Print

Print


The Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP)  invites you to its end-of-year event on Labour in the green transition in conversation with:
 
Prof Ariel Salleh (Nelson Mandela University, South Africa), SBM Distinguished Visiting Scholar
Prof Matt Huber (Syracuse University, USA), IHSS Distinguished Visiting Fellow
 
Thursday 8th of June 2023, 16:00-19:00 BST
Graduate Centre Peston Lecture Theatre, 

Please, book here to attend the event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/labour-in-the-green-transition-clasp-end-of-year-event-tickets-620695836957
 
Abstract:
With the climate crisis firmly upon us, it is clear, now more than ever, that mainstream solutions centred on the market and technology have done little to move us along a sustainable ecological transition. Even the disruptions of the pandemic proved temporary, and global production and extraction have continued apace. Equally, the institutional infrastructure that has supported ecologically destructive capitalist growth, constituted by a plethora of world forums and regional and international, private and public, and bilateral and multilateral agreements and commitments has undertaken no course correction. What we have then is a form of global capitalism that is motored by the relentless use of material resources, on the one hand, and detached from the present and future material realities of the vast majority of the global population, on the other.   
At the same time, this vast majority remains far from passive. Struggles of working people have mushroomed across the globe around their conditions of work and life and around questions of racial, gender, ethnic, inter-generational and environmental justice. While not all these struggles are linked to the climate crisis, they reflect deep unrest with business-as-usual and an urgency towards progressive transformation. It is crucial to consider the place of these collective struggles in imagining and effecting a green transition, and within it, not least, the socially and spatially differentiated agency of labouring individuals and communities.   
This end-of-year event seeks to centre the labour-nature relation, and the multiple sources and trajectories of alienation within capitalism, in thinking through the climate crisis and the green transition. It will explore the varied manifestations of workers’ struggles as ecological struggles and seeks to reposition labour in its plurality at the centre of the green agenda.    
It asks: What is the place and role of labour in the green transition? What kinds of class struggles can be and should be organized in the short-term? What can we learn from history, i.e., from past struggles and debates on sustainability, environment and the climate crisis? Is there space for a 'thin-green-line' to reconcile global classes of labour across their multiple axes of fragmentation (race, gender, ethnicity, age, geographical location etc.)? Is it possible to envisage a green transition that does not lose sight of labour, one that reconfigures (potentially, challenges) global capitalism to save the people as much as it saves the planet?   
 
Also, check the new blog of the Centre on Labour, Sustainability & Global Production (CLaSP): https://www.claspblog.org/
 

Best wishes to all,
Elena


Dr Elena Baglioni
Reader in Global Supply Chain Management and Sustainability
Co-Director of the Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) 
School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London
Room 3.44E, Bancroft Building, Mile End Campus
Email: [log in to unmask]
 

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1

This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CRIT-GEOG-FORUM, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/