RGS-IBG 2023 Call for Papers: Legacies and Geographies of Left Environmental In/Determinisms

This is one of two sessions that I am co-organising this year. Please get in touch with myself (al418@le.ac.uk) or Elise (efl4@leicester.ac.uk).

Organisers: Angela Last (Leicester), Elise Lecomte (Leicester)

Session type: In-person

Sponsor: History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG website)

Deadline for submissions: 10 March 2023

The term ‘environmental determinism’ has primarily become associated with the far right of the political spectrum. It evokes concepts such as Friedrich Ratzel’s ‘Lebensraum’ or the disturbingly popular ‘new environmental determinisms’ such as those of Jared Diamond, Robert D. Kaplan and Tim Marshall. However, at the height of modern environmental determinism, the idea that humans are hardwired for aggressive competition and colonisation was countered by a multiplicity of left responses, which covered the spectrum from de-naturalisation (e.g. He-Yin Zhen) to alternative naturalisation of human behavioural patterns (e.g. Kropotkin, Reclus, Metchnikoff). In his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), for example, Kropotkin argued against right wing ideas of ‘natural competition’ by proposing that humans are rather biologically predisposed towards cooperation. While environmental determinism in any shape or form became shunned by the left after its devastating application by the National Socialists its fundamental relations between biology, geography and politics never entirely went away in either political direction, due to its close entanglement with modern identity (Adamczak, 2013).

In this session, we are interested in tracing some of the lineages of left environmental determinism. The reasons for examining these include 1) contemporary transitions of left intellectuals to the far right via questions that closely relate to environmental or biological determinisms such as gender, environment and indigeneity; 2) journeys of concepts such as ‘mutual aid’ from anarchism to neoliberalism; 3) ‘re-materialisations’ in new materialism that echo far right environmental determinism (e.g. Latour, 2022); 4) experiments to subvert far right determinisms by reinterpreting far right favourites such as ancient (climate) history, or proposing ‘environmental indeterminisms’ as alternative scientific models based on chance/indeterminacy (e.g. Monod, 1970; Barad, 2007; Ferreira da Silva, 2022).

In this session, we are looking for critical engagements with left environmental determinisms and their varied histories and legacies. These may include:

• Historical re-readings and alternative genealogies of environmental in/determinism
• Past/present culture wars and environmental in/determinism
• Environmental in/determinisms and modernity
• Non-European environmental in/determinisms
• Historical changes of scientific bases
• Environmental in/determinist currents in (new) materialism
• Speculative fiction that critically engages with left environmental in/determinism

References

Adamczak, B. (2013) Gender and the new man: Emancipation and the Russian Revolution? Platypus Review 62. URL: https://platypus1917.org/2013/12/01/gender-and-the-new-man/

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Ferreira da Silva, D. (2022) Unpayable Debt. New York: Sternberg Press.

Kropotkin, P. (1902) Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. URL: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

Latour, B. (2022) Is Europe’s soil changing beneath our feet? Group d’études géopolitiques. Sep 2022, 92-97: https://geopolitique.eu/en/articles/is-europes-soil-changing-beneath-our-feet/

Monod, J. (1970) Chance and Necessity : An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. London: Collins.

Zhen, He-Yin (1907) On the Question of Women’s Liberation. Natural Justice (天义).

CFP: Political Ecologies of the Far Right, Lund University

Call for Contributions

Lund University, 15-17 November 2019

www.pefr.hek.lu.se

An interdisciplinary academic-activist conference organized by the Human Ecology Division at Lund University in collaboration with CEFORCED at Chalmers University

Far-right political parties, ideologies and social movements are increasingly exercising influence across the world. At the same time, ecological issues, such as climate change, deforestation, land use change, biodiversity loss, and toxic waste are intensifying in their urgency. What happens when the two phenomena meet? How, when and why do they intersect? How are party and non-party sectors of the far right mobilizing ecological issues and discourses to their advantage, whether through championing or rejecting environmentalist claims? What are the ecological underpinnings of far-right politics today? This understudied topic forms the basis of this interdisciplinary conference on the political ecologies of the far right.

From Trump and Bolsonaro to the Sweden Democrats and AfD, a radical anti-environmentalism is most often championed by the contemporary far right. This stance resonates with a conspiratorial suspicion of the state, science, elites, globalism, and supposed processes of moral, cultural and social decay. This is most clearly pronounced in climate change denialism and defense of fossil fuels, which have undergone a global resurgence in recent years. But the same position is also articulated in, for example, anti-vegetarianism or opposition to renewables. How can we understand the causes of far right rejection of environmentalism and environmental concerns where it occurs? What broader ideologies, interests, psychologies, histories, narratives and perceptions does it reflect? What might the implications be for ecological futures if far-right parties continue to amass power? How can the climate justice and other environmental movements and anti-racist, anti-fascist activism converge and collaborate?

