Capitalism and Climate Change: Crisis, Politics, Governance
Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2016, San Francisco
Organizers: Reed Kurtz (Ohio State University) and Kevin Surprise (Clark University)
Call for Papers
What kind of crisis does climate change present for capitalism? Various analyses posit civilizational catastrophe wrought by the constant expansion of capitalism beyond planetary boundaries (Foster and Clark 2012), or the ‘negative value’ created by climate change, compounding structural crisis conditions and heralding the ‘end of capitalism’ (Moore 2015). Still others portend that capital can potentially solve the climate crisis by transposing sovereignty from the nation-state to the planetary-scale, vastly increasing the remit of liberal-capitalist power (Wainwright and Mann 2013, 2015). The question of whether global climate change may ignite catastrophe, the end of capitalism, or unfathomable forms of sovereign power is primarily a question of liberal-governance. Precisely: how can the liberal-capitalist system manage the climate crisis? Climate governance is comprised of a diverse array of perspectives, some of which include the 'regime complex' and institutional fragmentation literature in international relations (IR) scholarship (Keohane and Victor 2011), as well as more explicitly cross-disciplinary approaches such as the 'Earth Systems Governance' project (Biermann et al. 2012). Among more critically-oriented scholarship, there exist divergences between Foucauldian themes of governmentality and a potentially emergent climate dispositif (Oels 2013, Braun 2014), and those which draw largely upon Marxist political economy (Lohmann 2012) as well as Marxist theories of the political (Swyngedow 2010). From carbon markets, to UN COP structures, resilience discourses and geoengineering technologies, the governance of climate poses novel questions for politics at the planetary scale.
To discuss these questions, we welcome papers from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives organized around the broad theme of “climate governance.” Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- The relation of climate 'governance' to climate 'geopolitics'
- The changing nature of sovereignty and the state system
- Climate governmentality, environmentality, and climate apparatuses
- New limits discourses (e.g. planetary boundaries) and their governance
- Earth System Governance discourses and institutions
- Global civil society, NGOs, social movements, and climate governance
- Market-based climate governance mechanisms
- Governance of climate adaptation
- The ‘green economy’ and regimes of accumulation
- Geoengineering and climate governance
- Shifting geographies of cooperation and conflict in climate politics
Please send abstracts to Kevin Surprise – [log in to unmask] or Reed Kurtz [log in to unmask] by October 21st.
Works Cited
Biermann, Frank, Kenneth Abbott, Steinar Andresen, Karin Bäckstrand, Steven Bernstein, Michele M. Betsill, Harriet Bulkeley et al. 2012. “Navigating the Anthropocene : Improving Earth System Governance.” Science 335 (6074): 1306–7.
Braun, Bruce P. 2014. “A New Urban Dispositif? Governing Life in an Age of Climate Change.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (1): 49–64.
Foster, John Bellamy, & Brett Clark. 2012. The planetary emergency. Monthly Review, 64(7), 1-25.
Keohane, Robert O., and David G. Victor. 2011. “The Regime Complex for Climate Change.” Perspectives on Politics 9 (01): 7–23.
Lohmann, Larry. 2012. “Financialization, Commodification and Carbon: The Contradictions of Neoliberal Climate Policy.” Socialist Register 48: 85–107.
Moore, Jason W. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. Verso Books.
Oels, Angela. 2013. “Rendering Climate Change Governable by Risk: From Probability to Contingency.” Geoforum 45: 17–29.
Swyngedouw, Erik. 2010. “Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change.” Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2-3), 213-232.
Wainwright, Joel, and Geoff Mann. 2013. “Climate Leviathan.” Antipode 45 (1): 1–22.
Wainwright, Joel, and Geoff Mann. 2015. “Climate Change and the Adaptation of the Political.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (2): 313–21.
