Journée “Political Ecology”: Exploring the Frontiers of Political Ecology

11 octobre 2016

Christian Kull

Organizing committee: Prof. Christian Kull, Mialy Andriamahefazafy (assistante-doctorante), Hélène Weber (assistante-doctorante), Joana Guerrin (première assistante) tous Institut de Géographie et Durabilité, UNIL

Lyla Mehta, Professorial Research Fellow Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK

Benedikt Korf, Professor of Political Geography University of Zurich, Switzerland

Description: The journée "Political Ecology" will consist of a full day colloquium during which researchers, PhD students and practitioners will have the opportunity to discuss the field of Political Ecology through two public lectures and two workshops. Political Ecology (PE) studies the relationships of environmental issues and transformations with political, economic and social factors. It seeks to examine the political aspects of environmental change. Since its beginnings when it brought together cultural ecology with Marxist political economy at the frontiers of geography and anthropology, PE has evolved through the influence of diverse disciplines and schools of thought. These include environmental history, political and cultural geography, rural sociology, non-equilibrium ecology, post-structural theory, critical theory, ecological economics, and more... Today, PE is widely called upon in diverse types of research on the political stakes of the environment, authored by scholars across a variety of traditional disciplines. Yet it is not always clear how authors position themselves in relation to, on one hand, PE and, on the other hand, their original discipline(s) and/or research traditions. Objective: The objective of this colloquium is to discuss how PE is appropriated, used, and reworked across disciplines and research traditions, and to assess whether bridging PE with other disciplines might be the way in which PE can continue to enrich its future contributions to understanding pressing issues of environmental sustainability and social justice.

For more information please visit the website: www.unil.ch

Université de Lausanne

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