Political Ecology in Asia: Plural Knowledge and Contested Development in a More-Than-Human World
Thursday-Friday, 10-11 October 2019, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Co-organized by Center for Social Development Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University (CSDS); Chula Global Network (CGN); French Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC); French Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD); French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP); IRN-SustainAsia; Patrimoines Locaux, Environnement et Mondialisation (PALOC); POLLEN Political Ecology Network
With the support of Chula Global Network (CGN); The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS); French Embassy in Bangkok; Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University
Asia is nowadays a region of extremely rapid ecological and social change. The last several decades have witnessed growing economies, intensification of resource extraction and use, and the accelerated expansion of domestic mass consumerism alongside export-orientated manufacture. This has been accompanied by widening social and spatial inequalities within and between urban and rural areas, and the concentration of resource ownership that has resulted in part from large resource enclosures and exclusions. These changes are uneven, and include areas that have been exploited and since left degraded. Through all of these changes, nature-society relations are continually reworked and contested.
Asia is a region that is ethnically diverse, with plural histories, knowledges, values, and ways of making a living. Whilst modernization may have been an aspiration for some, now there is at least some growing recognition of associated ecological harms at scales ranging from the local to global, and political tensions over them. Yet deeply embedded power asymmetries have impeded the types of transformations necessary to address ecological and social injustices, and to move towards reducing vulnerability and a growing sense of precarity.
There is a strong body of knowledge studying the political ecologies of Asia, in both academic and transdisciplinary forms. This conference intends to further this work, in particular encouraging a reflection on how political ecology is understood and applied by researchers and activists throughout Asia whose work addresses the themes of the politics of plural knowledge, contested development, and human-more-than-human relationships. In doing so, the conference also actively seeks alternatives beyond the anthropocene/ capitalocene.
Panel topics include:
Resource politics and the public sphere;
Particulate matters: the emergence of a political ecology of haze in Asia;
Hydrosocial rivers and their politics;
Ontologies of infrastructure;
Post-development and systemic alternatives from Asia;
People and the biodiversity crisis: reshaping governance and justice in conservation;
Industrialization and ecological justice;
Asia’s urban political ecologies;
Feminist political ecology in Asia;
Interspecies cohabitations in Asia: non-human animals and political ecology;
Representations of nature and political engagements;
Political ecologies of land in Southeast Asia: Beyond the technical-regulatory gaze.
Conference Venue:
Venue A (Main Plenary, Sessions A): Chumpot-Pantip Conference Room, 4th floor, Prajadhipok-Ramphai Barni Building, Chulalongkorn University
Venue B (Sessions B): Alumni Meeting Room, 12th Floor, Kasem Authayanin Building (Building 3), Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University