tania Murray Li. Dr. Li is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her work explores questions of land, labor, class, capitalism, development, resources, and indigeneity. In this episode she gave us insight into her most recent co-authored book, Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zone, which was published in 2021 by Duke University Press. The conversation centers on the impacts to existences when plantations are established over existing landscapes. We got insights into the feel of the space on the plantation and the rhythms of life under plantation rule. You can read more about Dr. Li’s work on her blog.

Listen to the episode with Tania Murray Li here.

In April, we are joined on the podcast by Gediminas Lesutis, from University of Amsterdam. We talked about precarity and the destructive, real-life impacts of dispossession in the epicentre of the extractive boom in contemporary Mozambique. Recently, Gediminas also joined EXALT to launch his newly published book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering (Routledge). If you missed that great conversation, please check out the recording on the EXALT YouTube Channel. The new podcast episode will premier on Friday, April 29th on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcatchers.

CONTENT FOR THE EXALT-NEWSLETTER?

One of the core aims of the EXALT Initiative is to communicate and disseminate transformative and critical knowledge. As valued members of the EXALT community we invite our fellow scholars and activists to send us publications, other materials, or news (related to extractivisms and alternatives) for inclusion in the monthly EXALT newsletter. Please send any suggestion for the newsletter to exalt@helsinki.fi.

EXALT NEWS FEBRUARY 2022

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the February 2022 edition of the EXALT newsletter! In 2022, the newsletter will be sent every other month, which means the next one will come in April. In this newsletter we highlight an upcoming EXALT book launch event that will discuss Gediminas Lesutis's book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence and Suffering (Routledge). We are also happy to share some calls for papers for some exciting special issues and conferences. For our Spanish-speaking readers, we are sharing a call for panels and papers for the 4th Latin American Conference on Political Ecology. We also highlight a new open-access publication by Will Steffen and Jamie Morgan in Globalizations, as well as the newest EXALT reading, the special issue “Extractivism, Resistance, Alternatives” by Feminist Africa. We have links to some exciting keynote speeches from FSDRs Development Days 2022 and the most recent episode of the EXALT podcast What is "sustainability" trying to sustain? with Janne Salovaara.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

BOOK LAUNCH: The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering

This EXALT webinar on March 17th at 16-17 (UTC+2) focuses on Gediminas Lesutis’s recently published book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering (Routledge) that explores how intensifying geographies of extractive capitalism shape vulnerable lives and (im)possibilities of transformative politics in historically marginalised areas of the global economy. Engaging critical theory on space, precarity, and resistance with ethnographic research on destructive real-life impacts of dispossession in the epicentre of the extractive boom in contemporary Mozambique, The Politics of Precarity theorises precarity as a configuration of space, violence, and politics.

Two discussants – Jennifer Fluri and Saska Petrova – will reflect on the book’s contributions to understanding the complex politics of violence and precarity endemic to extractivism and contemporary capitalist development, as well as possibilities of politicization. After interventions from each of these scholars and an exchange with the author, the floor will then open for a facilitated Q&A session with the attendants.

Speakers:

Author - Gediminas Lesutis, Marie Curie Fellow in Geography, University of Amsterdam

Discussant - Jennifer Fluri, Professor of Human Geography, University of Colorado

Discussant - Saska Petrova, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Manchester

There is no cost to attend, but registration is required. Sign up to the webinar here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special issue of The Journal of Social Encounters

The special issue of The Journal of Social Encounters will bring together scholarship exploring contemporary developments in extractive politics, conflict, and peacebuilding. For more detailed information about what themes & questions the journal seeks to address click here. If you are interested to participate, please send an abstract of 300-500 words to sgallo@holycross.edu by April 25, 2022.

CALL FOR PAPERS: ANTHROPOLOGY OF MINING NETWORK PANEL IN THE EASA BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

The Anthropology of Mining Network panel Extractive governmentalities: articulating top-down and bottom-up views will take place in The 17th EASA Biennial Conference EASA2022: Transformation, Hope and the Commons 26th-29th of July, online or in-person in Belfast. The panel aims to deepen understanding of top-down extractive governmentality and to take a more contextualized and ethnographic perspective "from below". For more detailed information about the themes & questions the panel will discuss click here. Deadline for submission is March 21, 2022.

You can find more information about the conference theme, registration fees etc. here.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS: Sustainability Science Days 2022 & World-Ecology Research Network Conference

The Sustainability Science Days is an international, two-day conference organised jointly by Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and Aalto University on 18th-19th of May 2022. This year the conference will focus on the theme of systemic transformations to sustainable futures in a globally connected world and highlight the urgency to act now.

The World-Ecology Research Network Conference "Working Environments, Unruly Natures" will take place in Bonn between 8th-10th of June 2022. Highlighted by recent calls for a Green New Deal and Degrowth, the conference will explore the intimately connected – and profoundly global – dimensions of work, workers, and life across the long history of the capitalist world-ecology.

CALL FOR PANELS AND PAPERS: THE 4th LATIN AMERICAN CONFERENCE ON POLITICAL ECOLOGY

The conference will be held in Spanish, and therefore the announcement here is also in Spanish.

El Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador, el Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo, con el apoyo del Grupo de Trabajo Ecología(s) política(s) desde el Sur/Abya-Yala de CLACSO invitan a la comunidad académica y a los movimientos sociales a participar en el IV Congreso Latinoamericano de Ecología Política.

El tema central del Congreso es “Ecología política y pensamiento crítico latinoamericano: raíces, trayectorias y miradas al futuro”. Pueden leer más sobre la convocatoria al congreso, los Ejes temáticos y Líneas de discusión aquí.

Inscripciones a todas las modalidades aquí. Plazo de envío de propuestas: 1 de Marzo, 2022

DEVELOPMENT DAYS 2022 CONFERENCE: KEYNOTE SPEECHES

EXALT is pleased to be able to share the links to two keynote speeches from Development Days 2022: Infrastructures, technologies, and vulnerabilities in global development. For more information about the rest of the program that was presented at the conference, please visit the conference webpage.

This conference was organized by the Finnish Society for Development Research (FSDR) in collaboration with the Finnish University Partnership for International Development (UniPID), The Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT), University of Helsinki, and Hanken School of Economics.

Timothy Oakes, University of Colorado Talk Title: ‘Cities just out of reach: infrastructures of post-urbanism in China’ https://youtu.be/UQ906CB5qvQ

Tania Murray Li, University of Toronto Talk Title: ‘Infrastructural Violence in Indonesia’s Oil-Palm Plantation Zone’ https://youtu.be/d8WXoFXkzyA

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT:
From the Paris Agreement to the Anthropocene and Planetary Boundaries Framework

By Will Steffen & Jamie Morgan (Globalizations)

In this wide-ranging interview by Jamie Morgan, the well-known Earth System scientist Professor Will Steffen introduces and discusses the influential planetary boundaries (PB) framework, the potential for a Hothouse Earth pathway and the relevance of the Anthropocene concept. He elaborates on the role of emergence, complexity, feedback and irreversibility and draws attention to updates for the nine PBs.

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: Extractivism, Resistance, Alternatives

The latest EXALT Reading is the issue "Extractivism, Resistance, Alternatives" by Feminist Africa. The diverse articles presented in the issue explore the gendered aspects of extractivisms & the creative responses of people, especially women, to destructive projects across the African continent. Authors include various African feminist scholars from the fields of Gender Studies, Development Studies, International Relations and many others.

Read the issue here.

EXALT Podcast

Latest episodes:

Jauary 2022 - Janne Salovaara - What is "sustainability" trying to sustain?

December 2021 - Anna Marjaana Heikkinen - Can traditional livelihoods survive climate change & mining in the Peruvian Andes?

November 2021 - Antti Tarvainen - Is settler colonialism at the heart of the US and Israeli tech sectors?

In January the EXALT podcast we were joined by Janne Salovaara from the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Programme (DENVI) at University of Helsinki. His research looks at the discipline of sustainability science from the perspective of how it is educated at the University level. The big question we tackled is what is sustainability? It is such a buzzword today, but what does it mean in practice? What is the imaginary of sustainability actually supposed to be? What are we trying to sustain and how do we keep sustainability safe from corporate capture?

Listen to the episode with Janne Salovaara here.

In February, we are joined on the podcast by University of Helsinki World Politics professor Teivo Teivainen. In this vibrant and wide-ranging conversation, we talked with Teivo about his recent turn as a documentary film maker. Teivo has recently been in the Finnish Arctic and in Uruguay traveling along planned railway lines while reflecting on the concept of Finnish colonialism. Premiering February 26th on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcatchers.

EXALT NEWS DECEMBER 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the December 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! In this newsletter we highlight a video introducing EXALT and its contributors and our first event of 2022. We also highlight the Pollen 2022 conference, an article on the constraints affecting the adoption of new farm and land management practices, an article on the current state of the declared ‘climate emergency', and the latest EXALT Reading on direct action tactics that can create social change. Finally, we highlight the upcoming EXALT Podcast episode with Anna Marjaana Heikkinen whose research focuses on climate vulnerabilities, natural resource politics, and socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America.

In 2022 the EXALT newsletter will be sent every other month. This means the next EXALT News will be sent at the end of February. We wish you safe and happy holiday season!

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

INTRODUCING THE EXALT INITIATIVE

Several of the EXALT contributors took some time to sit down with us and talk about their research interests, EXALT, and the importance of researching extractivisms and alternatives. Please enjoy our introduction video to meet some of our affiliated researchers and learn more about the EXALT Initiative.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Conference 2022

The Call for organised session proposals for the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) Conference 2022 continues until 31 January, 2022! This Call encourages proposals for Organised Sessions in a variety of both conventional and novel formats, aspiring to bring together perspectives and ways of sharing from across disciplines and geographic traditions, and welcoming contributions from within and outside the academy.

One exciting panel session at POLLEN 2022 is "Exploring the Interface between ‘Green’ Extractivism and Violent Conflict" convened by Alexander Dunlap and Judith Verweijen. Please submit a proposal to this panel by 23 January, 2022!

Visit the POLLEN2022 website here

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Mining and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus

EXALT kicks off 2022 with an exciting webinar called 'Mining and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus', which focuses on bridging the gap between colonial/critical genocide studies and political ecology, anthropology, and human geography. Our keynote speaker Alexander Dunlap, will give a presentation based around two open access articles (1 and 2). Dunlap is joined by discussants Martin Correa-Arce, Sakshi Aravind and Markus Kröger. You are very welcome to participate in the discussion during the Q&A session!

Time: Monday, January 31, 2022, from 16-18 UTC+2

Participation is free but, registration is required.
Register for the webinar here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Constraints for adopting climate-smart agricultural practices among smallholder farmers in Southeast Kenya

By Antti Autio, Tino Johansson, Lilian Motaroki, Paola Minoia, Petri Pellikka

"Climate uncertainty challenges the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Awareness of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and access to climate-smart technologies are key factors in determining the utilization of farm and land management practices that may simultaneously decrease greenhouse gas emissions, increase the adaptive capacity of farmers, and improve food security. This study contributes to existing climate change adaptation research by increasing our understanding of how physical and socio-economic constraints can affect the adoption of new farm and land management practices, and how CSA-based intervention strategies could be restructured by local stakeholders to be more inclusive. Our results indicate a dissonance in the perceived awareness of CSA practices and utilization of CSA technologies between state actors and farmers. State actors emphasize lack of awareness as a barrier to adoption, while farmers express knowledgeability regarding environmental change and climate-smart practices but are confined by limitations and restrictions posed by e.g. market mechanisms, land tenure issues, and lack of resources". (Excerpts from the abstract from https://www.sciencedirect.com//).

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: No More Excuses! Why the Climate and Ecological Emergencies Demand a New Paradigm

By Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan (Cadmus Journal)

This paper repeats some of the themes set out in recent special issue of Globalizations, which explores the contributing role of mainstream economics in the current climate emergency. Gills and Moore provide a brief update on the current state of the declared ‘climate emergency’ and make the case for a paradigm shift informed by quite different principles, including ‘transversalism’. (image from cadmusjournal.org).

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: Anarchy, war, or revolt? Radical perspectives for climate protection, insurgency and civil disobedience in a low-carbon era

The latest EXALT Reading is a captivating article by Benjamin K. Sovacool and Alexander Dunlap called ‘Anarchy, war, or revolt? Radical perspectives for climate protection, insurgency and civil disobedience in a low-carbon era’ published in Energy Research & Social Science (ERSS) journal. Sovacool and Dunlap explore various more and less transformative direct action tactics and distill from them options for potential climate action and social change.

“…we recognize the need to continue and widen examination to look at a multitude of options capable of stopping institutions and actors whose
efforts are already harming millions, degrading the biosphere, and contaminating the climate, despite all the scientific or moral reasons against doing so. We need options that can vigorously oppose such action; that confront inequality and injustice; and that can subvert power relations currently perpetuating environmental destitution and driving climate change.”

Read the article here.

EXALT Podcast

Latest episodes:

November 2021 - Antti Tarvainen - Is settler colonialism at the heart of the US and Israeli tech sectors?
October 2021 - Barry Gills - How has the world changed since EXALT began?
September 2021 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh - Can local movements beat big companies?
August 2021 - Victoria Kiechel - How has extractivism become intertwined in our built environment?

