CFP: Women, Nature, & Colonies

Power, Reproduction, and Unpaid Work/Energy in the Capitalist World-Ecology World-Ecology 2017: Binghamton, USA 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: worldecology2017@gmail.com 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 21stcentury’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.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to)
Queering Accumulation Race, Gender, and Colonialism Social Reproduction and Class Struggle The Political Ecology and Political Economy of Unpaid Work Women, Work, and Modes of Re/Production Nature, Gender, and Industrialization
Neoliberalism, Gender, and ‘Disposable’ Workers
Commodity Frontiers: Households, Imperialisms, Capitalisms Gender and Transitions to Capitalism Value Relations, Unpaid Labor, and Capital Accumulation Commodity Chains as Racial, Gender, and Colonial Violence Women, Nature, and colonies as Frontiers of Appropriation and Exploitation Depletion and Devaluation within Capitalized Ecologies Racialized and Gendered Accumulation Strategies

The Politics of Care Work WE WILL ALSO ACCEPT PAPERS ON OTHER TOPICS WITHIN A BROADLY RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL CHANGE, INCLUDING: Literature in the Capitalist World-Ecology The Nature of Combined and Uneven Development Anthropocene/Capitalocene/Cthulucene The Politics of Work and Work/Energy Gramscian World-Ecologies/Political Ecologies Multi-Species Perspectives Anthropogenic/Capitalogenic Climate Change Energy, Work, and Value Accumulation Crises and the Four Cheaps Patterns of Appropriation and Exploitation of Humanity-in-Nature Social and Labor Movements and Accumulation Regimes Cultural Materialisms Extinctions/Exterminisms States and Geopower: Territory- and Environment-Making in Capitalism Planetary Urbanization Hydropolitics, Hydro-Crises, and the End of Cheap Water The conference will be held 21-22 July, 2017 at Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY. Direct queries to: worldecology2017@gmail.com.