RIFS Focal Topic Year: “Justice in Sustainability”

Lecture series on the RIFS Focal Topic Year on “justice in sustainability"

“The Scale of Things to Come: Scalability, Politics and Organisation” with Rodrigo Nunes

The event will be held online on 17.11.2023 at 14:00-15:30 (CET).

If you would like to join, please register here.

Abstract: This talk starts from the diagnosis of a certain aversion to scale in contemporary political thought. This condition is especially remarkable in debates on climate change, in which the recognition of the global scale of the problem often leads almost seamlessly into a discussion of exclusively local solutions. My first objective during this talk will be to analyse the sources of this aversion. A second objective is to bring ecological hierarchy theory to bear on our understanding of capitalism, so as to unmake some of the negative associations that surround the idea of scale. Thirdly, I want to make the case for why we cannot leave matters of scale out of our considerations on how to respond to the environmental crisis.

Rodrigo Nunes is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Organization at the University of Essex. He is the author of Organisation of the Organisationless: Collective Action After Networks (Mute, 2014), Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation (Verso, 2021) and Do Transe à Vertigem: Ensaios sobre Bolsonarismo e um Mundo em Transição (Ubu, 2022).

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