‘Women, Nature, & Colonies’

Power, Reproduction, and Unpaid Work/Energy in the Capitalist World-Ecology

Third annual conference of the World-Ecology Research Network

21-22 July, 2017, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

We welcome proposals for individual papers as well as paper sessions, book sessions, and panel discussions. Inquiries and proposals may be sent to:

Deadline for proposals: 15 February, 2017: worldecology2017@gmail.com.

Two important currents of critical thought have gained special prominence over the past decade: the Marxist critique of capitalist ecology, and the feminist critique of unpaid work and social reproduction in capitalist development. This conference explores how these perspectives are not only helpful – but necessary – to each other in the analysis of capitalism’s diverse forms of exploitation, appropriation, and domination. The observation that capitalism works simultaneously in and through bodies, landscapes, and the biosphere remains, however, undertheorized and inadequately historicized. Rather than consider gendered and ecological forms of violence and appropriation as discrete historical domains, the conference seeks to open questions concerning their mutual constitution. Especially important, in this light, is the centrality of unpaid work – delivered by “women, nature, and colonies” (Mies) – in the history of capitalism, including the 21st century’s conjuncture of climate change, financial instability, and a wildly expanding “surplus humanity.” We are especially interested in papers that open space for rethinking of capitalism and capital accumulation in the web of life, and in its manifold forms of colonial, racialized, and gendered violence. Papers may be regional or global, empirical or conceptual.

We invite established and younger scholars – as well as activists and others outside the university system – to contribute papers on these themes as well as broader questions posed by the world-ecology conversation.