CFP AAG 2019, Washington DC, April 3-7, 2019
Finance and environmental crises: Disaster capitalism beyond the Shock Doctrine
Organizers: Jenny Goldstein (Cornell University), Shaina Potts (UCLA), Sarah Knuth (Durham University)
Sponsored by: Economic Geography Specialty Group
Twenty years following the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis and a decade after the 2008 subprime mortgage-led crisis, what have we learned about the ways in which financial failures-cum-opportunities such as currency devaluations or debt
crises intersect with environmental crises and/or less spectacular ecological transformations? In the decade since publication, Naomi Klein’s “disaster capitalism” thesis in
The Shock Doctrine (2007) has become a widely-referenced and useful starting point for understanding how capital catalyzes “disasters”, usually—if not necessarily—localized and short-term, and then uses such events to further entrench and expand neoliberal
policies. We seek papers that consider the ongoing salience of and/or go beyond the disaster capitalism model for understanding the iterative relationship between financial practices and environmental crises, in and beyond moments of acute financial turbulence
(Christophers 2017, Ekers and Prudham 2015, Peet 2011). Environmental degradation and devaluation today, for instance, are not simply occasions for the spread of standard neoliberal policies to new spaces: they are equally significant as moments for the invention
of novel financial practices and new forms of value creation or extraction (Knuth, Potts, and Goldstein forthcoming). Many questions about the relationship between finance, economic crises, and environmental crises remain (Bigger and Dempsey 2018, Ouma et
al. 2018). Participants might consider—but are not limited to—topics including:
As we are interested in organizing a paper and a related panel session, please send 250 word paper abstracts *or* expressions of interest to be a panel participant to Jenny Goldstein ([log in to unmask]),
Shaina Potts ([log in to unmask]) and/or Sarah Knuth ([log in to unmask]) by October 22. Accepted participants will need to register for the conference by October
25 to be included in the session.
References
Bigger, P., Dempsey, J. 2018. The ins and outs of neoliberal natures.
Environment and Planning E 1(1-2): 1-19
Christophers, B. (2017). Climate change and financial instability: Risk disclosure and the problematics of neoliberal governance.
Annals of the American Association of Geographers,
107(5), 1108-1127.
Ekers, M., & Prudham, S. (2015). Towards the socio-ecological fix.
Environment and Planning A, 47(12), 2438-2445.
Fletcher, R. 2012. Capitalizing on chaos: Climate change and disaster capitalism.
Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 12(1/2): 97-112
Fox Gotham, K., Greenberg, M. 2014.
Crisis Cities: Disaster and redevelopment in New York and New Orleans. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Johnson, L. 2017. Catastrophic fixes: Cyclical devaluation and accumulation through climate change impacts.
Environment and Planning A 47: 2503-2521
Klein, N. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Picador
Knuth, S., S. Potts, J.E. Goldstein. 2018. In Value’s Shadows: Devaluation as Accumulation frontier.
Environment and Planning A. Forthcoming.
Ouma, S., L. Johnson, P. Bigger. 2018. Rethinking the financialization of ‘nature’.
Environment and Planning A 50(3) 500-511
Peet, R. 2011. Contradictions of finance capitalism. Monthly Review 63(7): 18-32
Pulido, L. 2016. Flint, environmental racism, and racial capitalism.
Capitalism Nature Socialism 27(3) 1-16
Ranganathan, M. 2016. Thinking with Flint: Racial liberalism and the roots of an American water tragedy. Capitalism Nature Socialism 27(3)
Roitman, J. 2014. Anti-Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press.
Shaina Potts
Assistant Professor
Departments of Geography and Global Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
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