This month the EXALT podcast was delighted to welcome University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies doctoral researcher Anna Marjaana Heikkinen. In her doctorate Anna Marjaana focuses on the role of water in the Peruvian Andes. She works with communities of peasant farmers, who are trying to hold onto traditional ways of working with their land and water in the face of pressures from globalized supply chains and the incursion of extractive industries. She highlighted a case she is working on that shows the deep entanglements between humans, other than human beings, mining, and water. Anna Marjaana also shared some great resources to help the listeners think about water and gave us insight into the ways she communicates science. The episode will drop on 31 December, 2021. Subscribe to the EXALT podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or the podcatcher of your choice to get a notification when new episodes go live!

EXALT NEWS NOVEMBER 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the November 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! In this newsletter we highlight a working group at the Development Days 2021 conference on digital extractivism, an article which argues for a degrowth strategy in industrialized countries, a book on existential redistributions created by extractivist frontiers and a handbook which seeks to reframe our understanding of sustainability. We also highlight intriguing research on 'care extractivism' as well as the newest EXALT Podcast episode with Antti Tarvainen who studies innovation economy and colonial violence.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

EXALT CONFERENCE 2021

We would like to thank you once more for your participation in the EXALT Conference 2021. Over 350 people from 35 countries registered for the conference! The recordings of all of the conference sessions are still available until the end of November through the Conference Lobby for those who registered. The parallel sessions are also available on our website.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Development Days 2022

Be sure to join critical scholarly debates on development-related research at 'Development Days 2022: Infrastructures, technologies, and vulnerabilities in global development organised' between 17.-18. February 2022 in Helsinki. The keynote speakers at Development Days 2022 are Tania Li (University of Toronto), Timothy Oakes (University of Colorado) and Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania) and the conference is organised by The Finnish Society for Development Research.

We are happy to announce that EXALT contributors and the hosts of EXALT Podcast Christopher Chagnon and Sophia Hagolani-Albov will chair a working group focused on digital extractivism called 'The Encroachments of Big Tech and Datafication: Extractivism and Resistance'.

"The 21st century has seen an unprecedented advancement of communications technology, and interconnectivity. In addition, technology has become integrated into previously untouched areas of our daily lives. This rapid technological and social change has allowed for the widespread tapping and exploitation of a previously underappreciated resource, personal data. This working group delves into the damages done by massive expansion of data extraction, as well as the emergence of resistance and alternatives."

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Extractivisms, Existences and Extinctions: Monoculture Plantations and Amazon Deforestation

By Markus Kröger

This open access book explores the existential redistributions that extractivist frontiers create, going beyond existing studies by bringing into the English-language discussion much of the wisdom from Latin American rural and forest communities’ understandings of extractivist phenomena, and the destruction and changes in lives and lived environments they create. The author explores the many different types of extractivism, ranging from agroextractivist monocultures to mineral extraction, and analyzes the differences between them. This transdisciplinary book provides new organizing concepts and theoretical frameworks for starting to analyze the unfolding natural resource politics of the post-coronavirus era, the advancing climate emergency, and the ever more chaotic multi-polar world. (abstract from https://www.routledge.com/).

Read the book here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Scientists' warning against the society of waste

By Isabel Marín-Beltrán, Federico Demaria, Claudia Ofelio, Luis M. Serra, Antonio Turiel, William J.Ripple, Sharif A. Mukul, Maria Clara Costa (Science of The Total Environment)

In this Discussion article, we examine the amount of natural resources that is increasingly being consumed and wasted by humanity, and propose solutions to reverse this pattern. Since the beginning of the 20th century, societies, especially from industrialized countries, have been wasting resources in different ways. On one hand, the metabolism of industrial societies (their energy and material flows) relies on non-renewable resources. On the other hand, yearly, we directly waste or mismanage around 78% of the total water withdrawn, 49% of the food produced, 31% of the energy produced, 85% of ores and 26% of non-metallic minerals extracted, respectively. To reduce the anthropogenic footprint in the planet, and live in harmony with other species and ourselves, we suggest to shift the current economic model based on infinite growth and reduce inequality between and within countries, following a degrowth strategy in industrialized countries. In addition, we propose a set of technological strategies to improve the management of natural resources towards circular economies that, like ecosystems, rely only upon renewable resources. (excerpt from the abstract from www.sciencedirect.com/). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151359

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Who Cares about Healthcare Workers? Care Extractivism and Care Struggles in Germany and India

By Christa Wichterich (Social Change)

This paper suggests the concept of care extractivism to explore strategies and mechanisms which pursue the persistent low social and monetary acknowledgement of healthcare work in Germany and India. Recently, caretakers and nurses in both countries went on strike, pointing to a crisis situation in social reproduction and various forms of care extraction. In Germany, care for the elderly and nursing in hospitals are marked by strategies of familialisation and voluntarisation, of standardisation and digital surveillance and by transnationalisation through the import of migrant workers. In India’s rural health provision, voluntarism subsidises welfarism; in private and public hospitals, hierarchisation and contractualisation of employment deepen care extraction. Stereotypes of nursing as natural female, caste norms and various stigmata reinforce the low valuation of care work. In both countries, neoliberal policies merge with patriarchal structures of social reproduction, intensify care extraction and create a cheap care work force which however is no longer docile. (abstract from journals.sagepub.com). https://doi.org/10.1177/0049085719901087

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: Situating Sustainability

The latest EXALT Reading is a Helsinki University Press handbook called Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts which reframes our understanding of sustainability and calls for the recognition of the deep and diverse cultural histories that shape contemporary environmental politics. Authors include multiple EXALT contributors and collaborators who have written chapters on extractivisms, the Anthropocene, traditional ecological knowledge and on many other crucial topics on sustainability.

Chapter highlights:

Anthropocene Conjunctures by Parker Krieg and Paola Minoia
Nuclear Awareness Inna Sukhenko and Viktor Pal
Disaster Recovery (After Catastrophes) by Marjaana Jauhola, Niti Mishra, Jacquleen Joseph and Shyan Gadhavi
Traditional Ecological Knowledge by Corinna Casi, Ellen Guttorm and Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
Agroecological Symbiosis by Rachel Mazac, Sophia E. Hagolani-Albov and Hanna L. Tuomisto
Extractivisms by Markus Kröger, Sophia E. Hagolani-Albov and Barry K. Gills

"Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts, introduces readers to contemporary problem-sites and conceptual approaches of sustainability studies. Often missing from scientific and policy discussions is a fundamental recognition of the deep and diverse cultural histories that shape contemporary environmental politics. The chapters in this collection assert the indispensability of humanities and social sciences for the transdisciplinary aspirations of this emerging field. The perspectives offered by these fields are needed not only for effective communication after the research is done, but they are also necessary for their ability to propose, shape, and guide research from the ground up."

Read the book here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

October 2021 - Barry Gills - How has the world changed since EXALT began?
September 2021 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh - Can local movements beat big companies?
August 2021 - Victoria Kiechel - How has extractivism become intertwined in our built environment?
July 2021 - Mira Käkönen - How do dams impact climate change?

This month we were delighted to be joined by Antti Tarvainen, a fellow doctoral candidate in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. His works examines the innovation economy (think Steve Jobs, apps, smart everything, etc.) and the colonial violence that that underpins its expansions. We started the discussion talking about the colonial utopia history of California and by extension in Silicon Valley. We explore some of the myriad colonial imaginaries that play out in the mythology and material culture of Silicon Valley. Antti points out that “tech” does not exist only on a digital or immaterial layer but is deeply connected to physical place and space. The effect of tech on the polis is not just gentrification, but rather more akin to settler colonialism. However, it is not just the polis that is made by this tech expansion, but rural spaces and nature itself are also made. We uncover the global geography of the resources that are extracted to build the physical infrastructure and components of the tech industry. This takes us to a broader discussion of the continued spread and influence of the tech sector. Antti shares with us his experiences doing fieldwork in the Silicon Wadi and how and where settler colonialism is present as the tech industry expands in Israel and Palestine.

Listen to the episode with Antti Tarvainen here.

EXALT NEWS OCTOBER 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the October 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! We thank everyone for attending #EXALTConference2021! We are grateful and inspired by the insightful and transformative presentations and discussions. In this newsletter we highlight the plenary session recordings from EXALT Conference 2021, Development Days's call for papers, CEISAL's call for papers, EXALT Podcast's newest episode with Barry Gills plus a special pop culture episode and three insightful articles related to Indigenous knowledge and rights.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

EXALT CONFERENCE PLENARY SESSION RECORDINGS ARE AVAILABLE

EXALT's Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives conference has been wrapped up successfully. We would like to thank all attendees, plenary speakers, paper presenters and conference organizers for making this conference meaningful. As Anja Nygren said in the closing words of the conference, the discussions during the conference have shown that "global extractivisms and transformative alternatives have complex dialogical relationships. We need to understand more profoundly their cross-scale interlinkages. We also need more analysis of different sectors of extractivism and of their contextual differences and also careful intersectoral analysis".

During the conference we got to hear and participate in four thought-provoking plenary talks which tackled issues such as ecocide, genocide, the changes from slow violence to raw violence, our roles as defenders or scholar-activists, the concepts of environmental racism, indigenous sovereignty, and multi-species justice. The four plenary talks and the opening and closing words can be found on our website and our YouTube-channel.

Find recorded plenary sessions here!

CALL FOR PAPERS: Development Days 2022: Infrastructures, technologies, and vulnerabilities in global development

The Finnish Society for Development Research is inviting you to join critical scholarly debates on development-related research during the Development Days 2022 conference called 'Infrastructures, technologies, and vulnerabilities in global development' organised between 17.-18. February 2022 in Helsinki. The keynote speakers at Development Days 2022 are Tania Li (University of Toronto), Timothy Oakes (University of Colorado) and Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania).

"Infrastructure and (new) technologies unquestionably play a central role in (and for) development, as highlighted by the current sustainable development goals and revealed by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. The extractive development pathways putting liveable environments at risk are closely intertwined with infrastructural politics. Perhaps more than ever, the creation, maintenance, and distribution of infrastructures and technologies are crucial for virtually every aspect of development,"

Find the call for papers announcement here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The X CEISAL International Conference, 13–15 June 2022, Helsinki, Finland

The call for papers for the X International Conference of the European Council for Social Research on Latin America (CEISAL) is open until November 30, 2021. The conference aims to bring together researchers working on all aspects of Latin American Studies, with the goal to explore the changing conditions that are shaping Latin American societies after globalization. The conference focuses on local and regional responses to these developments and on re-examining ways Latin America is portrayed and understood. With such diverse, fluid, non-linear and uncertain trajectories, how are Latin American futures formed and transformed? The conference languages are Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Find the call for papers announcement here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Scientists' Warning to Humanity on Threats to Indigenous and Local Knowledge Systems

By Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares et al. (Journal of Ethnobiology)

The knowledge systems and practices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities play critical roles in safeguarding the biological and cultural diversity of our planet. Globalization, government policies, capitalism, colonialism, and other rapid social-ecological changes threaten the relationships between Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their environments, thereby challenging the continuity and dynamism of Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK). In this article, we contribute to the “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity,” issued by the Alliance of World Scientists, by exploring opportunities for sustaining ILK systems on behalf of the future stewardship of our planet. We conclude with 15 recommendations that call for the recognition and support of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their knowledge systems. Enacting these recommendations will entail a transformative and sustained shift in how ILK systems, their knowledge holders, and their multiple expressions in lands and waters are recognized, affirmed, and valued (abstract from https://bioone.org/).
https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-41.2.144

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Territorial and mobility justice for Indigenous youth: accessing education in Ecuadorian Amazonia. By Johanna Hohenthal and Paola Minoia ‪(Mobilities).

Indigenous people of Ecuador have suffered for a long time from marginalisation in access to quality education, which for them means culturally and ecologically pertinent education close to their own communities. In this study, we aim to articulate the relationship between access to eco-culturally pertinent education, and mobility and territorial justice. Based on the review of studies on education reform, fieldwork in Amazonia in 2018–2019, and remote conversations in 2020, we identified and analysed three events – education reform, Indigenous protests and the Covid-19 pandemic, which have disrupted access to education within Indigenous territories. These turbulent events make visible territorial and mobility injustices, including the dismissal of Indigenous visions of education, the strategic weakening of Indigenous territorial defence, and the lack of state support for access to education in remote areas. The analysis advocates for the recognition of mobility and territoriality as part of the social justice agenda in quality education (abstract from https://www.tandfonline.com/).

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: On thin ice – The Arctic commodity extraction frontier and environmental conflicts

The latest EXALT Reading is an article in the Ecological Economics journal called "On thin ice – The Arctic commodity extraction frontier and environmental conflicts" by Ksenija Hanaček, Markus Kröger, Arnim Scheidel, Facundo Rojas and Joan Martinez-Alier. The focus of the article is socio-environmental conflicts and extractive projects in the Arctic region. According to the research which was conducted by using data from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, geography of socio-environmental conflicts predominantly overlap with predominantly Indigenous peoples' territories.

