[csaa-forum] CFP: "Extraction: Tracing the veins", a virtual conference hosted by Massey University and Wageningen University

Tom Doig tom at tomdoig.com
Tue Feb 25 11:07:22 ACST 2020


(with apologies for cross-posting)

*Extraction: Tracing the veins[1] <#m_-4730342236279792204__ftn1>*

*A Virtual/nearly carbon neutral conference*

*Massey University, New Zealand and Wageningen University and Research, The
Netherlands *

*June 29 – July 10, 2020*

The global appetite for large-scale resource extraction is insatiable.
Extraction is the basis for contemporary capitalism, and for almost every
commodity we engage with, use and even consume in everyday life. Like
minerals coursing through veins deep in the earth and connecting in ways
unseen from the surface, extraction provides a direct link between people,
economy and planet, with deeply embedded connections—material, ideological
and political. Extractive industries are also responsible for half of the
world’s carbon emissions and more than 80% of biodiversity loss. Now, as
the environmental costs become harder to ignore, we are seeing new actions
to contest and reshape extractivism, and to consider post-extractive
futures. From a ban on offshore oil and gas exploration in Aotearoa NZ, to
industry-led sustainable mining initiatives, and to strikes and protests
against mining and oil developments through the Americas, Asia, Pacific and
Africa, extraction (and activism towards it) is reshaping people’s
relationships with state and market institutions, with the land and soil,
and with each other.

Despite the centrality of extraction to contemporary life, Anthony
Bebbington (2012) wrote a few years ago of ‘the relative invisibility of
minerals, oil and gas in the canons of political ecology’. While the
intervening years have seen important scholarship, the extractive
industries, and processes of extractivism more broadly, continues to be a
fertile space for further political ecology- driven exploration. In order
to re-examine extraction and its contested place in contemporary
capitalism, this event calls on participants to take up the theme of
Extraction, which we understand in multiple senses: extraction as the
material extraction of natural resources; as a mode of accumulation central
to the histories and continuation of capitalism; and as a worldview in
which nature is a resource to be commodified for human consumption and
accumulation. We encourage scholarly critique as well as engagement with
the multiple movements that confront extraction and the communities that
are practicing and imagining different systems based on regeneration.

In this nearly carbon neutral conference, we invite authors from a range of
backgrounds and countries to present and collaborate virtually. The
conference will take place over two weeks in June and July 2020. We welcome
contributors who hail from a broad range of disciplines: sociologists,
artists, engineers, environmental activists, geographers, development
practitioners, biologists, economists, environmental managers,
anthropologists, and industry representatives to name a few.  We seek
contributions that cross boundaries of social/natural sciences, and that
connect local and global contextual analyses.

Papers are invited to address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

   - *Theorising extractivism. *Considering the environmental histories and
   ongoing colonial character of extractive industries; the historic and
   contemporary global flows and connections of resources and power. This may
   include: Social reproduction and extractivism; feminist political ecology
   of extraction; racism and ethnic identity formation in extractivist
   projects and processes; the financialization of commodities and
   extractivism; extractivism and climate change.
   - *The future of extractive industries. *How are extractive industries
   changing and adapting to environmental, social, or competitive pressures;
   What are the possibilities for sustainable resource extraction?; of moving
   away from extractive industries?; do calls for the end of extractive
   industries ignore the imperial histories of these industries, their
   centrality to modern life (and indeed to the technologies by which this
   conference is possible) and the different potentialities that extraction
   produces – from the politics of resignation, to increasingly strident forms
   of nationalism, and discourses of (resource) curses.
   - *New forms of extraction. *Beyond the traditional extractive
   industries, how do other forms of resource extraction – sand, intensive
   agriculture, deep sea mining, data mining, even ‘renewable’ resources -
   help us to re-theorise extractivism and its centrality to capitalist
   relations?
   - *Confronting extractivism.* Movements by indigenous Peoples,
   environmental groups, peasants, workers, etc. that confront extractivism,
   both in terms of place-based projects, and the political economy and
   nature/society dualisms that legitimate extractive practices.
   - *Creative responses to extraction. *How are artists, creative writers
   and activists responding to extraction? How is / can art challenge and
   subvert extractivism? We welcome creative presentations that work well on
   the online format, such as photography and art portfolios, short films, and
   creative writing.
   - *Post-extraction and regenerative systems. *Can we live without
   extraction?What does a post-extractivist world look like? How are
   communities around the world protecting and/or building regenerative rather
   than extractive systems? How do different worldviews, including Māori
   and other indigenous perspectives on extraction, take us beyond a
   materialist discussion of post-extractivism to imagining and building
   alternatives?



*Nearly carbon-neutral conference format*

Traditional academic conferences are responsible for a considerable amount
of carbon emissions, as presenters fly from around the world to present in
a single location. This also incurs significant financial costs, which
often precludes researchers from developing countries and postgraduate
students from attending. The Environmental Humanities Initiative at UC
Santa Barbara estimated that running an online conference reduces the
carbon footprint of a conference by 99%, as well as broadening their reach
and accessibility.

This conference will take place entirely online in June-July 2020.
Contributors will not have to travel anywhere and there is no registration
fee. Conference presentations will consist of material that can be
submitted online as a video file. This could take the form of a webcam
recording, an edited video, a PowerPoint or Prezi with recorded audio or
another form of video.  Each presentation should be no more than 20 minutes
long. Instructions on creating and submitting presentations for the
conference are online here
<http://perc.ac.nz/wordpress/submitting-a-video-file/>. For a sense of what
this looks like in practice, please see previous conferences on “The Lives
and Afterlives of Plastic
<http://perc.ac.nz/wordpress/the-lives-and-afterlives-of-plastic/>” and “The
Feral <http://perc.ac.nz/wordpress/feral/>”. We also ask contributors to
actively engage with questions and ideas that other attendees post on their
presentation.

*Abstract and panel submission instructions *

If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please send a 250
word abstract with your name, e-mail address, and affiliation to
*masseyPERC at gmail.com
<masseyPERC at gmail.com>* by *Friday, March 6th 2020. * We also welcome
proposals for panels and (digital) roundtable discussions, and we encourage
innovative formats. If you would like to propose a panel, please send us a
short panel rationale and details of panel participants.

After the conference, some contributors will be invited to develop their
presentations for publication in an edited volume.



*Conference Organisers*

Glenn Banks, Massey University

Alice Beban, Massey University

Michiel Köhne, Wageningen University

Elisabet Rasch, Wageningen University



Hosted by Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC)

------------------------------

[1] <#m_-4730342236279792204__ftnref1> Tracing the Veins is the title of a
book by Janet Finn (1998). “Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture, and
Community from Butte to Chuquicamata”. Berkeley: University of California
Press.





*Dr Tom Doig*

Coordinator, Creative Writing



*SGP 2.48 **|  **School of English and Media Studies*

*Massey University **| **Private Bag 11222 Palmerston North*

*+64 (0)27 347 1344 **| *www.massey.ac.nz



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*(Penguin
Random House, 2020)

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<https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-coal-face-penguin-special-9780143573074>*
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Award)

*Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure
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*(Allen
& Unwin, 2013)



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