WiSe 24/25: S - Konzeptionelle Vertiefung: Resource Geographies, Extr. Activism and Slow Violence
Beril Ocakli
Comments
Global consumption, production and accumulation preferences extend resource frontiers from deep-sea to deep-space. Our hyper-extractive age knows no boundaries as we scout for minerals in the Papua New Guinean seabed, mine the world’s driest deserts in Chile, dare flooding villages for hydropower in Georgia and remove glaciers for gold in Kyrgyzstan for seemingly building prosperous and sustainable futures. Confronted instead with extractive and exploitative regimes, communities around the globe resist injustices and repression for making space for a multiplicity of lifeworlds. As a result, mounting extractivism and counter-activism co-evolve in a relational process that puts to the test prevailing socio-political orders.
In this course, we will critically explore processes and practices that recast geographies as resources over time. We will theoretically, empirically and methodologically disassemble different infrastructure and resource regimes into their choreographies, components and consequences. Along the process, we will think with concepts such as resource-making, (green) extractivism, resistance, slow violence, infrastructure, resource materialities and sociomateriality, and governance in an attempt to understand what becomes when, why and for whom a resource – and at what cost. The course mirrors the complexity of extractivism and brings together different disciplinary perspectives in conversation with a range of guest scholars and practitioners.
close16 Class schedule
Regular appointments