"Associated large-scale extractive activities are bringing negative socio-environmental impacts at the expense of Indigenous groups, fishermen, and pastoralists, with loss of traditional knowledge and practices being significantly higher in Indigenous territories of high bio-cultural values associated to the environment."

Read the article here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

September 2021 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh - Can local movements beat big companies?
August 2021 - Victoria Kiechel - How has extractivism become intertwined in our built environment?
July 2021 - Mira Käkönen - How do dams impact climate change?
June 2021 - Arturo Escobar - Why are communities key to transforming the world?

In honour of the 2-year anniversary of the EXALT podcast we brought back our very first guest, Professor Barry Gills from Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. We talk about the development and activities of the EXALT Initiative over the last few years. We touch on how the COVID crisis has raised awareness of the global system as a whole, which has highlighted the impact and knock-on effects of the extractivist logic. Barry gave us insight into organizing concepts and the continued development of extractivism and particularly global extractivisms as an organizing concept. Global extractivisms as an organizing concept is a concept for our times of concurrent crises. However, that is not to say there is not hope for the future as we are living in a time of unprecedented information, reflectivity, and the ability to respond differently.

Listen to the newest episode via Apple Podcast here!

We have also wanted to celebrate the 2-year anniversary with a special bonus episode! We decided to sit down and talk about the expressions and examples of extractivism(s) in Denis Villeneuve's blockbuster Dune: Part 1. The episode will include spoilers for part 1 of the Dune series so if you haven't seen it, you might want to wait.

Listen to the special episode via Apple Podcast here!

EXALT NEWS SEPTEMBER 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the September 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! There's only four weeks to go before we get to meet at EXALT Conference 2021, so remember to register to get your spot! In this newsletter we highlight one of the conference plenary speakers Andréa Zhouri, a UniPID course called 'Global Extractivisms and Alternatives', an editorial postscript on 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) as well as a blog post on post-progress infrastructures.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

READ ABOUT AMAZING CONFERENCE TRACKS!

EXALT's Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives conference includes six tracks with 19 sessions, 67 presentation and two artistic interventions! These six tracks include topics on global extractivisms, alternatives, indigenous sovereignty, urbanity, data extractivism, and so much more!

Registration for EXALT's Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives conference is OPEN! This three-day digital conference will be held via Zoom on October 25-27, 2021. Participating in the conference is free of charge and requires registration. Registration will close on October 22, 2021.

We will also continue to communicate important information related to the conference and other EXALT activities via Twitter, Facebook, and through this newsletter.

COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT: UNIPID COURSE ON GLOBAL EXTRACTIVISMS AND ALTERNATIVES

Are you a student in Finland excited to learn more about extractivism(s) and sustainable alternatives? EXALT's contributors are conducting a course called Global Extractivisms and Alternatives via UniPID for university students studying at UniPID member universities beginning in January 2022. The main framing component of the course is analysis of extractivism(s) and implications for prospects and development of actionable and sustainable alternatives. From this grounding the course will explore different relevant philosophical views, as well as lived experiences derived from case study examples, in order to further explore the current plurality of uses of the concept and the variety of its forms of manifestations. The course will examine the different social and global contexts in which extractivisms are rooted and deployed.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Postscript, an end to the war on nature: COP in or COP out?
By Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan ‪(Globalizations)

In this editorial postscript, we return to a primary theme of this special issue on Economics and Climate Emergency. We elaborate on some aspects of, and reasons why we need, urgent and radical transformative change. We briefly update the trends affecting climate change and ecological breakdown, assess the need for an end to the ‘war on nature’, which resists a dichotomy between our species and nature and make some comments on the COP process and ways forward which resist ‘trasformismo’, while embracing the need for just transitions, degrowth and practices rooted in such concepts as ‘transversalism’. (abstract from https://www.tandfonline.com/).

Read the full article here.

EXALT READING: Post-progress infrastructures: material-affective structures that sustain the pluriverse (or world of worlds)

The latest EXALT Reading is a blog post called "Post-progress infrastructures: material-affective structures that sustain the pluriverse (or world of worlds)" by Susanne Hofmann who is part of an Interdisciplinary Working Group called Gender and Megaprojects in the Americas. In this blog post, Hofmann discusses “great infrastructures” which are tightly connected to material and affective world-making. Instead of megaprojects that are hinged on the dispossession of marginalized people and Indigenous land, Hofmann calls for post-progress infrastructures or "pluriversal infrastructures".

"No life can be generated from “sacrifice zones”: where territories have been depleted by extractivism, and water and soil has been contaminated by toxic substances. This is why in recent decades the defense of life and of territory has emerged as the core element of social mobilizations by Indigenous, Afro-descendent and peasant communities across the Americas".

Read the article here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

August 2021 - Victoria Kiechel - How has extractivism become intertwined in our built environment?
July 2021 - Mira Käkönen - How do dams impact climate change?
June 2021 - Arturo Escobar - Why are communities key to transforming the world?
May 2021- mirko nikolić - How do we dismantle our connections to extractivism?

In the latest EXALT Podcast episode we were very fortunate to have Robin Broad and John Cavanagh join us to talk about their book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed from Beacon Press. Robin is a professor at the School of International Service at American University and John is a senior advisor and the former director of the Institute for Policy Studies. In this conversation we jump into the dangerous world of environmental activists trying to defend their communities and health against the incursions of international extractive corporations. We talk about how the fate of communities and lands can be impacted by decisions made in the shadowy and extremely pro-business ICSID courtroom.

EXALT NEWS AUGUST 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the August 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! We are happy to announce that the registration for EXALT Conference 2021 is open. In this newsletter we also highlight exciting research on the complexities of mining resistance in Kyrgyzstan, agrarian extractivism in Bolivia, human-wolf interactions in Finland and the relationship between the built environment and extractivism.

If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

REGISTRATION FOR EXALT CONFERENCE 2021 IS OPEN!

Registration for EXALT's Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives conference is now OPEN! This three-day digital conference will be held via Zoom on October 25-27, 2021. The rich program includes thought provoking plenary speeches by distinguished scholars, riveting parallel sessions, and exciting artistic interventions! All sessions will have a strong focus on discussion and dialogue between presenters and the audience participants.

Participating in the conference is free of charge and requires registration. Registration will close on October 22, 2021. Join us to learn, discuss, create, and deepen our collective knowledge of extractivisms and alternatives.

We will also continue to communicate important information related to the conference and other EXALT activities via Twitter, Facebook, and through this newsletter.

Find the conference program here!

One of our plenary speakers is Lochner Marais, Professor of Development Studies at the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State (UFS). He is also an honorary professor at the Sustainable Minerals Institute (University of Queensland, Australia). His research interests include housing policy, small cities and towns (mining and renewable towns and cities) and public health focusing on children. In addition to concentrating on each of these themes separately, he focuses on integrating them.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan. By ‪Beril Ocaklı, Tobias Krueger, Marco A. Janssen, Ulan Kasymov (Ecological Economics)

Faced with mounting resistance against mining, neoliberal governance resorts to polarising strategies that delegitimise the heterogenous positions people hold regarding mining. In this paper, we contrast and complicate these dichotomies with the lived experiences on the ground in Kyrgyzstan. We focus on the ‘Taldy-Bulak Levoberezhny’ gold mine near the town of Orlovka that has been lauded by the state and business community as a paragon of company-community ‘cooperation’. We question how the gold mine has come to be an exemplary case of cooperation in a conflict-rife sector. Based on behavioural experiments, surveys, and in-depth inquiry, we follow and unpack entanglements of valuations, discourses and practices that have repackaged Orlovka from a former Soviet mining town in depression into a putative model of progress. Our interdisciplinary account unravels the contradictory processes of re/making extractive frontiers and managing resistance to extractivist expansion that interweave neoliberal practices with nationalist discourses. Beneath the discourses praising Orlovka, we find a community that has never stopped resisting despite consenting to the gold mine. The extractive entanglements we unearth exemplify the diversity of exigencies and aspirations behind resisting, negotiating and/or allowing mining while attesting to the diversified portfolio of tactics that silence and delegitimise these life concerns. (abstract from https://www.sciencedirect.com/) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107177

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Book review on Ben McKay's The political economy of agrarian extractivism: Lessons from Bolivia. By Alexander Dunlap (Journal of Agrarian Change).

The Political Economy of Agrarian Extractivism is a thoroughly researched book and highly recommended not only for Bolivian scholars with an interest in agrarian change and extractivism but also for people with a general interest in agricultural development and value chains. This review, however, hopes to remind readers that we should not lessen our critiques of industrialization, even if we remain dependent on and engulfed by its operations (text from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/). https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12443

Read the full book review here.

PODCAST HIGHLIGHT: The convivial conservation podcast

The convivial conservation podcast is affiliated with CONVIVA - the convivial conservation research project, funded by NORFACE/Belmont Forum. With 'convivial conservation', the team of natural and social scientists based in Brazil, California, Finland, the Netherlands, Tanzania and the UK aspire to transform nature conservation in ways that help both people and the planet through research focusing on four apex predators: jaguars, bears, wolves and lions. Convivial conservation tackles the roots of the conservation crisis, challenges market-based and colonial approaches, and focuses on justice for people and nature. It builds on ideas that already exist in practice and theory and is an open approach that requires input from different communities around the world.

In the latest episode of the convivial conservation podcast EXALT contributors Sanna Komi, PhD researcher, and Prof Anja Nygren, the Finnish team of the CONVIVA share with Dr Judith Krauss (University of Sheffield, CONVIVA post-doc) what CONVIVA Finland has been up to. Sanna and Anja, both from the University of Helsinki, describe their research and knowledge exchange efforts around human-wolf interactions in Lieksa in eastern Finland.

EXALT READING: Mapping the Amazon: Cutting through the Entanglement of Literature and Extractivism

The latest EXALT Reading is Liverpool University Press blog's interview with Amanda M. Smith who discusses her latest book called Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom and shares her thoughts on extractivism, Indigenous mapping, and the socio-environmental impacts of the rubber boom. Mapping the Amazon examines how widely read novels from twentieth-century South America attempted to map Amazonia for readers and simultaneously helped to identify and access exploitable resources to be extracted from the region. Smith also talks about how Indigenous activists today make maps to challenge cartography’s colonial biases alongside contemporary governmental and corporate maps and embed history and cultural practice as well as plant and animal life into the geography.

"By approaching literary texts as maps, Mapping the Amazon provides evidence of the role literature plays not only in representing the world but also in constructing geographic regions, determining their value, providing access to them, and reinforcing how people and capital flow through them."

Read the article here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

July 2021 - Mira Käkönen - How do dams impact climate change?
June 2021 - Arturo Escobar - Why are communities key to transforming the world?
May 2021- mirko nikolić - How do we dismantle our connections to extractivism?
April 2021 - Saskia Sassen - Why are there so many everyday miseries in big cities?

In the latest EXALT Podcast episode we talk to Victoria Kiechel, a professor from American University. She is an architect and teaches in the School of International Service. Her focus is on the relationship between the built environment and extractivism. This conversation is premised on Victoria’s contribution to the open access book Our Extractive Age. We talk about building as they contribute (or don’t) to urban and social life. We discussed the lifecycle of buildings and the extent of the extraction in all forms that accompany the built environment. The extraction which accompanies the built environment spans from literal extraction from the Earth in the form of building materials, to the displacement of communities, to financialization (via profit driving more extraction), to the construction labor. This discussion highlights the complexity of the built environment and how to be aware to minimize the most negative impacts of the extraction which occurs with making buildings.

EXALT NEWS JULY 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the July 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy the recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives

Registration for the conference will open in August 2021. In the meantime please check out our conference website for more information about our plenary speakers and our preliminary schedule.

One of our plenary speakers is Professor Deborah McGregor from York University’s Osgoode Hall law faculty cross-appointed with Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental Studies. She is also a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice and has been at the forefront of Indigenous environmental justice and Indigenous research theory and practice. Over the years, she has achieved international recognition through her creative and innovative approach using digital and social media to reach Indigenous communities and the public. Her work has been shared through the IEJ project website and UKRI International Collaboration on Indigenous research.

Important Dates to Keep in Mind:

August 16th - Registration Opens
October 20th - Registration Closes
October 25th-27th - Conference Time!!

We will also continue to communicate important information related to the conference and other EXALT activities via Twitter, Facebook, and through this newsletter.

RESENTATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Eija Ranta's presentation at Reimagining 'Quality of Life' and 'Social Wellbeing' by UoN & NENA

EXALT contributor and University of Helsinki researcher of Global Development Studies Eija Maria Ranta gave a presentation on "Learning from Indigenous views of quality of life in Latin America" at the Reimagining 'Quality of Life' and 'Social Wellbeing' online workshops hosted by New Economy Network Australia (NENA) and The University of Newcastle, Australia (UoN).

See the presentation here.

As part of our collaboration with Common Alternatives we will be posting these lectures on a dedicated playlist on our YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe!

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Quarantining activism: COVID-19, frontline defenders and intensifying extractivism in the Philippines. By ‪Wolfram H. Dresslery (Journal of Political Ecology).