On the other hand, it is an inconvenient truth that there is a long-standing shadowy legacy of genealogical connections between environmental concern and far-right thought, from links between conservation and eugenics in the early national parks movement in the US, to dark green currents within Nazism. Hostility to immigration informed by Malthusian thinking and regressive forms of patriotic localism have often surfaced in Western environmentalism. Today, the mainstream environmental movement is more usually aligned with leftist, progressive policies, yet the conservative streak that always lies dormant in overly romanticized conceptions of landscape and nature, or fears about over-population, lie ripe for mobilization in new unholy alliances between green and xenophobic, nativist ideologies. In what forms does this nexus appear around the world today and with what possible consequences? What frames, linkages and concerns are central to eco-right narratives? How can environmental thinking ward off the specter of green nationalism?

How to apply:

The conference aims to bring together not only scholars working at the interface of political ecology and far right studies but also activists from environmental, anti-fascist and anti-racist organizations and movements. We believe there is still much work to do to bring together these often separate strands of scholar and activist work together, and much opportunity for collaboration, mutual learning, and networking. This conference aims to hold a space for such engagement.

Scholars: We welcome contributions from all disciplines (geography, anthropology, sociology, history, literature, political science, cultural studies, sustainability studies, STS, philosophy, art history, media studies, communication studies, et cetera). Apart from individual papers, we also welcome suggestions for panels and workshops.

Activists: At least one day of the conference (Sunday – TBC) will focus on activist practices, with an emphasis on sharing and developing ideas and synergies between green and anti-fascist thinking and working, and on ways to collectively prevent a scenario of ‘ecological crisis meets fascist populism’. We invite activist groups and individuals to submit proposals for workshops, discussions, and presentations.

In line with recent calls for radical emissions reductions at Swedish universities, we encourage prospective participants to consider other travel options than aviation if possible. We are also open to presentations via video link.

Submission of abstracts: Please send abstracts (max. 350 words) to pefr@hek.lu.se by Thursday 16^th May. There are a limited number of travel bursaries available (we will prefer non-aviation means where possible) for those who are most in need of support. Please indicate in your application whether you would like to be considered.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• climate denialism/climate change, fossil fuels and the far right
• anti-environmentalism of far right
• linking environmental, anti-fascist, anti-racist activism and social movements
• ‘cultural marxism’, conspiracy theories and the environment
• gender, sexuality, the far right and environment (eco, hegemonic or industrial masculinities, anti-feminism, normative heterosexuality, patriarchy)
• renewable energy, vegan/vegetarianism, animal rights, agriculture, toxic waste, land use change, biodiversity extinction, pollution etc and the far right
• environmental science, epistemology and the far right
• racism, xenophobia, nature, conservation, ecology, wilderness and far right
• whiteness as/and ‘endangered’ species
• scenarios of a far-right ecological future
• religion, ecology and the far right
• populism, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, alt-right, far right
• greenwashing, industry links, capital and funding for the far right and links with environmental issues
• far right narratives on development, progress, and futures and their ecological conceptualization
• environmental history of green ideas in far right politics
• dark green histories and genealogies of environmentalism
• infiltrations of and unhappy alliances between the contemporary far right and environmentalists
• ecofascism, bio-nazism, green nationalism
• psychologies, affects, emotions, private lives of the ecologies of the far right
• historical legacies of ecologically unequal exchange and racial capitalism

Two upcoming talks at Westminster and Birmingham on geopoetics

I am giving two talks this term on my current work on geopoetics. The talks are based on a chapter for a collection called ‘Geopoetics in Practice’ (Editors: Eric Magrane, Linda Russo, Sarah de Leeuw, Craig Santos Perez). The instructions for authors were to write a poetic piece and a commentary on their practice (or both combined). I submitted a piece entitled ‘Geopoetics, via Germany’, which also represents a critique of the geohumanities. It is an autobiographical piece which moves between family/local environmental history and German/geopolitical history. It was emotionally very hard to write, and it is even harder to read, but I think I have found a format in which I can present the work.

The first talk is at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster (32-38 Wells Street, London, W1T 3UW), Tuesday 25 September 2018, 4-5.30pm.

The second talk is at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham (Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT), Tuesday 13 November 2018, 1-2pm.

Both are departmental seminars, but should be open to visitors.