Discussion with Prof. Ariel Salleh on her new book ‘Decolonize Ecomodernism!
When: Tuesday, June 10, 2025, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: GC601, Montagu Lecture Theatre, Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) Book DeColonize EcoModernism!, Bloomsbury, 2025, Launch
In her new book, DeColonize EcoModernism! (Bloomsbury, 2025) Professor Ariel Salleh engages with the patriarchal- colonial-capitalist mindset and its threats to Life-on-Earth, including climate change and nuclear risks, mining and the gene trade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital coloniality. She spells out the social and ecological contradictions of the contemporary Androcene. Inspired by decolonial thinkers from Arturo Escobar to Tyson Yunkaporta, and critics of technology like Vandana Shiva and Shoshana Zuboff (a key speaker at the IHSS Annual Symposium 2021, see the recording), she argues that dispossession of First Nation peoples' livelihoods i not healed by consumerism in the name of 'development'. Breaking with ecomodernist policy, including 'the tech fix' of mainstream environmentalism, Salleh contests the new imperium with its Green New Deals, Earth Governance, Sustainable Development Goals, and Smart Futures. Worldwide decolonial activists see through the zero-sum imagination and its Earth Summits. Youth too, is defying the capitalist ruling class extinction trajectory, and some even challenge the fashionable posthuman ideology circulating in high-tech quarters. Beyond 'exchange value', these Others of the Androcene call for self-governing bioregional futures, respectful of indigenous skills; they want local food sovereign economies which both meet people's needs and protect nature's 'metabolic value’. Tracing the biopolitical violence of modernity, the book follows two decades of creative defiance by global peoples' movements against the contradictions of ecomodernist development and its ongoing imposition by nation states and international agencies.
Ariel Salleh will be in conversation with Elena Baglioni (QMUL) and Kate Metcalf (WEN - Women Environmental Network)
Ariel Salleh is Visiting Professor in Humanities, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa; former Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany and Research Associate in Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia. Her numerous publications can be found at www.arielsalleh.info
20% off Decolonize EcoModernism! Use discount code GLR BD8 at checkout on DeColonize EcoModernism!: : Ariel Salleh: Bloomsbury Academic
Organisers
The book discussion is organised by the Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) and supported by IHSS.