How does the intersection of authoritarian populism and a global pandemic reinforce the suppression of human rights, dismantle environmental protections, and accelerate resource extraction? In parts of Southeast Asia, the rise of authoritarian regimes has created conditions of impunity in which state and non-state actors have exploited restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic to restrain activism, contain indigenous livelihoods, and intensify resource exploitation. This article explores how political control and violence against activists (‘defenders') under authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have intersected with and been reinforced through COVID-19 health measures to curtail grass-roots efforts to protect social and environmental safeguards (text from journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu)

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION HIGHLIGHT: Resisting extractivisms in Brazil and India
The global demand for industrial raw materials continues to rise but so does public concern over extractivism. This article recaps one valuable contribution to literature on social movement struggle against natural resource extraction is a book called Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India by Markus Kröger which examines armed resistance and peaceful resistance movements against iron ore mining in India and Brazil.

Read the summary article here. Read the book here.

EXALT READING: Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico

In the latest EXALT Reading, Anja Nygren illustrates how huge projects of hydropower, irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, hydrocarbon extraction, flood-protection infrastructure, and human relocations in Mexico have increased benefits and profits for certain stakeholders, while growing vulnerability and marginalisation among others. The article called 'Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico' demonstrates the overlapping and cumulative effects of state-making, accelerated resource-making, politics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature on socially differentiated vulnerability in the context of the Grijalva River basin, Mexico.

Read the article here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

June 2021 - Arturo Escobar - Why are communities key to transforming the world?
May 2021- mirko nikolić - How do we dismantle our connections to extractivism?
April 2021 - Saskia Sassen - Why are there so many everyday miseries in big cities?
March 2021 - Beril Ocaklı - How has extractivism played out in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?

For the July podcast we were glad to talk with Mira Käkönen, a post-doctoral researcher in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. She is an environmental social scientist with a focus in political ecology and water infrastructures through the lens of infrastructural politics and the intersection of water and climate. Her work focuses on the Mekong region and the impact of hydropower development. This exciting conversation was a deep dive into the history of water infrastructures and the impact of these development schemes. We talked about the concept of resource making and how river waters are developed and objectified to be turned from naturally flowing rivers into resources that can be “tamed”, commodified, and extracted. We delved into the logic of hydroelectricity and the violent reductions that accompany ordering riverine resources. Hydropower can itself be extractivism and it serves to support other extractivisms, like mining and forestry.

EXALT NEWS JUNE 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the June 2021 edition of the EXALT newsletter! If you want to dive into our previous events on extractivisms and alternatives please enjoy their recordings on EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives.

Registration for the conference will open in August 2021. In the meantime please check out our conference website for more information about our plenary speakers and our preliminary schedule.

One of our plenary speakers is Robin Broad, Professor of International Development at American University’s School of International Service and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. She heads SIS’s International Development Program’s unique curricular offerings on rethinking globalization and development and on environment and development with a focus on social, environmental, and economic accountability. Her most recent work is a book called The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed (2021) co-authored with John Cavanagh.

Important Dates to Keep in Mind:

August 16th - Registration Opens
October 20th - Registration Closes
October 25th - 27th - Conference Time!!

We will also continue to communicate important information related to the conference and other EXALT activities via Twitter, Facebook, and through this newsletter.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Indigenous Research Methodologies in Sámi and Global Contexts
Edited by Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Pigga Keskitalo & Torjer Olsen

How can research methods be drawn from local ways of producing knowledge? What are the shared elements of Indigenous research methodologies? How has Indigenous studies emerged? The new open access book Indigenous Research Methodologies in Sámi and Global Contexts (Brill 2021), answers these questions.

This book addresses the conceptualization and practice of Indigenous research methodologies especially in Sámi and North European academic contexts. It examines the meaning of Sámi research and research methodologies, practical levels of doing Indigenous research today in different contexts, as well as global debates in Indigenous research. The contributors present place-specific and relational Sámi research approaches as well as reciprocal methodological choices in Indigenous research in North-South relationships.

Book available here.

PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: The evolving techniques of the social engineering of extraction: Introducing political (re)actions ‘from above’ in large-scale mining and energy projects
By Judith Verweijen & Alexander Dunlap

Ecological catastrophe and global inequality are pressing, yet socio-ecologically destructive natural resource extraction continues unabated. This special issue published in Political Geography explores the strategies and tactics employed by large-scale mining and energy companies to render extraction socio-politically feasible in the face of multi-pronged opposition.

Read the article here.

EXALT READING: From the Paris Agreement to the Anthropocene and Planetary Boundaries Framework: an interview with Will Steffen

In this wide-ranging interview by Globalizations, the well-known Earth System scientist Professor Will Steffen introduces and discusses the influential planetary boundaries (PB) framework, the potential for a Hothouse Earth pathway and the relevance of the Anthropocene concept. He elaborates on the role of emergence, complexity, feedback and irreversibility and draws attention to updates for the nine PBs.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

May 2021- mirko nikolić - How do we dismantle our connections to extractivism?
April 2021 - Saskia Sassen - Why are there so many everyday miseries in big cities?
March 2021 - Beril Ocaklı - How has extractivism played out in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?
February 2021 - Yafa El Masri – How can refugees save the world?

For the June podcast we were honored to be joined by anthropologist Arturo Escobar. Arturo Escobar is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He also works in Columbia as a Research Associate with the Culture, Memory, and Nation group at Universidad del Valle in Cali and the Cultural Studies groups at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota. He has published widely on political ecology, ontological design, and the anthropology of development, social movements, and technoscience. This exciting conversion covered a lot of rich ground. We discussed the role of academic knowledge and activist knowledge in addressing the pressing concerns of our times. In particular we explored the interconnectedness of all beings in the world and the idea of radical interdependence. He highlights 6 axes or strategies for enacting transformative alternatives. We hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

EXALT NEWS MAY 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the May 2021 edition of the EXALT Initiative newsletter. We had a few busy months in April and May. Some of the highlights were a book discussion on Iron Will by Markus Kröger and a book launch for Our Extractive Age. If you missed either of these events, the recordings are available on the EXALT YouTube channel. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives
The EXALT conference will be taking place digitally in 2021 due to the continuing corona virus pandemic. Our conference site is open and more information will be added as we move closer to the conference. Included on the website is our preliminary daily program as well as our plenary speakers.

We are excited to announce that our plenary speakers include four distinguished scholars:

Dr. Robin Broad, Professor of International Development at the American University’s School of International Service.
Deborah McGregor, an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.
Lochner Marais, Professor of Development Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS).
and Andréa Zhouri, Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Important Dates to Keep in Mind:

August 1st - Registration Opens
October 20th - Registration Closes
October 25th - 27th - Conference Time!!

PAST EVENTS: Our Extractive Age and Iron Will book event

In the past month we organised two exciting book events: a book discussion for Markus Kröger's Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India and a book launch for Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance edited by Judith Shapiro and John-Andrew McNeish. Both of these volumes are Open Access.

You can find the recordings of both of these events as well as recordings from most of our past events on our website.

COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Publication: "¿La minería para el buen vivir? Large-scale Mining, Citizenship, and Development in Correa’s Ecuador"
In their article Karolien van Teijlingen and Consuelo Fernández-Salvador examine how Ecuador Estratégico, a government agency tasked with implementing buen vivir (good living) in regions of resource extraction, plays a pivotal role in justifying and legitimizing resource extraction locally. According to van Teijlingen and Fernández-Salvador, these political strategies were key for the onset of large-scale mining under former president Correa, the effects of which may endure for decades.

EXALT READING “Alternative Worldviews - Sharing life: The ecopolitics of reciprocity”

Alternative Worldviews - Sharing life: The ecopolitics of reciprocity by Andreas Weber et al. is an assemblage of 12 stories, poetry, song, artwork and academic writings which speak about alternative worldviews and traditional knowledge systems of the people of Northeast India and beyond. It challenges the ‘extractivist’ perceptions of the Northeast of India as space locked within rigid governance or development frameworks which miss the importance of the region’s ecology and biodiversity.
Evolving around the main essay “Sharing life. The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity” and based on a common understanding of the importance of indigenous knowledge systems and practices, the contributors to this assemblage visualize a wealth of indigenous epistemologies and encourage us to un-learn, de-theorize and re-assemble ourselves and our present thinking and methodologies.

Latest episodes:

April 2021 - Saskia Sassen - Why are there so many everyday miseries in big cities?
March 2021 - Beril Ocaklı - How has extractivism played out in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?
February 2021 - Yafa El Masri – How can refugees save the world?
January 2021 – Alexander Dunlap - Is "green energy" really that green (and is it better called "fossil fuel plus")? and bonus episode - What is the "World Eater"?

The May podcast is a delightful dive into looks at extractivisms through an artist lens. We were joined by mirko nikolić. mirko is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS) at Linköping University (LIU). mirko’s work occupies a post-disciplinary space that falls between art and environmental humanities. mirko’s work explores the many entanglements of climate and social justice in areas affected by extractivism and the intense exploitation of ‘natural resources’. Our conversation went many different places, including how mirko got into this work and extractivisms occurring at the peripheries of southeastern Europe and in the Nordics. This is a look at how extractivisms are experienced outside of the Latin American context. mirko also joined EXALT in 2020 at our digital symposium, you can check out mirko’s performance on the EXALT YouTube.

EXALT NEWS APRIL 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the April 2021 edition of the EXALT Initiative newsletter. Here in Helsinki the snow is melted, and we are oscillating between sunny days and freezing rain – typical spring for this area! There are some exciting events coming up, including book launches and an upcoming conference session. Additionally, check out the EXALT YouTube channel if you want to revisit any of our previous events. Thanks as always for your participation in the EXALT Initiative.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives

The EXALT conference will be taking place digitally in 2021 due to the continuing corona virus pandemic. While we will miss networking in person, we are working hard to create a vibrant digital space to interact. We have over 60 papers confirmed for the conference and we are working on an exciting keynote line-up.

One of our tracks, Track 4: Expanding Extractivisms – Big Data, Financialization, and Intellectual Extractivisms, has been opened for abstracts submission. Please note that this Call for Papers is open only for Track 4 submissions therefore we will not accept abstracts for any other track. Please see our website for more information.

Important Dates to Keep in Mind:

August 1st - Registration Opens
October 20th - Registration Closes
October 25th - 27th - Conference Time!!

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Book discussion of Markus Kröger's Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India

We are happy to welcome you to EXALT's book discussion about Markus Kröger’s recent book Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India, which explores the role of extractivist policies, their global significance and the local efforts to resist them, in the context of iron ore mining in Brazil and India. To discuss his book Kröger is joined by Professor Alf Nilsen and Sakshi Aravind.

Time: Thursday, April 29, 2021, at 2pm-3.15pm EEST (UTC +3) / 11 am GMT

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Book Launch - Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance

We are excited to host a book launch for Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance edited by Judith Shapiro and John-Andrew McNeish. Join us for this exciting event to hear about and discuss the content of this groundbreaking volume. The event includes an introduction by the editors, short interventions by the chapter authors, and an interactive Q&A session with the audience.

Time: Thursday, May 20, 2021, at 4pm - 5.30pm GMT

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Extractivisms and Alternatives at Sustainability Science Days 2021

EXALT is hosting a session called “Extractivisms and Alternatives” at the Sustainability Science Days organized by Aalto Sustainability and Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS). This session is a robust exploration of renewables, recycling, and new tech developments that could help to address the current forms of destructive and unsustainable extraction of raw materials. See the full program and register for the event.

Session conveners: Associate professor Markus Kröger, Doctoral Student Sophia Hagolani-Albov, Postdoctoral Researcher Ossi Ollinaho (University of Helsinki), Assistant Professor Annukka Santasalo-Aarnio (Aalto University).

EXALT READING “A Material Transition”

The latest EXALT reading is War on Want's report A Material Transition: Exploring supply and demand solutions for renewable energy minerals. The research examines the potential widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses unleashed by the extraction of transition minerals – the raw materials needed for the production of renewable energy technologies. A Material Transition highlights what can be done to avert this devastation and sets out a pathway for a globally just energy future.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

March 2021 - Beril Ocaklı - How has extractivism played out in Soviet and post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan?
February 2021 - Yafa El Masri – How can refugees save the world?
January 2021 – Alexander Dunlap - Is "green energy" really that green (and is it better called "fossil fuel plus")? and bonus episode - What is the "World Eater"?
December 2020 – Joshua Mata – How can labor movements help improve the environment?

This month on the podcast we were honored to spend some time with renowned Professor and author Saskia Sassen. Dr. Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. Her research and writing focus on globalization, global cities, states in the world economy and international human migration. The three key variables of inequality, gendering and digitization run through her work. Our conversation was wide ranging and very interesting as we explored the connections between health, commuting, and urban inequality; how the financial sector has used increasingly complex methods to squeeze profits out of the poorest people; and why owning a car has become less important in popular consciousness (among many other things!!)

EXALT NEWS MARCH 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to the March 2021 edition of the EXALT Initiative newsletter. There are lots of exciting events coming up this spring for EXALT. Please feel welcome to send EXALT information your events, publications, and other activities that explore extractivisms and alternatives. We will happily share them on our social media and through our newsletter. We can always be reached via e-mail at exalt (at) helsinki.fi.

