Why ‘Game of Thrones’ was about ecomodernism

By Chris Giotitsas & Vasilis Kostakis Game of Thrones was arguably about climate change, but the HBO series turned this narrative around by presenting a last-minute technological solution as magically saving the day, the planet, and existence.  !!! SPOILERS AHEAD !!! Game of Thrones was arguably about climate change. George RR Martin himself confirmed that it is …

A case for small climate stories

by Dylan M. Harris The best stories about climate change are not about climate change. Rather, they are about small, particular, mundane events. They are personal and intimate. And they are grounded in specific locales. These 'small' stories show different ways of imagining, creating, and sustaining meaning in the face of climate change. As the …

About Permaculture Songs and the Food (In)security Narrative

by Elena Louisa The promotion of food (in)security over decades has achieved to govern the way we think about alternatives to industrialised agriculture. Global famine is not a problem of food scarcity but a legacy of unequal power structures which are weaved into past and present agri-food systems. Agriculture based on permaculture can embrace localized …

Weaving musical spaces of indigenous resistance for environmental justice

By Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares* The author proposes a journey to explore environmental justice movements through music amongst indigenous peoples from all over the world. Environmental protest songs enact different ways of telling that can connect ecological, political, spiritual and place-based meanings of environmental issues in  unanticipated ways. Through history, protest songs have shown to be a …

Xingu, the clamor coming from the forest in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival

By Barbara Arisi & Felipe Milanez * Much to the chagrin of ranchers and agribusiness, one of Rio de Janeiro’s popular samba schools, Imperatriz Leopoldinense, is making visible the terrible consequences of agribusiness and hydropower dams on the Xingu Indigenous Park in this year’s Carnival. It’s the biggest party on earth. The greatest multitude of …

Save cultural studies in the age of Brexit

This is a petition* addressing the dissolution of the Centre of Cultural Studies (CCS) at Goldsmiths, University of London. Its aim is to attract public attention to the conditions which led to this decision.

How’s that for an ending? A political ecology of apocalypse

By Jonathan Coward* Warnings over climate change are often dressed in the language of apocalypse, but is well-intentioned alarmism having the required effect? “Suddenly there is an earthquake. Suddenly the sea floods the city, pouring down through the mouths into the corridors of council and institute and short-circuiting everything... How’s that for an ending?” “These …

Encountering Arturo Escobar

By Isabella M. Radhuber* Workshops were recently held in Barcelona with Arturo Escobar to discuss two of his key texts. Isabella shares some important reflections on the social and political role of researchers, what it means to place oneself as an academic and how we, more broadly, understand and relate with the world. I felt …

Using art to study and communicate socio-environmental change in areas of land grabbing

By Emma Li Johansson* Art in research is a powerful tool to evoke feelings and actions beyond academia. This researcher set out to see what is possible when mixing research with artistic ways of expression. A picture says more than a thousand words, they say. Which is why art is a good way to inform …

An archive of motion: how objects find their meaning

By Marc Herbst* A reflection on how meaning is organised in relation to objects gathered at recent climate events. Or, how things stay in motion until the system changes. Ultimately, it was because the interior of the Paris COP21 Summit’s conference hall looked similar to the train I’d arrived on that it took quite a …