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Department of Geography

 

Distinguished International Visitors seminars: archive

Return to the list of forthcoming seminars.

# Wednesday 8th June 2022, 2.30pm - Professor Mark Carey, University of Oregon
Icebergs and Oil in the North Atlantic, Reframing Human Relationships with Ice
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Since the 1970s, oil companies off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador have been drilling for oil right in the middle of Iceberg Alley. To ensure uninterrupted oil flows, and to make the North Atlantic Ocean safer for capitalism, they have monitored, mapped, moved, blasted, and towed Arctic icebergs that drift into their ocean ‘frontier’. At the same time, widely circulating environmental narratives have turned icebergs into unpredictable enemies. Ice in this story, then, becomes less an icon of the climate crisis and more an agent of the Anthropocene.

# Wednesday 8th May 2019, 5.00pm - Professor James Scott, Yale University
Public Lecture: In Praise of Floods: homo sapiens and rivers
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Virtually all civilizations are dependent on the ever-renewed fertility of floodplain soils. Human engineering has radically simplified river hydrology, the way taxidermy or amputations might destroy a living being, so that rivers can be navigation canals, water storage, sewage conduits, hydroelectric sites, irrigation reservoirs, and flood free. Disturbance ecology teaches us, on the contrary, how the “edge environments” and “eco-tones” created by naturally occurring floods and fires promote bio-diversity. The simplification of river hydrology has set the stage for “iatrogenic” (illness caused by previous “treatment”) river ailments including massive floods.

# Wednesday 23rd January 2019, 5.00pm - Professor Rebecca Lave, Indiana University
Public Lecture: Can we save nature by selling it?
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Selling nature in order to save it is the core goal animating market-based approaches to environmental conservation. Such approaches have become a central component of international environmental policy and practice, with biodiversity offsetting and related policies enacted on every continent except Antarctica. What are the consequences of this shift? Can putting a price tag on nature succeed where previous regulatory approaches to environmental conservation have failed? In this talk, Professor Lave will trace the development of market-based forms of environmental management, examining their track record and future potential through integrated physical and social science analysis of markets for stream and habitat credits. Professor Lave will argue that the contrast between the dynamism and complexity of ecosystems and the stability and simplicity required for functional markets radically limits the conservation potential of market-based approaches.

# Wednesday 24th February 2016, 5.00pm - Professor Tania Murray Li, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Plantations, Violence, and the Monopoly Form
Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Plantations are back.  Colonial-style large scale corporate monoculture of industrial crops on concession land is again expanding in the global south.  The land dimensions of this renewed expansion were thrust into public debate in 2008-9, when there was a spike in transnational land-acquisitions dubbed a global “land-grab.” Legitimating narratives for corporate grabs hinge on the need for efficient production to supply food and fuel for expanding populations, and the promise that plantations bring development to remote regions, reduce poverty and create jobs.  These narratives are powerful: time and again opposition to “land grabs” is dismissed on these grounds.  Present losses and harms are discounted in view of the brighter future that is to come.  To move the debate forward, much more attention needs to be paid to what happens after the grab: what form of “development” is actually produced?  What are the economic, social, political and ecological relations that form on and around agricultural land concessions not just in the short term, but as they evolve over time?  What is a plantation?

# Tuesday 23rd February 2016, 5.00pm - Professor Tania Murray Li, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Commodifications, Capitalism, Counter-movements: Perspectives from Southeast Asia
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

The contemporary trajectory of global development, sometimes glossed “neoliberal,” is said to be characterized by the expansion of markets, and the extension of the commodity form to more domains of life. Nature, ideas, debt, risk, genes, carbon, pollution: anything, it seems, can be commodified and circulated in order to generate profit. Pushed too far, the commodification of everything puts human life at risk.  According to Karl Polanyi, recognition of the risk produces push-back in the form of protective counter-movements. Of particular concern to Karl Polanyi was the commodification of land, which is the basis of human life, and the treatment of humans as mere units of labour. This was his warning: “Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed…”  This lecture re-examines movements for and against commodification of land and labour from the perspective of Southeast Asia, and re-centres capitalism as a key term of analysis. Southeast Asia is an important location from which to revisit these topics for several reasons. First, the region has a long history of transactions in commodities, including land and labour, enabling us to ask: if the present is different, how so?  Second, colonial powers played an ambivalent role in the commodification process, deeming sectors of the native population inappropriate market subjects, with effects that still resonate. Third, the agricultural frontier continues to expand, as land and labour are mobilized to produce commodities for global markets. Counter-intuitively, it is smallholders, not plantations that organize their production on competitive, capitalist lines. Finally, Southeast Asia is the site of prominent writing about counter-movements said to be grounded in indigenous traditions, subsistence ethics, moral economies, notions of shared poverty, Asian values, the Asian family, and the Asian village. Contemporary counter-movement imaginaries invoked in projects to involve forest-villagers in combating climate change run up against the dynamic, often capitalist, processes in which the same villagers are involved.