If you have missed anything from our program in 2020 or like to revisit a talk, please remember that the recordings are available on our webpage. Below please find the latest from the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Please feel welcome to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives, October 25-27, 2021 Online

The EXALT 2021 Conference will be held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are going to be actively updating our conference webpage over the next couple of months as our exciting program comes together. We will share updates about the conference through this newsletter and our social media. We look forward to seeing you on the web in October 2021. If you have any questions or need additional information in the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out via e-mail at exalt (at) helsinki.fi

EXALT READING “Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution”

To commemorate the International week against racism, the latest EXALT reading is an essay called “Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution” by Cara Judea Alhadeff. The author writes about the ways in which the so-called green solutions and environmental racism reinforce the very systems of ecological devastation and global wealth inequities that many actors embracing sustainability try to question and even dismantle. She reminds us that, “however well-intentioned, these supposed alternatives perpetuate the violence of wasteful behavior and destructive infrastructures. Even if temporarily abated, they ultimately conserve the original crisis.”

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: HELSUS Brown Bag lunch hosted by EXALT

March 26, 2021 Online

Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science is hosting EXALT's "Our Extractive Age: Exploring Extractivisms" talk as part of HELSUS Brown Bag Lunch series on Friday March 26, 11AM-12PM. On the academic front, the use of the concept of extractivism has expanded from mining to new arenas like agriculture, forestry, finance, and even the digital. This presentation will provide a brief introduction to the complex web of extractivisms, where data and the digital intersect with natural resource extractivisms and provoke resistances to these processes and underlying ideological and historically-situated logics. This presentation is drawn from our co-authored work in chapters 1 and 9 from the forthcoming Routledge book Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance, which will be published in May 2021. Presenters: Christopher Chagnon, Francesco Durante, Sophia E. Hagolani-Albov, Saana Hokkanen, Markus Kröger and Will LaFleur. Link to the event page.

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Ask & answer session on Markus Kröger’s book Iron Will

APRIL 29, 2021 Online

Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India lays bare the role of extractivist policies and efforts to resist these policies through a deep ethnographic exploration of globally important iron ore mining in Brazil and India. It also addresses resistance strategies to extractivism and tracks their success, or lack thereof, through a comparison of peaceful and armed resource conflicts, explaining how different means of resistance arise. Using the distinctly different contexts and political systems of Brazil and India highlights the importance of local context for resistance. Event link is added on our exalt.fi website in early April.

Markus Kröger is an Associate Professor of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki and a research fellow at the Academy of Finland. To discuss his book Kröger is joined by Professor Alf Nilsen and Sakshi Aravind. Nilsen is professor of sociology at the University of Pretoria and a scholar of social movements, political economy, and global development. Aravind is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on Indigenous Environmental Justice in Australia, Brazil, and Canada.

FOLLOW-UP ANNOUNCEMENT: Book launch recording on The Water Defenders

The University of Pittsburgh’s book launch event (March 5) for The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed can be viewed here as a recording.

Session description: In a time when countless communities are resisting powerful corporations—from Flint, Michigan, to the Standing Rock Reservation, to Didipio in the Philippines, to the Gualcarque River in Honduras—Robin Broad and John Cavanagh present the inspirational story of a community that took on an international mining corporation at seemingly insurmountable odds and won not one but two historic victories.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

February 2021 - Yafa El Masri – How can refugees save the world?
January 2021 – Alexander Dunlap - Is "green energy" really that green (and is it better called "fossil fuel plus")? and bonus episode - What is the "World Eater"?
December 2020 – Joshua Mata – How can labor movements help improve the environment?
November 2020 - Katherine Trebeck - Should the economy work for society and the environment?

Next episode – Beril Ocaklı

In this month’s episode we get to explore extractivisms from a perspective different from any we have discussed before. Beril Ocaklı joined us to discuss extractivisms through the lens of post-soviet spaces. Beril is a doctoral researcher at IRI THESys at Humboldt University of Berlin and also works full-time for the Federation of German Industry, Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, where she is implementing the GIZ project “Mineral Resources for Development in Central Asia.” Her research work explores conflict and cooperation in coupled social-ecological systems in Kyrgyzstan. This is an interesting dive into the iterations of extractivisms that are far removed from the Latin American context.

EXALT NEWS FEBRUARY 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

We hope this month’s edition of the newsletter finds everyone in good health and spirits. We are still under snow here in Finland, but there are hints of spring starting to make themselves known. We will make all upcoming event announcements with this newsletter, on our webpage, and via social media. If you have missed anything from our program in 2020 or like to revisit a talk, please remember that the recordings are available on our webpage. Below please find the latest from the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Please feel welcome to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives

October 25–27, 2021, Helsinki, Finland

A save the date announcement that is the EXALT logo combined with the dates and name of the conference, which are October 25–27, 2021 in Helsinki, Finland, and titled, Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives. The background is thick green trees next to an area of clearcutting.

The 2021 EXALT Conference will take place digitally in 2021 due to the continuing pandemic. We really look forward to someday having an in-person conference event but want to wait until it is safe and accessible. Over the next month or so the conference webpage will be updated with the preliminary conference program. If you submitted an abstract to the 2020 event, you will soon be getting a separate e-mail with additional information about the 2021 event and how to confirm your continued participation and update your abstract if needed. We deeply appreciate the continued flexibility and patience around the planning of the 2021 event. More information is coming! If you have any questions or need additional information in the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out via our exalt (at) helsinki.fi e-mail address.

EXALT READING “Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary

The latest EXALT Reading is “Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary” by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria and Alberto Acosta.

“Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary” is an exciting collection of over 100 essays by 120+ contributors on transformative alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. In the post-development imagination, ‘development’ would no longer be the organizing principle of social life. The book presents worldviews and practices from around the world in a collective search for an ecologically wise and socially just world. Contributors to this volume from activists and academics to practitioners call for a pluriverse, a broad transcultural compilation of concrete concepts, worldviews and practices worldwide, challenging the modernist ontology of universalism in favor of a multiplicity of possible worlds.

Pluriverse is also the topic of one of our EXALT Podcast episodes, featuring Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes who joined us as guest on the December 2019 edition of the EXALT podcast.

PUBLICATION ANOUNCEMENT AND BOOK LAUNCH: The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed

By Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

Abstract: In a time when countless communities are resisting powerful corporations—from Flint, Michigan, to the Standing Rock Reservation, to Didipio in the Philippines, to the Gualcarque River in Honduras—The Water Defenders presents the inspirational story of a community that took on an international mining corporation at seemingly insurmountable odds and won not one but two historic victories. In the early 2000s, many people in El Salvador were at first excited by the prospect of jobs, progress, and prosperity that the Pacific Rim mining company promised. However, farmer Vidalina Morales, brothers Marcelo and Miguel Rivera, and others soon discovered that the river system supplying water to the majority of Salvadorans was in danger of catastrophic contamination. With a group of unlikely allies, local and global, they committed to stop the corporation and the destruction of their home. Based on over a decade of research and their own role as international allies of the community groups in El Salvador, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh unspool this untold story – a tale replete with corporate greed, a transnational lawsuit at a secretive World Bank tribunal in Washington, violent threats, murders, and –surprisingly– victory. The Water Defenders demands that we examine our assumptions about progress and prosperity, while providing valuable lessons for those fighting against destructive corporations in the United States and across the world.

The University of Pittsburgh is organizing a book launch event for The Water Defenders on Friday March 5, 19-20:30PM Eastern European Time (Helsinki) and 12-1:30PM Eastern time (Pittsburgh). Register to attend the book launch!

WORKSHOP SERIES ANNOUCEMENT: Dislocating Urban Studies

Dislocating Urban Studies: Rethinking Theory, Shifting Practice is a series of digital workshops that invites scholars working on/in/out of the above-mentioned margins who have carried out empirical, methodological or theoretical work that helps expand the boundaries of urban studies. Their aim is to engage in critical dialogue and explore different starting points or strategies that contribute to dislocating the center of the field. In the next workshops, they seek to:

Workshop 2: Learn from empirical cases from “off the map” of urban studies / 18-19 March 2021
Workshop 3: Explore methodological approaches that allow for research in understudied geographies and contribute to a global comparative urbanism /15-16 April 2021
Workshop 4: Challenge, revisit or rethink the usefulness of key concepts in the field (e.g. financialisation, gentrification, displacement, neoliberal urbanism, right to the city) / 17-18 May 2021

WEBINAR SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT: Global South Encounters

The HELSUS Global South Encounters is a series of seminars and small talks intended to sharpen critical research in sustainability science. Recognizing the complexities and peculiarities of the Global South, these seminars engage mainstream sustainability science in order to transcend it, among others by decolonizing nature, economy, society and methodologies. The seminars aim to open up space to get prior feedback on a forthcoming talk, an ongoing dissertation, a draft article, and a variety of research from students at all levels, academics, and members of the general public. Encounters also welcome discussions on giving conference papers and celebrate/publicize published papers. (text from HELSUS webpage).

UPCOMING CONFERENCE SESSIONS:

Global Extractivisms Roundtable at International Studies Association Annual Convention #ISA2021 on Thursday, April 8th - 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM EDT for a roundtable discussion on Global Extractivisms during the ISA Annual Meeting. Link for the full program for #ISA2021 and registration.
Extractivisms and Alternatives Session at Sustainability Science Days 2021 on Tuesday, May 18, 2021 from 12.15 – 14.00 EEST. See the full program and register for the event.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

January 2021 – Alexander Dunlap - Is "green energy" really that green (and is it better called "fossil fuel plus")? and a bonus episode - What is the "World Eater"‪?
December 2020 – Joshua Mata – How can labor movements help improve the environment?
November 2020 - Katherine Trebeck - Should the economy work for society and the environment?

Next episode – Yafa El Masri

This episode we get the pleasure to speak with Yafa El Masri, who is a PhD Student in Geography at the University of Padova, and was a visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki. She gives us insight to the experience of statelessness from the perspective of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. She shares with us the alternatives and livelihoods that operate within the camp. She is currently writing her dissertation on livelihood in Palestinian refugee camps through the lens of situated knowledge. We featured her published article, “72 Years of Homemaking in Waiting Zones: Lebanon's “Permanently Temporary” Palestinian Refugee Camps,” in the December 2020 edition of the EXALT news.

EXALT NEWS JANUARY 2021

Dear EXALT-community,

Welcome to 2021! While this looks like it will be another “digital year,” we are working hard here at EXALT to put together a productive and interesting year so we can continue to have important conversations around extractivisms and alternatives. Hope to see you all at one or more of our digital events. We will make all upcoming event announcements with this newsletter, on our webpage, and via social media. If you have missed anything from our program in 2020 or like to revisit a talk, please remember that the recordings are available on our webpage. Below please find the latest from the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Please feel welcome to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives

October 25–27, 2021, Helsinki, Finland

On account of the continuing global pandemic, our 2021 Conference is currently planned to take place digitally. We are working hard behind the scenes to get an engaging and interesting online program together. If you submitted an abstract to the 2020 Conference, we will be sending additional information via e-mail in the coming months. Even though we can only get together digitally, we look forward to creating an accessible and engaging space to foster interesting and important interaction and dialogue around extractivisms and alternatives. Once again, please hold this space in your calendar! More information will be forthcoming!

EXALT READING “The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure”

The latest EXALT Reading is “The Politics of Ecocide, Genocide and Megaprojects: Interrogating Natural Resource Extraction, Identity and the Normalization of Erasure” by Alexander Dunlap. Alexander is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, Centre for Development and Environment. His body of work had made critical examinations of police-military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects, including coal mining in Germany and copper mining in Peru. His current research “investigates the formation of transnational-super grids and the connections between conventional and renewable extraction industries.” His work is fresh and insightful, drawn from fieldwork and lived experiences on the frontlines of extractive projects. He highlights some of the ways that renewable energy can also be extractive and exposes the greenwashing that can happen with renewable energy projects. Alexander joined us at the 2020 EXALT Digital Symposium as a plenary panelist in a panel that explored the meaning and use of the term extractivism and will join us as guest on the January 2021 edition of the EXALT podcast.

PUBLICATION ANOUNCEMENT: Agroforestry transitions: The good, the bad and the ugly

By Ossi I. Ollinaho and Markus Kröger (Published in The Journal of Rural Studies)

Abstract: “This article canvasses the current definitions and framings of “agroforestry” in different academic literature and policies. Three key framings of “agroforestry” are identified in the scholarship and explored for their differences. The findings suggest that the distinct schools of research on “agroforestry” focus on distinct points of departure, and these baseline situations from which transitions to what is called “agroforestry” occur vary in distinct ways from monoculture plantations to primary forests. Political-economic analysis is used to scrutinize three key “agroforestry” transition categories: agroecological, agribusiness, and forest degradation, which the article identifies as agroecoforestry (the good), agrobizforestry (the bad), and agrodeforestry (the ugly) transitions, respectively. Examples of each type are provided based on field research in Brazil, and the results are put into a global perspective. The categories are helpful in identifying the “agroforestry” transitions that are currently marketed as good solutions but might also have negative impacts and in highlighting the agroecological agroforestry transitions that would help simultaneously increase global food production, adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis, and achieve equity and social justice.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.01.016

Read the full open-access article here.

