August 9, 2016

A short history of the enclosures in Ethiopia

By tracing the history of enclosures in Ethiopia we learn how common property was first turned into state property that now enables the transfer of land to private investors. Such historical political ecological analysis can help civil society organisations learn from past social struggles against the enclosures and for the commons.*
February 11, 2016

Jason W. Moore: Ontological Politics

A core problem has been the difficulty in forging a conceptual vocabulary that grasps ‘society’ and ‘nature’ as a singular ontological domain, such that all human activity is simultaneously producer and product of the web of life – Jason W. Moore.
February 2, 2016

Jason W. Moore: Capital Frontiers

Capital’s dynamism turns on the exhaustion of the very webs of life necessary to sustain accumulation; the history of capitalism has been one of recurrent frontier movements to overcome that exhaustion, through the appropriation of nature’s free gifts hitherto beyond capital’s reach – Jason W. Moore, 2011.
January 26, 2016

Jason W. Moore: The Web of Life

Capitalism, as project, emerges through a world-praxis that creates external natures as objects to be mapped, quantified, and regulated so that they may service capital’s insatiable demands for cheap nature. At the same time, as process, capitalism emerges and develops through the web of life; nature is at once internal and external – Jason W. Moore.
January 19, 2016

Jason W. Moore: Anthropocene or Capitalocene?

The Anthropocene makes for an easy story. Easy, because it does not challenge the naturalized inequalities, alienation, and violence inscribed in modernity’s strategic relations of power, production, and nature – Jason W. Moore.
January 12, 2016

Jason W. Moore: Political Ecology or World-Ecology?

The world-ecology perspective argues that humans are a part of nature, such that capitalism does not act upon nature but develops through the web of life. In this view, the modern world-system is a capitalist world-ecology, joining the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the production of nature in dialectical unity – Jason W. Moore.
November 17, 2015

A Review of ‘Land Grabbing—The Movie’

Land Grabbing by Kurt Langbein offers a razor sharp visualization of the tremendous drivers and tragic dramas of mega investments in land. 
March 16, 2015

Bitter Lake and Waves of a Fever: Adam Curtis on chaos, complexity and crisis

by Jonah Wedekind Bitter Lake by Adam Curtis puts Afghanistan at the centre of global struggles over ideology, politics, and economy. The film tells a simple story about the political ecology of chaos, complexity and crisis, and about how politicians have lost their ability to tell simple stories that simply make sense. “Increasingly we live in a world where nothing makes any sense. Events come and go like the waves of a fever, leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to help […]