# Wednesday 4th November 2015, 5.00pm - Professor AbdouMaliq Simone (Professor of Sociology and Urbanism, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
Public lecture: The fugitives - blackness as urban method
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

As part of the Distinguished Visitors Scheme, Professor AbdouMaliq Simone (Professor of Sociology and Urbanism, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity) will be visiting the Department from Tuesday 3rd to Thursday 5th November 2015.

AbdouMaliq Simone is one of the leading urbanists of our time. He has shown repeatedly how misleading is the characterisation of ‘failed cities’ across Africa and South-East Asia by revealing the sustaining relations, networks, and structures enabling life in the most precarious of city landscapes. Working extensively in and at the edges of cities such as Douala, and Dakar, in Jeddah, Johannesburg, and Jakarta, Simone has crafted uniquely creative methodological engagements at the interface of planning and postcolonial studies, urban policy, global studies, and critical theory as well as a critical analytics for comprehending ‘rogue urbanism’ and the ‘cities yet to come’.

In this lecture, Simone will address the question “What is the ‘common sense’ of cities?”. With so much attention today focusing on smart urban government to cope with global uncertainty and turbulence, where should we place the very concrete efforts that constructed the city, with all the layers of physical and cultural memory that new regimes usually attempt to cover-up or suppress?  Invoking blackness as an analytical method, these questions are addressed through thinking about how long histories of urban practices deployed by Black residents of cities across the world might challenge and reinvent the sense of an urban commons.

# Tuesday 3rd November 2015, 5.00pm - Professor AbdouMaliq Simone (Professor of Sociology and Urbanism, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
Department Seminar: Urbanisation at the interface of the habitable and uninhabitable: on redescription and detachment
Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

As part of the Distinguished Visitors Scheme, Professor AbdouMaliq Simone (Professor of Sociology and Urbanism, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity) will be visiting the Department from Tuesday 3rd to Thursday 5th November 2015.

AbdouMaliq Simone is one of the leading urbanists of our time. He has shown repeatedly how misleading is the characterisation of ‘failed cities’ across Africa and South-East Asia by revealing the sustaining relations, networks, and structures enabling life in the most precarious of city landscapes. Working extensively in and at the edges of cities such as Douala, and Dakar, in Jeddah, Johannesburg, and Jakarta, Simone has crafted uniquely creative methodological engagements at the interface of planning and postcolonial studies, urban policy, global studies, and critical theory as well as a critical analytics for comprehending ‘rogue urbanism’ and the ‘cities yet to come’.

# Tuesday 3rd March 2015, 5.00pm - Professor Diana Liverman
Climate and Poverty in the Americas
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

How do the poor experience climate change and how are they affected by climate policy? Many scholars, activists and policy makers have suggested that climate change will have serious negative impacts on the most vulnerable – most often defined in terms of their poverty status. They also argue that responses to climate change should be particularly sensitive to the poorest people and countries that are most vulnerable and bear little responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. But as millions of people emerge from poverty around the world – at least according to standard development indicators – the emissions of poorer countries increase. Is this decline in poverty reflected in reduced climate vulnerability and increased capacity to adapt to climate change?

This lecture will first explore the idea of vulnerability, its relation to poverty, and how it may be changing over time and space. I will argue that we need to rethink the concept and measurement of vulnerability to capture the embodiment of climate change for individuals, to incorporate insights from critical development studies, and to recognize that constructions of vulnerability are used politically to make claims on limited climate aid. Secondly I develop a framework, grounded in political ecology, for evaluating the impacts of climate policies – emissions reductions, carbon trading and offsets, and adaptation – on poor or marginalized people. Can we develop responses to climate change that simultaneously reduce emissions, help adapt to a warmer climate, and alleviate poverty and inequality?

