Event overview
Critical Environments is a series of lectures and events, which engages with the apprehension that we are living in end times through a wide variety of thematic and disciplinary perspectives.
Philip Steinberg (http://philsteinberg.wordpress.com) is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University and Associate Editor of Political Geography. At Durham, he is Director of IBRU: Durham University’s Centre for Borders Research and he also coordinates the ICE LAW Project (the Project on Indeterminate and Changing Environments: the Anthropocene, Law, and the World). Phil’s research focuses on the projection of social power onto spaces whose geophysical and geographic characteristics make them resistant to state territorialisation, spaces that include the world-ocean, the universe of electronic communication, and the Arctic. His publications include The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge, 2001), Managing the Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion (Temple, 2008), What Is a City? Rethinking the Urban after Hurricane Katrina (Georgia, 2008), Contesting the Arctic: Politics and Imaginaries in the Circumpolar North (I.B. Tauris, 2015), as well as recent articles in journals including Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Society & Space, Ocean Development & International Law, Antipode, Polar Geography, and Atlantic Studies.
‘Critical environments’ names several senses. If the (Greek) krinein is to sift and kritikos is the ability to discern, then we are faced with the work of interpretation. Yet if we turn to the Latin criticare, then those environments are diagnosed as gravely ill. We know that what we call the ‘environment’ is indeed in a state of crisis – acidification renders the oceans increasingly inhospitable to life; deforestation threatens both local ecologies and global climate maintenance; the appetite for meat eats up land as well as nonhuman life. Many of us choose not to know this, or perhaps maintain the fetishistic logic of knowing that comes with simultaneous disavowal. Corporate interests ranging across agriculture, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, and the super-saturation of all forms of media hamper the work of interpretation and the possibility of agency and intervention.
The event is free, no booking is required and all are welcome.
Series chairs: Lynn Turner & Wood Roberdeau
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Feb 2015 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
