The first lecture of the 2016-2017 CSI History Department Lecture Series will take place on Thursday, Nov. 10 in Building 2N, Room 107 at 2:30pm. Our guest will be Prof. Jason Moore, Associate Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University. Prof. Moore will give a talk titled “Ecology and Rise of Capitalism: Work, Power, and Capital in the Origins of Planetary Crisis.”
The rise of capitalism after 1450 marked a turning point in humanity’s relation with the rest of nature. In his talk, Prof. Moore, will survey the global land and labor revolution of early capitalism, situating it within contemporary discussions of planetary crisis. The origins of that crisis, argues Moore, are not only found centuries before the steam engine, but rooted in a peculiarly violent and productive strategy: cheap nature. The limits of the strategy are increasingly revealed in the exhaustion of capitalism’s productive dynamism–paired with escalating biospheric instability–in the 21st Century.
Prof. Moore, a world historian and historical geographer, is the author of several books, most recently Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), and editor of Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. He coordinates the World-Ecology Research Network and blogs online. He is presently completing Seven Cheap Things: A World-Ecological Manifesto (with Raj Patel) and Ecology of the Rise of Capitalism, both for the University of California Press.
This CLUE event is supported by the Campus Activities Board. Light refreshments will be served.