PUBLICATION ANOUNCEMENT: Unity on the Global Left: Critical Reflections on Samir Amin's Call for a New International

Edited by Barry K. Gills and Christopher Chase-Dunn

“This book brings together a collection of essays by progressive global activists in response to Samir Amin’s call for a new global organization of progressive workers and peoples. Amin’s proposal is applauded, criticized and reformulated by these scholar-activists who are all proponents of ways forward toward a more egalitarian world society.

Samir Amin, a leading scholar and co-founder of the world-system tradition, died on August 12, 2018. Just before his death, he published, along with close allies, a call for ‘workers and the people’ to establish a ‘fifth international’ to coordinate support for progressive movements. Amin, an Egyptian economist, was an intrepid intellectual and organizer of popular movements whose scholar activism provided inspiration to the global justice movement. The essays in this volume are by other prominent scholar activists who praise, critique and reconfigure Amin’s proposal in order to help humanity confront the contemporary crisis of global capitalism and move toward a more egalitarian global society. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Globalizations.” (From the Routledge webpage)

Link to Unity on the Global Left and the Rethinking Globalizations Book Series

PROJECT ANNOUCEMENT: Worlds in Transition

Led by Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes

“This blog/podcast focuses on the people engaged in building more resilient, localized and regenerative systems for a livable planet. It is a platform that give grassroots organisations a voice and a possibility to connect with one another. As more and more people take their first steps towards radically changing their lives, this collection of stories of transitions makes up a larger narrative on how new worlds are born from below, one story at a time.

The podcast is part of the Academy of Finland research project Organising from the grassroots – territorial movements and their role in building sustainable futures lead by Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, Assistant Professor at Hanken School of Economics. The project has also received funding from the Swedish Culture Foundation and Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth’s foundation.” (From the Worlds in Transition webpage)

Listen to the newest pod with Ian McSweeney, who is the director of Agrarian Land Trust, an organization that works to bring farms into community-centered ownership and equitable lease tenure.

Listen to the pods in English and the pods in Swedish.

CONFERENCE SESSION: Global Extractivisms Roundtable at International Studies Association Annual Convention # ISA2021

Join us on Thursday, April 8th - 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM EDT for a roundtable discussion on Global Extractivisms during the ISA Annual Meeting. This will be a rousing discussion and exploration of global extractivisms. The panelists study the extractive nature of renewable energy megaprojects, agroforestry, world politics, resistance to extractivisms, and data/intellectual extractivism. This is a discussion not to be missed! Panelist in the session include:

Robin Broad (American University)
Markus Kröger (University of Helsinki)
Alexander Dunlap (University of Oslo)
Ossi Ollinaho (University of Helsinki)
Sophia Hagolani-Albov (University of Helsinki)

Look at the full website and program for #ISA2021. There will be many interesting sessions!

CONFERENCE SESSION: Extractivisms and Alternatives Session at Sustainability Science Days 2021

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 from 12.15 – 14.00 EEST

Session Description: The session is robust exploration of renewables, recycling, and new tech developments that could help to address the current forms of destructive and unsustainable extraction of raw materials. The session will create opportunities for dialogue and development of common vocabularies across disciplines. The conveners of this session come from diverse backgrounds including the social sciences, business, and engineering. We welcome a collaborative approach to a robust exploration of renewables, recycling, and new tech developments that could help to address the current destructive and unsustainable forms of extraction of raw materials—including, but not limited to, mining, agriculture, forestry. We strive to pave the way for future collaboration and looking at these issues from inter-, trans-, and multidisciplinary perspectives

Session conveners: Associate professor Markus Kröger, Doctoral Student Sophia Hagolani-Albov, Postdoctoral Researcher Ossi Ollinaho (University of Helsinki), and Assistant Professor Annukka Santasalo-Aarnio (Aalto University).

See the full program here.

EXALT PODCAST

Latest episodes:

December 2020 – Joshua Mata – How can labor movements help improve the environment?
November 2020 - Katherine Trebeck - Should the economy work for society and the environment?
October 2020 - Markus Kröger - What is the Best Way to Push for Change?
September 2020 - Anja Nygren - How Does Extractivism Impact Frontier Families Over Generations?

Next episode – Our conversation with Alexander Dunlap from University of Oslo will be released on Friday, January 20, 2021. We talked about how “green” are green energy projects and their multiple environmental impacts. In addition, we talked about the concept of the Worldeater. This conversation was so riveting that we are going to release it as a main episode and a bonus episode! Keep your ears open for the bonus!

EXALT NEWS DECEMBER 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

Here we are at the close of 2020. This year has certainly been one for the books! We would like to thank everyone that has been part of the EXALT Activities in 2020, including the Symposium, the podcast, and our other seminars. If you have missed anything or like to revisit a lecture, please remember that the recordings are available on our webpage. We hope that everyone has a safe and happy winter holidays. Below please find the latest news and events organized by the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Please feel welcome to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT: Concurrent Crises and Sustainable Futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives

October 25 -27, 2021, Helsinki, Finland

Due to the corona virus our conference planned for October 2020 was postponed to 2021. As we all know, the global situation continues to evolve with the pandemic. At this point, we hope that we will be able to have a hybrid conference, however, we will be waiting until closer to the conference dates to make final decisions. In any case, even if we have to meet digitally again, we look forward to seeing you on October 25-27 in 2021. We will share more information in early 2021 about how will move forward. Hold this space!

EXALT READING “Fieldnotes from Extractive Frontiers”

The latest EXALT Reading is "Fieldnotes from Extractive Frontiers" by Thea Riofrancos. The piece discusses the challenges for achieving environmental justice when contemporary governance practices are incompatible with the rights of nature and people. It explores questions like, "Who has the power to decide the fate of extractive projects? Who can speak on behalf of Nature, and to what ends? Are flourishing ecosystems and Indigenous rights at odds with “development” or compatible with it? Is the law a tool for liberation or a dead-end route to co-optation?" This essay was written as part of the Question series of the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago.

PUBLICATION ANOUNCEMENT: 72 Years of Homemaking in Waiting Zones: Lebanon's “Permanently Temporary” Palestinian Refugee Camps

By Yafa El Masri (Published in Frontiers in Sociology)

Yafa will be joining the EXALT Podcast for an episode in early 2021, this article gives great insight to her topic. Stay tuned for our forthcoming interview! (Image by Yafa El Masri)

Abstract: The “permanently temporary” Palestinian refugee community, present in Lebanon since 1948 with no solution in sight, has the highest rate of abject poverty within all five areas of operation of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA), and it still occupies the same limited geographic space it did 72 years ago. This harsh reality stems from the refugees’ statelessness but is also worsened by the local conditions imposed by the Lebanese legislation and (non)settlement policy aimed at preventing refugees from becoming permanent. Within this situation, we look at practices of agency enacted by camp dwellers to provide lacking life necessities and improve living conditions in the camps. This paper will identify and analyze coping mechanisms and homemaking practices undertaken by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, operating within the framework set by Brun and Fábos (2015), which conceptualized home and homemaking for people in protracted displacement through identifying a refugee’s “home, Home and HOME.” Building on Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledge, this paper uses data collected from participant observations, interviews, ethnographic and autoethnographic recordings analyzed through the lens of my own positioned rationality as a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon. Further, the paper will explore how Palestinian refugees establish camp spaces as a “home-Home-HOME,” despite their uncertain futures, through vertical expansion of buildings, stories and family bonding, in addition to trading and micro-markets. The paper will also deduce how refugees’ informal coping mechanisms offer a way of strengthening community bonds, making home in those, otherwise, uncomfortable “waiting zones,” and finally, envisioning new ideas for restructuring the camp beyond the rule of formal institutions. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2020.587063

Read the full open-access article here.

PUBLICATION ANOUNCEMENT: The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society

By Franklin Obeng-Odoom, University of Helsinki

"In the last two hundred years, the earth has increasingly become the private property of a few classes, races, transnational corporations, and nations. Repeated claims about the "tragedy of the commons" and the "crisis of capitalism" have done little to explain this concentration of land, encourage solution-building to solve resource depletion, or address our current socio-ecological crisis.

The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty presents a new explanation, vision, and action plan based on the idea of commoning the land. The book argues that by commoning the land, rather than privatising it, we can develop the foundation for prosperity without destructive growth and address both local and global challenges. Making the land the most fundamental priority of all commons does not only give hope, it also opens the doors to a new world in which economy, environment, and society are decolonised and liberated." (from University of Toronto Press)

Link to University of Toronto Press

CONFERENCE SESSION: Extractivisms and Alternatives Session at Sustainability Science Days 2021

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 from 12.15 – 14.00 EEST

The topic of extractivism is gaining more importance as a new key concept that helps to understand, at a deeper level, the causes of destructive resource extractive projects and overall political economic models built on this extractivist paradigm. There is a growing debate around how to find alternatives to destructive extractive processes, and how to identify and implement alternative ways to provide raw materials and create sustainable livelihoods and production processes. This session will focus on unsustainable extraction practices and the technological and political solutions that stand as alternatives in the face of extractivism. We invite presentations that explore renewables, recycling, new tech developments, and how these measures could be adopted to ameliorate the problems of extractivism. We want to explore the political, economic, and socio-environmental factors that could impede or support the adoption of these potential alternatives.

The session will create opportunities for dialogue and development of common vocabularies across disciplines. The conveners of this session come from diverse backgrounds including the social sciences, business, and engineering. We welcome a collaborative approach to a robust exploration of renewables, recycling, and new tech developments that could help to address the current destructive and unsustainable forms of extraction of raw materials—including, but not limited to, mining, agriculture, forestry. We strive to pave the way for future collaboration and looking at these issues from inter-, trans-, and multidisciplinary perspectives

See the full program and register for the event now at www.sustainabilitysciencedays.fi

PUBLICATION: Co-Creating Agroecological Symbioses (AES) for Sustainable Food System Networks

By Juha Helenius, Sophia E. Hagolani-Albov, and Koppelmäki (published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems)

This open access article introduces a proposal for an alternative food system design that addresses the relationships between producer, processors, and consumers. "[Networks of Agroecological Symbiosis] NAES gives the promise for increased food sovereignty and resilience in terms of food security. It gives promise for transformative change from extractive food capitalism toward sustainable ecology-based food systems." (Helenius et al. 2020). https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.588715

Read the full article here.

EXALT PODCAST – LATEST EPISODES

Latest episodes:

November 2020 - Katherine Trebeck - Should the economy work for society and the environment?
October 2020 - Markus Kröger - What is the Best Way to Push for Change?
September 2020 - Anja Nygren - How Does Extractivism Impact Frontier Families Over Generations?
August 2020 - Gutu Olana Wayessa - Why do people need to be consulted about big projects in their back yards?

Next episode - In light of Christmas Day, this episode will be released on Thursday, December 24th. In January we will be back to our normal release schedule of the last Friday of the month. In this episode we are joined by Trade Union Josua Mata, who we met through our partners at the People's Sovereignty Network. We will be learning about the role of labor unions in resistance struggles in the Philippines.

EXALT NEWS NOVEMBER 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

We hope everyone is doing well despite the turbulent times. Please find below the latest news and hear about events organized by the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Feel free to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

SESSION RECORDINGS FROM DOCTORAL STUDENTS PRE-CONFERENCE in October 2020 “(De)naturalising extractivism: investigating its social orders and resistances”

Prior to the EXALT Symposium last October, EXALT partnered with two doctoral programs from the Faculty Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki to coproduce an online annual conference as a pre-conference to the Symposium. The 7th Annual Conference for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences & the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change explored the (de)naturalisations of extractivist practices. The session recordings can be found below, as well as on the EXALT website and EXALT’s Youtube-channel.

Keynote Cori Hayden - Crowding extractivism: Data and more-than-social media
Keynote Markus Kröger - Resistance to extractivisms: Dynamics, strategies and outcomes
Methods Workshop “Challenges of pragmatic RCT data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic” (with panelists: Anni E. Kajanus, Assistant Professor, Social and Cultural Anthropology Tuomas M. Ylä-Anttila, Associate Professor, Political Science Anne Kouvonen, Professor, Social Policy)

EXALT READING: Alternative Futures: India Unshackled

Read the latest: “Alternative Futures: India Unshackled”, (edited by KJ Joy & Ashish Kothari) which brings together scenarios of an India that is politically and socially egalitarian, radically democratic, economically sustainable and equitable, and socio-culturally diverse and harmonious. This open access book covers a wide range of issues and is a must-read for those interested in envisioning better futures for all. Previous: The previous EXALT Reading is an article published on the Journal Globalizations. Steve Keen's "The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change" offers devastating critique of neoclassical climate economics and shows how lot of the research dramatically underestimates and misinterprets the risk of climate emergency. "If climate change does lead to the catastrophic outcomes that some scientists now openly contemplate, then these Neoclassical economists will be complicit in causing the greatest crisis, not merely in the history of capitalism, but potentially in the history of life on Earth."

