Dear colleagues,

Please consider submitting an abstract to the EASA 2020 panel P090 on
engagements with plastic.


https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2020/p/8522



The deadline for submission is 20th January 2020



Best wishes,

Magda



P090 Living in the Plasticene



Convenors:

Magdalena Craciun (University of Bucharest)

Adam Drazin (University College London)



Discussant:

Krisztina Fehervary (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)



Short abstract:

This panel invites contributions that focus on engagements with plastics,
plastic objects and plastic debris, and enable the theoretical framing and
ethnographical fleshing out of the life-enriching, life-saving and
life-threatening realities of 'the Plasticene'.



Long abstract:

We live in 'the Plasticene'. The term refers to a planetary epoch in which
plastic impacts on the Earth's systems. It might not be as widespread in
academic and popular parlance as 'the Anthropocene', but theoretically it
undermines the anthropocentric perspective epitomised in the latter (Crist
2016). Plastic is the first man-made material to be mass-produced, its
malleability and profitability ensuring its enthusiastic adoption and
resulting in 'a thoroughly plasticized world' (Roberts 2013). However, its
propensity to transform has changed it into a pollutant that harms
molecules, bodies and environments, in known and yet to be known ways; and
its durability and endurance have turned it into matter that accumulates,
rather than decomposes, a 'techno-fossil' (Westermann 2019). How is 'the
Plasticene' experienced and responded to by actors from different social
milieus and cultural contexts? What sort of mundane actions (e.g. selective
purchase, recycling) an awareness of living in this epoch generates? What
kind of material interventions (e.g. reduction, recycling, innovation) it
provokes? What kind of political mediations (e.g. eco-activism,
governmental decisions, (inter)national policies) this awareness engenders?
What kind of global networks and geopolitical agendas it produces? What
kind of exchanges between humans and nonhumans it gives rise to? What do
plastics continue to do? This panel invites contributions that focus on
plastic, not only as a material, and enable the theoretical framing and
ethnographical fleshing out of the life-enriching, life-saving and
life-threatening realities of 'the Plasticene'.

-- 
*Magdalena* *Crăciun*
Lecturer in Anthropology
Faculty of Sociology and Social Work
University of Bucharest
9 Schitu Magureanu
Bucharest Romania

http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/islam-faith-and-fashion-9781474234375/

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/material-culture-and-authenticity-9780857854513/
https://unibuc.academia.edu/MagdalenaCraciun

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