All posts by valdivia

May 5 and 7: Eduardo Gudynas in UNC Chapel Hill!

Eduardo Gudynas
Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social, Montevideo
 
May 5 & 7, 2015
 
Macintosh HD:private:var:folders:l5:tzd6_67d72g2srvl7ws8xzmr0000gn:T:TemporaryItems:maxresdefault.jpg
 
 
1) Buen Vivir and Nature’s Rights: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Tuesday, May 5, 3:00-4:30pm, GEC 4003
 
2) Workshop on “Transitions towards Alternatives to Development: Post-extractivism beyond Capitalism and Socialism”
 
With responses by Gabriela Valdivia (Geography, UNC)
and Dana Powell (Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone)
Thursday, May 7, 2:00-4:30, GEC 4003
Reception to Follow
 
 
Description of the events:  The first event discusses prevailing trends on the concept of Buen Vivir (BV), including its origins in radical development critiques in the Andean countries; its re-appropriation by the region’s progressive governments; ethical and political debates around BV and critiques from modernist perspectives; and the limits and possibilities of linking BV with other critical notions, such as degrowth.  Concrete examples will be drawn from Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.  The second event examines transitions to post-extractivism as a concrete attempt at bringing about alternatives to development focused on BV.  It analyzes the radical objectives that can be imagined within a transitional democratic framework, and identifies differences with related proposals, such as the transition town initiatives, degrowth, and Sustainable Europe.
 
About Eduardo Gudynas: Eduardo is Director of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology (CLAES – Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social), Montevideo, Uruguay. He has been Visiting Professor at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo.  His current appointments include: Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis; Coordinator, Latin American Alliance of Critical Studies on Development (ALECD); and member of the Expert Group on Alternatives to Development, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Quito.  Besides maintaining a very active lecturing circuit at universities in Europe and the Americas, and a program of workshops and meetings with civil society and social movement organizations, Eduardo is an extremely prolific writer.  His two most recent books summarized his work of many years and the continental debates of last decade on Buen Vivir, the Rights of Nature, and transitions to post-extractivism.  See: Gudynas, E. 2014. Derechos de la Naturaleza y políticas ambientales. La Paz: Plural (1st ed.); and Gudynas, E. 2015. Extractivismos. Ecología y economía política de un modo de entender el desarrollo y la Naturaleza. Cochabamba: CEDIB (1st ed.). Both books have separate editions in Perú, Colombia and Argentina.
 
Sponsored by: The Latin American Social Cartographies Working Group, Carolina Seminar on the Theory and Politics of Relationality, Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), and Curriculum in Global Studies .

Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek

Working Films, UNC Geography, UNC Communication Studies, the Institute for the Environment, and the Duke Law and Policy Clinic brought filmmaker Leah Mahan and NC environmental justice activists Omega and Brenda Wilson to join us in the screening of Come Hell or High Water at UNC. This film is having an amazing tour–check out Leah Mahan’s post on NC Environmental Justice Tour– From Witness to Action. The NC EJ Tour will be featured at the “Using Documentary Film and Multimedia Art to Strengthen Efforts for Environmental Justice” at the National Environmental Justice Conference. Check it out: http://thenejc.org/ ‪#‎nejc2015‬ ‪#‎EJ‬

The UNC Chapel Hill Come Hell or High Water team!

Fall 2014-Spring 2015 Events: Social Cartographies of the Americas

Activities: Fall 2014-Spring 2015

Honduras Mapping Project (Photo by Sharlene Mollett)
Honduras Mapping Project (Photo by Sharlene Mollett)

December 1-2: The group hosts two events with Sharlene Mollett, Centre for Critical Development Studies|Department of Human Geography at UTSC, on The Banality of Land Grabs in Latin America.

Sharlene Mollett has worked extensively among Afro-Latin American communities in Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, exploring questions of race, gender and land/territory. Christian Lentz (Geography) and Chris Courtheyn (Geography) will offer short commentaries after the talk. Time and place: Monday, December 1, 2014, 3:15p.m. – 5:00p.m.4th Floor FedEx Global Education Center,301 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC. We will also hold a workshop on race, racialization, and environment in Latin America. These workshops encourage interdisciplinary conversations. Time and place: Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 1pm-3pm. Saunders Conference Room, 321.

Thursday February 5, 3:30-4:45 pm
Images and Nature:  The artwork of Sandra Lopez

2008-2010 Global Education Center (FedEx Building).

Sandra Lopez is a visual artist and sculptress from Bogota. She currently resides in Puebla, Mexico, where she is doing a graduate program in art and aesthetics.  Her work explores
the role of technical images in framing humans’ understanding of nature, and the ecological potential of visual arts through relational approaches.

 

February 19, 3-5pm, Hitchcock Room – Stone Center

Racialized Spaces and Proper Places: Frantz Fanon, Decolonization, and the Rise of New Territorialities
Alvaro Reyes, Department of Geography, Institute of African American Research faculty fellow

Friday, March 27, 2:30pm, FedEx Building, Room 1005.

Cartographies of Extractivism in Latin America, a workshop with Fernando Garcia, FLACSO-Ecuador. More information coming soon.

March 26-28: Race and Rurality in the Global Economy. Duke University, West Duke Building, Room 101.