PUBLICATION: ORGANISING IN DEFENCE OF LIFE: THE EMERGENCE AND DYNAMICS OF A TERRITORIAL MOVEMENT IN SOUTHERN CHILE

By Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes (Published on the Journal Organization)

The aim of this paper is to examine how territorial movements, as distinct forms of place-based social movements, organise in defence of life against the threat of resource extraction on their land. Based on the experiences of Indigenous Lafkenche-Mapuche members of a protracted struggle against a pulp mill in southern Chile, the study seeks to address the following research questions: (1) How do territorial movements emerge and organise the defence of their threatened lives? and (2) How do diverging (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) territorial relations shape the dynamics of the struggle? Combining insights from Enrique Dussel’s ‘ethics of liberation’ with that of Indigenous ontologies, this study suggests that territorial movements emerge out of the awakening of a critical consciousness of the threat of death and the collective ‘desire to live’ that define the dynamics of the struggle. The findings demonstrate how the diverging territorial relations, the societally embedded ‘coloniality of power’, and the state and corporate induced violence shape the movement dynamics. Changes in the movement dynamics also occur as a result of the struggle itself, as the movement actors’ unified desire to live continuously transforms the people and shapes the territory they inhabit. DOI: 10.1177/1350508420963871

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION: ALLI KAWSAY: EPISTEMOLOGY AND POLITICAL PRACTICE IN THE TERRITORIES, A POSSIBILITY FROM THE ANDEAN PLURIVERSE FOR ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE AND THE CARE OF MOTHER NATURE

By Eduardo Erazo Acosta (Chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies pp 1-17)

Indigenous communities are noted for being resilient. The following presentation is an epistemological-political action from the world of possibilities in the pluriverse of indigenous knowledge. The Alli Kawsay (Buen Vivir) and its political, cultural, and epistemic options offer the possibility to work collectively in favor of our ‘Mother Nature.’ From the urgent options to be heard in the current climate crisis and even more in the sociopolitical crisis, it is essential to strengthen respect for Mother Nature. This document arises from learning in indigenous communities in walking and listening to indigenous talk in the Andean region in high Andean and Amazonian communities. Presented here are elements of the rights of nature. The Alli Kawsay is an option to be lived urgently now, as a serious and fundamental option that originates from ancestral knowledge, is lived by millions in the global south, and that today is taken up again at the global level by activists and people aware of the care of nature as a subject of rights in the international political framework.

Full chapter here.

NEWS PIECE ON THE FIRST YEAR OF THE EXALT PODCAST: “Popularising research on extractivism and its alternatives”

Published on the University of Helsinki’s website

In celebration of the one year anniversary of the EXALT Podcast a brief news piece was published on the EXALT website on the podcast’s first year and the significance of approachable communication of research. “From large-scale mining, to eco-cultural pluralism, and harmful forms of conservation, the EXALT Podcast offers listeners, activists, and academics a space to explore and discuss the multiple ways extractivism shapes our world today and the possibilities for alternatives.”

Read the full article here.

PUBLICATION: ECONOMICS AND CLIMATE EMERGENCY

By professors Barry Gills & Jamie Morgan (published in Globalizations)

In this article professor Barry Gills (Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki) and professor Jamie Morgan (Leeds Beckett University) provide introductory comment for the collection of solicited essays on Economics and Climate Emergency published as a collection on the Journal Globalizations, and all of which are open access until the end of the year. In the article Gills and Morgan suggest that recent critique of the climate movement has broader systemic significance and this is indicative of issues that bear on the collected essays. This article is to rehearse some of the standard arguments leading to complacency and delay to action on climate change and ecological breakdown. DOI:10.1080/14747731.2020.1841527

Read the full article here.

EXALT PODCAST – LATEST EPISODES

Latest episodes:

Bonus episode: Year 1 Retrospective (and Outtakes)
Markus Kröger – What is the Best way to Push for Change?
Anja Nygren - How Does Extractivism Impact Frontier Families Over Generations?
Gutu Olana Wayessa - Why do people need to be consulted about big projects in their back yards?
Will LaFleur – What kind of connection do you have with your food?

EXALT NEWS OCTOBER 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

Please find below the latest news and hear about events organized by the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Feel free to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

EXALT SYMPOSIUM 2020 – SESSION RECORDINGS

EXALT Symposium 2020 was a series of convivial and critical online discussions, which took place online in the end of October, 2020. The event brought together scholars and activists in discussing the diverse phenomena of global extractivisms and the myriad alternatives. The Symposium consisted of a plenary Roundtable Discussion followed by seven thematic sessions with a diverse set of speakers. The session recordings can be found below, as well as on the EXALT website and EXALT’s Youtube-channel.

WATCH THE RECORDINGS:

Opening Plenary: Roundtable-discussion with Eduardo Gudynas, Alexander Dunlap and Anna Willow
Musical Performance by KO:MI
Urbanity and Extractivisms with Ali Almoghazy and Joe Collins
Colonized by Data: The Costs of Connection with Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejías
Transitions to Alternatives with Stephen Healy, Bhavya Chitranshi, Molly Anderson and Students of Middlebury College
Performance: Arcanes of Terran Reproduction by Mirko Nikolic
Book Launch: Beyond the Coal Rush – A Turning Point for Global Energy and Climate Policy with James Goodman and fellow authors
Global Extractivisms with Julie Ann De Los Reyes, Anja Nygren and Natacha Bruna
People’s Sovereignty Network: Reclaiming Democracy from Below with Nora McKeon, Gonzalo Berrón and fellow authors
Indigenous Sovereignty, Modernity Projects and Alternatives with Deborah McGregor

EXALT READING

Read the latest: This week's EXALT Reading is an article published on Globalizations. Steve Keen's "The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change" offers some devastating critique of neoclassical climate economics and shows how lot of the research dramatically underestimates and misinterprets the risk of climate emergency. “If climate change does lead to the catastrophic outcomes that some scientists now openly contemplate, then these Neoclassical economists will be complicit in causing the greatest crisis, not merely in the history of capitalism, but potentially in the history of life on Earth.” Previous: Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice (edited by Tahseen Jafry). The book addresses some of the most important topics in current climate justice research, including just transition, urban climate justice and public engagement, in addition to the more traditional focus on gender, international governance and climate ethics. The book draws from a multidisciplinary group of authors and provides valuable insights into the timely and crucial topic. Whether you are a student, researcher or come from outside of academia, this topic is relevant for everyone!

UPCOMING BOOK: “IRON WILL - GLOBAL EXTRACTIVISM AND MINING RESISTANCE IN BRAZIL AND INDIA”

By Markus Kröger (The University of Michigan Press)

To be published in November, 2020, new book by Markus Kröger (Associate Professor of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki) “Iron Will” lays bare the role of extractivist policies and the efforts to resist these policies through a deep ethnographic exploration of globally important iron ore mining in Brazil and India. Markus Kröger addresses resistance strategies to extractivism and tracks their success, or lack thereof, through a comparison of peaceful and armed resource conflicts, explaining how different means of resistance arise. Using the distinctly different contexts and political systems of Brazil and India highlights the importance of local context for resistance. For example, if there is an armed conflict at a planned mining site, how does this influence the possibility to use peaceful resistance strategies? To answer such questions, Kröger assesses the inter-relations of contentious, electoral, institutional, judicial, and private politics that surround conflicts and interactions, offering a new theoretical framework of 'investment politics' that can be applied generally by scholars and students of social movements, environmental studies, and political economy, and even more broadly in Social Scientific and Environmental Policy research.

EXALT PODCAST CELEBRATES ITS ONE-YEAR-ANNIVERSARY

In celebration of the one year anniversary of the EXALT Podcast two new episodes were published in October! In the first episode the hosts Christopher Chagnon and Sophia Hagolani-Albov talked with associate professor Markus Kröger (Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, a founding member of EXALT, and a research fellow at the Academy of Finland) about the best ways to achieve change, as well as Kröger’s upcoming book "Iron Will". In the episode Kröger shares some of his stories of being a participant observer in the front lines of mining resistance in India and Brazil. In the Bonus Episode the hosts sat down to look back to the last year, the guests they’ve had and to see what's coming ahead next year in season two!

Latest episodes:

Bonus: Year 1 Retrospective (and Outtakes)
Markus Kröger – What is the Best way to Push for Change?
Anja Nygren - How Does Extractivism Impact Frontier Families Over Generations?
Gutu Olana Wayessa - Why do people need to be consulted about big projects in their back yards?
Will LaFleur – What kind of connection do you have with your food?
Rachel Mazac – How does your dinner impact the world?
Maija Lassila - Extractivism Research and Breaking Away from the Written Word

The EXALT Podcast publishes monthly episodes focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, SoundCloud, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker or RadioPublic.

ESSAY – BEYOND “KOYAANISQATSI”: REIMAGINING CIVILIZATION

By professor Barry Gills (ISA Global Dialogue, Volume 10, Issue 3)

In this short essay professor Barry Gills (Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki) discusses the concurrent global crises and the state of the world through the Hopi –concept of “Koyaanisqatsi”.

“There is an emerging view in the present crisis, illustrated in recently burgeoning commentary across the globe, expressing a realization that our present form of world order and civilization has brought humanity and “nature” into a great crisis, and that we must act radically to transform the foundations. The combination, or “triple crisis,” of the three Cs – Climate, Capitalism, and COVID-19 – has brought forward a momentum to address the fundamental causes of this crisis. The Hopi people of North America have an important myth with great relevance for our present situation: the myth of “Koyaanisqatsi,” often translated as “life out of balance,” “a form of life that should not exist,” or “a crazy life.”

Read the full essay here.

CALL FOR TWO POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS (Justice and Politics in Global Bioeconomy)

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)

“In the frame of JUST GLOBE, we are looking for two postdoctoral researchers to conduct critical, theoretical and qualitative research on bioeconomy policy, conflicts, justice and power relations in Ghana and Laos (one postdoc per country). The research will take part in environmental justice debates by providing understanding about the felt justice and injustice within the particular studied environments. The postdoctoral researchers are expected to carry out fieldworks in the case study countries (approximately 3 months) and to have one or two mobility periods with a duration of 1 to 2 months in the collaborating institutions or another relevant institution. The positions are with a duration of 1,5 years (18 months).”

About the project: JUST GLOBE: Justice in Global Bioeconomy project (2020-2025) is a project funded by the Academy of Finland. ”In JUST GLOBE we focus on Power, Politics and Environmental Justice in the context of Global Bioeconomy. We analyze how transitions to bioeconomy relate to and affect the existing socio-ecological injustices and power asymmetries and what kind of collaboration and conflicts emerge between those who do not share similar aspirations, worldviews and interests. In order to understand how the exercise of power and the calls for justice interact and shape the becoming of bioeconomy in its different forms and across different scales, the project combines policy analysis and ethnographic investigations of lived experiences.”

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - Organizing for a Living Earth: Beyond Human-centered Analyses of Organization and Management

We warmly invite you to submit your abstract to our sub-theme #56 “Organizing for a Living Earth: Beyond Human-centered Analyses of Organization and Management" taking place in the upcoming EGOS conference in July 2021. We call for contributions engaging with diverse approaches and methodologies that explore and theorize organizational practices involving how people, together with other living beings and things, co-construct an (un)livable earth. We are interested in the relations, senses and emotions that ‘glue’ people together with soils, nonhuman animals, microorganisms in socio-bio-material processes that enable a living and thriving earth. Such contributions could, for example, be informed by ecological economics, ecofeminism, post-structural philosophy, world-ecology theory, science and technology studies, practice theories, and others. While theory is clearly of interest to us, we are also encouraging empirical investigations and practical cases that vividly engage with exploring multiple ways of re-organizing the economy in the era of ecological crisis.

More information on the conference and the full call for papers can be found here.

EXALT NEWS SEPTEMBER 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

Please find below the latest news and hear about future events organized by the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). Feel free to distribute this newsletter to your own respective networks.

EXALT SYMPOSIUM 2020 – EXTRACTIVISMS AND ALTERNATIVES

October 21.-23. – Online

EXALT Symposium 2020 is a series of convivial and critical online discussions, taking place next month on 21.-23. of October, 2020. The event draws together diverse critical analyses of the phenomena of global extractivisms and the myriad alternatives pursued both in theory and practice. The Symposium consists of a plenary Roundtable Discussion and six sessions with diverse set of speakers from multiple backgrounds. Read about our speakers and check out the program on our website! The event is free and registration is open for everyone.

EXALT READING

Read the latest: This week's EXALT Reading is about just cities and inclusive urban spaces. The full issue "Cities of Inclusion—Spaces of Justice" edited by professor Anja Nygren and Dr. Florencia Quesada proposes new ways of rethinking cities so they can become places where all the citizens feel included. The Special issue explores new theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches to understanding the complex inequalities characteristic of contemporary cities, and emergent initiatives for enhancing the rights to the city, societal security and urban justice.

Previous: "Between Activism and Science: grassroots concepts for sustainability" by Joan Martinez-Alier et al. The article shows how various environmental justice organizations and activists have introduced new concepts to political ecology, which have then been taken up by academics and policy makers. These concepts include environmental justice, environmental racism, climate justice, biopiracy, food sovereignty, land grabbing, corporate accountability, ecocide, and indigenous territorial rights, among others.

