Jason W Moore speaks in Berlin: "Anthropocene or Capitalocene?"
Prof.
Jason W.
Moore.
Department of Sociology and
Fernand Braudel Center,
Binghamton University
‘Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Why
Nature Matters in the Making and Unmaking of the
Modern World, and Not in the Way
You Might Think’
Einstein Workgroup on ‘Rethinking
Crisis’ Lecture
Series at the JFKI.
Freie Universität Berlin.June 2014
Introduction: Dr
Larry Reynolds, Einstein
Postdoctoral Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin.
http://berlincrisis.info/
As with all fashionable concepts, the Anthropocene has been subject to a wide spectrum of interpretations. But one is dominant. This one tells us that the origins of modern world are to be found in
England, right around the dawn of the
19th century. The motive force behind this epochal shift? In two words: coal and steam. The driving force behind coal and steam? Not class. Not capital. Not imperialism. Not even culture. But… you guessed it, the
Anthropos.
Humanity as an undifferentiated whole.
Above all, the
Anthropocene argument obscures, and relegates to context, the actually existing relations through which women and men make history with the rest of nature: the relations of power, (re)production, and wealth in the web of life.
Jason W. Moore teaches world history and world-ecology in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University. He has published widely on the history of capitalism, environmental history, and the capitalist world-ecology. He is presently completing
Ecology and the Accumulation of
Capital (Verso) and Ecology and the
Rise of
Capitalism (
University of California Press), and serves on the editorial boards of
Review,
The Journal of Agrarian
Change, and The Journal of World-Systems
Research. His articles have been recognized with the
Alice Hamilton Prize of the
American Society for Environmental History, the Distinguished
Scholarship Award of the
Section on the
Political Economy of the World-System (
American Sociol. Assoc.), and the Bernstein and Byres Prize for studies in agrarian change.
Professor Moore coordinates the World-Ecology Research
Network. For further information on his work please visit:
www.jasonwmoore.com.
This was part of the Einstein Workgroup on ‘Rethinking Crisis’ Lecture Series at the JFKI. Freie Universität Berlin.
The project ‘Rethinking Capitalist Crisis’ was led by the political theorist Professor
Nancy Fraser of the
New School for Social Research New York, funded by the Einstein Stiftung of
Berlin and hosted by the
John F. Kennedy Institute at the
Free University-Berlin.
https://www.facebook.com/jfkicrisisgroup
http://berlincrisis.info/