Examples will be drawn from a variety of research sites in the Americas, including studies of vulnerability, offsetting and adaptation in Mexico, Northeast Brazil, and the Southwestern United States. These studies demonstrate the significance of varying technologies, natures, governance structures and contexts in the successes and failures of understanding vulnerabilities and assessing the effectiveness of climate policy in the Americas.

# Monday 2nd March 2015, 4.15pm - Professor Diana Liverman Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge Regents Professor of Geography and Development and Co-Director of the Institute of the Environment University of Arizona
Neoliberalism and the environment revisited: The North American Free Trade Agreement and the US-Mexico border 20 years on
Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force in January 1994, breaking down trade barriers between the US, Canada and Mexico. Strong opposition from unions and activists resulted in environmental and labor side agreements that established some oversight and new institutions. We drew on trade theory, political economy, and especially critiques of neoliberalism to analyze the likely impacts of NAFTA, especially in Mexico and along the US-Mexico border (Liverman and Vilas 2006; Vilas-Ghiso and Liverman 2007; Liverman et al. 1999; Gallagher 2004).
Those who opposed free trade and neoliberal policies in Mexico (including social movements such as the Zapatistas) forecast devastating impacts on Mexican landscapes and livelihoods. Theoretically, NAFTA provides an important case for evaluating geographical perspectives on neoliberalism – and the value of approaches that connect material nature, political economy, social agency, discourse, and governmentality that constitute political ecology (Robbins 2011).

This lecture will compare what was projected in terms of the environmental impacts and benefits of the trade agreement with the state of the debate and the material environment 20 years later. The focus is on the US-Mexico border region and draws on reviews of literature, critical institutional analysis, longitudinal datasets, and interviews with key individuals on both sides of the border who have worked long-term in the region on environmental issues. While the impacts of NAFTA on the environment are hard to detect because of the challenges of aggregating case studies and because of other changes in the political economy of Mexico and the border region, I will argue that the effects of NAFTA are both materially and discursively far more differentiated than anticipated and seem to include some positive outcomes for people and ecosystems.

Gallagher, K.P. 2004. Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Liverman, D.; R. Varady; O. Chavez; and R. Sanchez. 1999. Environmental Issues along the US Mexico border: Drivers of Change and Responses of Citizens and Institutions. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 24:607-643.
Liverman, D.M. and S. Vilas. 2006. Neoliberalism and the Environment in Latin America. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31:327-363.
Robbins, P. 2011. Political ecology: A critical introduction. John Wiley & Sons.
Vilas-Ghiso, S. and D. Liverman. 2007. Scale, technique and composition effects in the Mexican agricultural sector: the influence of NAFTA and the institutional environment. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 7:137-169.

# Friday 12th September 2014, 4.00pm - Prof. Nick Blomley
The Space of Property
Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Nick Blomley will present a department seminar entitled The space of property, drawing in an interdisciplinary audience from geography, anthropology and law.

# Thursday 13th February 2014, 4.30pm - Professor Paul Robbins, International Fellow, from University of Wisconsin-Madison
Paul Robbins is an International Visiting Fellow in Geography.
No Going Back: The Scientific and Political Ethics of Ecological Novelty
Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

This presentation argues that Ecological Novelty, a condition where new species and mixes of species come to form persistent communities with no precedent, holds unavoidable implications for science. It argues that the “Edenic” sciences focusing on these ecologies— conservation biology, invasion biology/ecology, and restoration ecology—though extremely valuable, are inherently political. Though this has always been the case, the rapid changes in environments around us have made the political implications of these sciences harder to ignore or disguise. As such, these fields will necessarily need to evolve an ethical procedure to adjudicate between ecological interventions, rather than depending on restorative or originary criteria. Further, the evolution of these criteria and standards will necessarily be rooted in principles that come to terms with the political implications and character of scientists and scientific practice within broader diverse publics. The presentation concludes with a brief puzzle for consideration: the ethics of producing and managing biodiversity in the economically productive plantation landscapes of labor-scarce rural India.

# Wednesday 12th February 2014, 5.00pm - Dr Paul Robbins; Department of Geography International Fellow & University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joint seminar, hosted with the Cambridge University Geographical Society (CUGS)
Producing Eden: Can wildlife thrive beyond national parks in India?
Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 11th February 2014, 1.00pm - Professor Paul Robbins, International Fellow from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Paul Robbins leads an Early Career Researcher Seminar
Venue: Seminar Room

Abstract not available