Convened by: Michaeline A. Crichlow and Anne-Maria Makhulu, Duke University
 Race and Rurality poster 8
Workshop Description: This day and a half workshop will examine the contemporary state of development, and the fluid zones of rurality in the world economy through the optic of raciality. The arguments considered will pivot on heightened risks and multiple states of insecurity being faced given the forces of globalization and environmental change, and the steady decline in the livelihoods of people of color globally, their deepened vulnerabilities, and the complex reconstitution of systemic and lived racialization within this process.

Race and Rurality poster 8

 

Our last event of the semester: Two talks by Eduardo Gudynas!

Eduardo Gudynas
Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social, Montevideo
 
May 5 & 7, 2015
 
Macintosh HD:private:var:folders:l5:tzd6_67d72g2srvl7ws8xzmr0000gn:T:TemporaryItems:maxresdefault.jpg
 
 
1) Buen Vivir and Nature’s Rights: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Tuesday, May 5, 3:00-4:30pm, GEC 4003
 
2) Workshop on “Transitions towards Alternatives to Development: Post-extractivism beyond Capitalism and Socialism”
 
With responses by Gabriela Valdivia (Geography, UNC)
and Dana Powell (Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone)
Thursday, May 7, 2:00-4:30, GEC 4003
Reception to Follow
 
 
Description of the events:  The first event discusses prevailing trends on the concept of Buen Vivir (BV), including its origins in radical development critiques in the Andean countries; its re-appropriation by the region’s progressive governments; ethical and political debates around BV and critiques from modernist perspectives; and the limits and possibilities of linking BV with other critical notions, such as degrowth.  Concrete examples will be drawn from Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.  The second event examines transitions to post-extractivism as a concrete attempt at bringing about alternatives to development focused on BV.  It analyzes the radical objectives that can be imagined within a transitional democratic framework, and identifies differences with related proposals, such as the transition town initiatives, degrowth, and Sustainable Europe.
 
About Eduardo Gudynas: Eduardo is Director of the Latin American Center for Social Ecology (CLAES – Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social), Montevideo, Uruguay. He has been Visiting Professor at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo.  His current appointments include: Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis; Coordinator, Latin American Alliance of Critical Studies on Development (ALECD); and member of the Expert Group on Alternatives to Development, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Quito.  Besides maintaining a very active lecturing circuit at universities in Europe and the Americas, and a program of workshops and meetings with civil society and social movement organizations, Eduardo is an extremely prolific writer.  His two most recent books summarized his work of many years and the continental debates of last decade on Buen Vivir, the Rights of Nature, and transitions to post-extractivism.  See: Gudynas, E. 2014. Derechos de la Naturaleza y políticas ambientales. La Paz: Plural (1st ed.); and Gudynas, E. 2015. Extractivismos. Ecología y economía política de un modo de entender el desarrollo y la Naturaleza. Cochabamba: CEDIB (1st ed.). Both books have separate editions in Perú, Colombia and Argentina.
 
Sponsored by: The Latin American Social Cartographies Working Group, Carolina Seminar on the Theory and Politics of Relationality, Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), and Curriculum in Global Studies .

Fall 2013-Spring 2014 Events: Social Cartographies of the Americas

Activities: Fall 2013-Spring 2014

Friday September 20: Reading group on political economy, development, and regional geographic imaginaries: Gonzales Casanova, Coronil, and Price.

Friday November 15: Reina Elena Rodriguez, visiting scholar from the University of Zaragoza, will present her dissertation project on ecoaldeas in Colombia. Readings: Introduction to the book by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, and Democratic Futures (1997)

Tuesday December 10: Conversation on the current moment of Zapatismo, led by Alvaro Reyes. Suggested readings: Raul Zibechi, El Arte de Construir Un Nuevo Mundo (http://www.cipamericas.org/es/archives/10446); Alvaro Reyes and Mara Kaufman “Zapatista Autonomy and The New Practices of Decolonization”; and Pablo Gonzalez Casanova,”Organizar una inmensa Red de colectivos en Defensa del territorio” (http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=161940)

Thursday Feb 6 and Friday February 7: Environmental justice and race scholar Laura Pulido will speak about engaged scholarship in geography and her research on landscapes of environmental racism.

Friday, April 11th: Roundtable on pedagogies, methodologies and praxis. We will initiate out discussion with three informal presentations by PhD students, who will share experiences and emerging projects in/with movements and organizations in Colombia and Brazil. The conversation will be enriched by the discussion of the text “Pedagogical Notes from the Decolonial Cracks” by Catherine Walsh.

(Photo by Kati Alvarez)
(Photo by Kati Alvarez)

Tuesday May 27-30: Workshop with Ecuadorian sociologist Kati Alvarez, on the current political context of the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. Readings TBA.

 

 

Life Amid Oil Politics in Ecuador: Public Works Wars

IMG_4296February 2014 was election time in Ecuador. Months earlier, the roads of Esmeraldas illustrated the upcoming election wars vividly: large signs announcing the arrival of the Citizen’s Revolution peppered major highways and city streets. Sewage, potable water, garbage collection, highways, schools, clinics: everything public became the terrain of political reform. Except the refinery. Overwhelmed by the signs, I could not stop photographing them–seeking to capture a hidden meaning beyond aggressive visual colonization. By March 2014, the vivid signs of regional and national campaigns were fading, bleached by the sun and overtaken by the local vegetation. A poignant (and fleeting) reminder of the ebbs and flows of political life. The Revolution didn’t just arrive–it already moved on. To Muisne, I think. The political battle continues there.