Political Ecologies of Waste: Salvaged Livelihoods and Infra-structural Labour

by Benjamin Irvine Solid waste is often seen as an environmental problem to be solved through change of behaviour and recycling. Political ecology can sharpen our analysis of the politics involved in the way materials move through the economy. Prospects for reducing the amount of solid waste generated and ambitions for a “circular economy” will …

Not afraid of the ruins

Call for submissions for science fiction and utopian imaginaries The online magazine Uneven Earth just announced a launch of a new section dedicated to science-fiction and utopian imaginings and is looking for the first contributions! Utopian dreamers, other-worldly explorers and psychonautic adventurers, scholars, activists, students, and critics: we are officially inviting submissions for a new …

Pará, bloody Pará

Even when the police doesn’t kill in Pará, Brazil, it still lets others do the killing. The coup and the political power of the rural sector in Brasília have provided Amazonian gunmen with a carte blanche. We are living in times of death. The massacre of nine men and one woman in Pau D'Arco, on …

Who can say? Reflections on the unknown in Valle de Cauca, Colombia

By Emma Lord* On December 1st, 2016, headlines marked the formal end of Colombia´s prolonged war. Emma Lord shares some reflections on the contextual complexity of the conflict based on fieldwork in the department of Valle del Cauca in 2015. Sitting in the kitchen of a caleño guitarist –a research informant and friend– we chat …

Tyrannocene, Carnival, Earth

By Richard Bater* Snowpiercer, a 2013 science fiction film by Bong Joon-Ho, takes us on a post-apocalyptic train ride through Earth. In this blog post, Richard creatively refracts the plot of the film to consider several strands of political thought concerning the anthropocene and human-environment relations. Jean-Marc Rochette, a French illustrator and comics creator, wrote …

Documenting political ecologies through film, part IV

by Gustavo Garcia Lopez and Salvatore Paolo De Rosa Note: This is the fourth of a five-part entry on the Tales from Planet Earth film festival held on April 9-12 in Stockholm, Sweden (to see the previous entries go HERE, HERE, and HERE). The Festival was organized by ENTITLE member Professor Marco Armiero, director of …

Documenting political ecologies through film, part III

by Gustavo Garcia Lopez and Salvatore Paolo de Rosa Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs” (“I hate travels and explorers. C. Lévi-Strauss (1955), Tristes Tropiques¹ Following our previous two posts (HERE and HERE) on the Tales from Planet Earth film festival in Stockholm, Sweden (9-12 April) this post focuses on the film Expedition to …

Documenting political ecologies through film, part II

by Gustavo Garcia Lopez and Salvatore Paolo de Rosa The incisive and thought-provoking opening lecture by Rob Nixon on the first day of the Tales from Planet Earth film festival in Stockholm, Sweden (April 9-12), reviewed HERE, was followed by three documentaries on the topic of waste: Plastic bag (Ramen Bahrani, USA, 2009, 18 min), Trash Dance …

Documenting political ecologies through film, part I

by Gustavo Garcia Lopez and Salvatore Paolo de Rosa The four-day Tales from Planet Earth film festival in Stockholm, Sweden, held from 9-12 April, 2014 kicked off with Rob Nixon, Rachel Carson Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of the book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, with a …