PUBLICATION: “THE POTENTIAL OF AMAZON INDIGENOUS AGROFORESTRY PRACTICES AND ONTOLOGIES FOR RETHINKING GLOBAL FOREST GOVERNANCE”

By Markus Kröger and Nidia Catherine González in Forest Policy and Economics

This article by associate professor Markus Kröger and Dr. Nidia Catherine González explores the potential of Amazon indigenous agroforestry practices and forest understandings for making global forest governance more nuanced and thus rethinking the value of forests in the context of multiple global crises. Indigenous forest practices and their inherent knowledge are included in current global governance in very limited ways. Onto-epistemological openings in forest policies are needed in the face of converging climate, food and health crises. The indigenous forest relations and practices analyzed here may offer possibilities for such onto-epistemological openings.

Read the article here.

PUBLICATION: “CORPORATE LAND GRABS: COLONIAL CONTINUITY AND SPACE OF EXCEPTION IN KENYA”

by Paola Minoia in Land Use Policy

This article by Dr. Paola Minoia discusses plantations and landgrabs as continuity of #colonial structures in contemporary agribusiness in Kenya. The article focuses on land dispossession instigated by large corporations, and the way they produce spaces of colonial persistence through particular structures and sovereignty systems that differ from the state-based administrative settings in which they are located. The study looks at phenomena that can be observed on large agricultural estates, particularly in the Teita sisal plantation in Taita-Taveta county in Kenya.

Read the article here.

PUBLICATION: “RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY FROM BELOW: FROM THE CONTEMPORARY STATE CAPITALIST SYSTEM TO PEOPLES’ SOVEREIGNTY”

Special Forum published on Globalizations Journal - Edited by Nora McKeon and Gonzalo Berrón

This Special Forum of Globalizations co-edited by Nora McKeon and Gonzalo Berrón grows from a collective effort to assess the deep changes underway in the world in a dialogue between specific struggles on the ground to defend rights and territories and the dynamics of the global trends that impact on them all. Behind what can look like fragmented battles and constructions, we hypothesize, there is an increasingly consolidated common struggle and vision, just as a mosaic is composed of separate pieces that are unified into a composition. Based on exchanges in a workshop in Siena in October 2018, the Forum aims at putting together some of the pieces of the mosaic.

Content:

1. Introduction – Nora McKeon and Gonzalo Berrón

2. Contextualizing corporate control in the agrifood and extractive sectors – Jennifer Clapp and Joseph Purugganan

3. Land, territory and commons: voices and visions from struggles – Tomaso Ferrando, Isa Alvarez, Molly Anderson, Sophie Dowllar, Harriet Friedmann, Antonio Gonzalez, Chandra Maracle, Nora McKeon

4. Rethinking law from below: experiences from the Kuna People and Rojava - Felipe Bley Folly in dialogue with Manigueuigdinapi Jorge Stanley Icaza, Havin Guneser and others

5. Knowledge and education for people’s sovereignty - Molly Anderson and Priscilla Settee;

6. Releasing the full transformative power of feminism - Zdravka Dimitrova, Isa Álvarez, Sophie Dowllar, Havin Guneser

PUBLICATION: OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES

1. Natural Resources, Energy Politics, and Environmental Consequences

2. Politics of Extraction: Theories and New Concepts for Critical Analysis

By Markus Kröger

EXALT researcher associate professor Markus Kröger has published two entries on the Oxford Bibliographies, offering authoritative research guides on 1. Natural Resources, Energy Politics, and Environmental Consequences and 2. [on the] Politics of Extraction: Theories and New Concepts for Critical Analysis. These publications can provide researchers and students valuable resources and an overview of the current literature on the subjects.

Oxford Bibliographies Online is unfortunately available only by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information visit their website.

LISTEN TO THE EXALT PODCAST

The EXALT Podcast publishes monthly episodes focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker or RadioPublic.

Latest episodes:

Anja Nygren - How Does Extractivism Impact Frontier Families Over Generations?
Gutu Olana Wayessa - Why do people need to be consulted about big projects in their back yards?
Will LaFleur – What kind of connection do you have with your food?
Rachel Mazac – How does your dinner impact the world?
Maija Lassila - Extractivism Research and Breaking Away from the Written Word
Tom Maraffa – Extractivism and sense of place in Ohio

COLLABORATION: PEOPLE’S SOVEREIGNTY LAB

EXALT is joining forces with The People’s Sovereignty Lab at the EXALT Fall Symposium 20202. The People’s Sovereignty Lab will organize a scientific session on Thursday 22nd of October at 16.-18.00 (EEST) with Nora McKeon and Gonzalo Berrón hosting the event.

The People’s Sovereignty Network is a mosaic of scholars and activists responding to a felt need to break out of silos, to converge and strategize around common threats and aspirations, and to build shared popular narratives rooted in the concrete experiences of communities around the world.

EXALT NEWS JULY 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

INTERVIEW IN THE RETHINKING-SERIES (EXTINCTION REBELLION FINLAND)

EXALT members, professor Barry Gills and postdoctoral researcher Ossi Ollinaho have each taken part in an interview-series “Rethinking”, by the Finnish Extinction Rebellion, Elokapina. Professor Gills discussed rethinking global restoration in times of concurrent crises (in English) and Dr. Ollinaho talked about the potential of alternative worldviews against the rampant environmental and climate crisis (in Finnish).

Watch the two interviews on XR Finland’s Youtube-channel:

NEW EXALT READING

Read the latest: David Wallace-Wells' article "The Uninhabitable World", a synthesis of the book by the same name, which tackles the current path our world is on due to climate-breakdown. The article is not an uplifting one, but exactly for that reason, even more necessary for everyone to read. The piece is one of the most-read article's in history of the New York Magazine and features a link to an annotated version, to give readers some context on how the article was reported and further sources for the information. Even if it scares you, read.

UCOMING EVENT THIS WEEK: GLOBAL EXTRACTION FILM FESTIVAL (NOT ORGANIZED BY EXALT)

Streaming Online | July 16-20, 2020 | #FocusOnGlobalExtraction | #GlobalExtractionAction

From 16-20 July 2020, Jamaican environmental filmmaker Esther Figueroa (Vagabond Media), in collaboration with https://www.caribbeancreativity.nl/https://www.caribbeancreativity.nl/, is hosting a free online film festival to reflect on the destructive impacts of hundreds of years of extractive industries on Planet Earth.

FOCUS ON GLOBAL EXTRACTION – PROGRAM 1:

Program 1 features a selection of 25 documentaries focused on all the regions of the world, with a wide range of topics demonstrating the all-encompassing and intersectional nature of global extraction and exploitation. From the military industrial complex and colonial occupation, to mining, tourism, industrial agriculture, factory farms, climate crisis, plastics, waste, forests, soil, forced labor, fossil fuels, and smart-technology.

LISTEN TO THE EXALT PODCAST

The EXALT Podcast publishes monthly episodes focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker or RadioPublic.

Latest episodes:

Will LaFleur – What kind of connection do you have with your food?
Rachel Mazac – How does your dinner impact the world?
Maija Lassila - Extractivism Research and Breaking Away from the Written Word
Tom Maraffa – Extractivism and sense of place in Ohio
Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia – Eco-cultural pluralism, Extractivism, and the Kichwa people of Ecuadorain Amazonia
Sanna Komi – Conservation and Extractivism: Two sides of the same coin
Maria Fuentes-Ehrnström – Exploring the Pluriverse
Aili Pyhälä – Activisms, Academia and Alternatives
Barry Gills – Extractivisms and Alternatives; Three concepts to live by; Call for Action

EXALT NEWS JUNE 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

EXALT SYMPOSIUM 2020 in October – a reminder

EXALT is hosting an online event, EXALT Symposium 2020 - Extractivisms and Alternatives, which will be held in October 21-23, 2020. The online symposium will be a series of convivial discussions on different aspects of extractivisms and alternatives, featuring a roundtable discussion with some of the world’s leading scholars working on extractivisms.

Please visit our website for more information and stay tuned on our social media channels to hear more about the upcoming Symposium!

QUARANTINE READING IS NOW EXALT READING

EXALT Reading (formerly Quarantine Reading) is a curated list of open access, topical and critical literature on Extractivism, Global Crises, Alternatives, Sustainability, Degrowth, Solidarity, Commons and everything in between! The literature-picks are posted biweekly on EXALT's Facebook-page and updated on the website regularly.

Read the latest: Professor Hamed Hosseini's essay "From well-being to well-living: Towards a post-capitalist understanding of quality of life" published on our partner-organization’s Common Alternatives website. The ten-minute-read discusses how well-being is understood in different contexts and how the discussion has the potential to make way for post-capitalist transformations towards convivial ways to live and be well.

PAST EVENT: “DEGROWTH AND POST-EXTRACTIVISM – A GOOD LIFE FOR ALL?”

On June 5th at 14.00-15.30 (EEST) EXALT and HELSUS Global South Encounters seminar series organized an online seminar “Degrowth and Post-Extractivisms – a Good Life for All?” as part of the Global Degrowth Day. The event hosted a discussion with Dr. Marta Conde (Pompeu Fabra University), a prominent researcher in the field of post-extractivism and Degrowth. The discussion dealt with the promises and challenges of Degrowth and examined the potential of and the need for post-extractivist realities. Dr. Conde also talked about her research on activism mobilizing science and touched upon the discussion around the EU Green Deal. We want to thank everyone who participated in the event! If you missed the event this time, you can watch it via the link below.

Watch the event-recording here.

LISTEN TO THE EXALT PODCAST

The EXALT Podcast publishes monthly episodes focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker or RadioPublic.

Latest episodes:

Rachel Mazac – How does your dinner impact the world?
Maija Lassila - Extractivism Research and Breaking Away from the Written Word
Tom Maraffa – Extractivism and sense of place in Ohio
Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia – Eco-cultural pluralism, Extractivism, and the Kichwa people of Ecuadorain Amazonia
Sanna Komi – Conservation and Extractivism: Two sides of the same coin
Maria Fuentes-Ehrnström – Exploring the Pluriverse
Aili Pyhälä – Activisms, Academia and Alternatives
Barry Gills – Extractivisms and Alternatives; Three concepts to live by; Call for Action

EXALT NEWS MARCH 2020

Dear EXALT-community,

Please find below the latest news and hear about future events organized by the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT). You are welcome to forward the information to your respective networks.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS IS OPEN FOR EXALT CONFERENCE OCTOBER 20-23, 2020, UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

The upcoming conference "Concurrent crisis and sustainable futures: Global Extractivisms and Alternatives" is a two day conference with six scientific sessions (themes below), organized at the University of Helsinki on 20-23 of October. The conference aims to catalyze and facilitate inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, and therefore welcomes proposals from researchers of all academic career-levels. One of the goals of the conference is to contribute to, expand, and deepen the concept of extractivism and the role of alternatives beyond the conventional usage connected to natural resources. Instructions for submission.

Thematic tracks:

Global Extractivisms
Indigenous Sovereignty, Modernity projects and Alternatives
Urbanity and Extractivisms
Financialisation and Intellectual Extractivisms
Transitions to Alternatives
Open theme

UPCOMING EVENT: “CLIMATE EMERGENCY AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE ARCTIC”

March 12th, 2020 at 13.00, Think Corner

This panel discussion will tackle the situations of Indigenous peoples in the changing Arctic, how livelihoods have started to alter and what roles does extractivism play with its myriad of direct and indirect consequences for the well-being of the Arctic. The panel offers a forum for Indigenous representatives and researchers to offer insights on the complex entanglement of climate emergency, Indigenous people’s sovereignty and Arctic extractivism. It also addresses the questions of future generations and the Anthropocene from the perspective of Arctic Indigenous peoples. The event is co-organized by The Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT), the Indigenous Studies programme at the University of Helsinki and All-Youth research project funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC).

Speakers:

Dmitry Arzyutov – Researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm
Hanna Guttorm – Researcher of Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki, INEQ and HELSUS
Third speaker will be announced shortly.

Event’s facebook-page.

LISTEN TO THE EXALT PODCAST

EXALT is committed to science popularization and communication. In support of this goal we developed the EXALT Podcast focused on the themes of extractivisms and alternatives. Our guests come from academics, activism, and lived experience. A new conversation will be posted every month. Listen to us on SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker or RadioPublic.

Latest episodes:

Katy Machoa and Paola Minoia – Eco-cultural pluralism, Extractivism, and the Kichwa people of Ecuadorain Amazonia
Sanna Komi – Conservation and Extractivism: Two sides of the same coin
Maria Fuentes-Ehrnström – Exploring the Pluriverse
Aili Pyhälä – Activisms, Academia and Alternatives
Barry Gills – Extractivisms and Alternatives; Three concepts to live by; Call for Action

PAST EVENT: (RE)PURPOSING THE UNIVERSITY TO TACKLE THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

On January 16th EXALT and HELSUS organized an event at Think Corner to discuss how to repurpose the University of Helsinki to tackle the climate emergency. You can watch the video of the entire event through this link. Watch the recording of Professor Barry Gills’ talk at the event on EXALT’s Youtube channel.

“EXTRACTIVISM – NEW AND RISING FIELD OF RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI” Article published on the University of Helsinki’s website, written by Saana Hokkanen

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.