We are living in the Anthropocene era, when humans are the\nleading power influencing the earth\u2019s future. Environmental systems and\necological processes are clearly in action; however, it is hard to understand their\nexpressions apart from human activities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On his lecture on November 1st<\/sup> at UWM, entitled as\n\u201cEmbattled Earth: Commodities, Conflict and Climate Change in the Indian\nOcean\u201d, Amitav Ghosh shared concerns about the most pressing issue of our time,\nclimate change and vulnerable future on earth. He talked about empire, power,\ncapitalism and consumerism as critical contributors to our climate crisis. He discussed\nhow historical conflicts over resources in Asia have become a major driver of\nclimate change in the Indian Ocean. According to Ghosh, imperialism is critical\nfor understanding the \u201cGreat Derangement.\u201d After the lecture, I could not stop\nthinking about why the climate change has not received necessary sympathy and\naffection. I was thinking about whether academic scholars have overlooked the important\nrole played by empire and military power in creating our current climate-related\ndisasters. How should we deal with the connection between higher inequality and\nincreased environmental damage? How well our disaster management plans work? Are\nwe really deranged? <\/p>\n\n\n\n A day after the Ghosh\u2019s lecture, the Center for 21st<\/sup>\nCentury Studies hosted a roundtable discussion on November 2nd<\/sup> with\nAmitav Ghosh, Richard Grusin (C21), and four panelists from different UWM\ndepartments (Arijit Sen (Architecture), Jasmine Alinder (History), Rina Ghose\n(Geography), and Anne Bonds (Geography)). In a format of five minutes individual\npresentations, they discussed how fields such as urban studies, history,\ncritical theory, architecture, and art could offer small-scale responses and\nstrategies of resistance to climate change. After that, Amitav Ghosh responded\nto each of the panelists\u2019 presentations. The whole discussion was very\ninformative and challenged us to think more about seeing the climate change and\nderangement in different ways. Jasmine Alinder encouraged us to think about the\nclimate change in visual term, photography of climate change. In The Great\nDerangement, Amitav Ghosh declares the need for not looking at the climate\ncatastrophes as a problem of individual choices, but as a problem of collective\naction. Reflecting on this, Alinder highlighted the need for a shared visual\nethnography and iconography of the climate change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anne Bonds talked about climate change and mass incarceration.\nShe argues that the climate change poses a great threat for the people who are\nincarcerated in prisons and jails. These people are most vulnerable to\nenvironmental catastrophes. As Amitav Ghosh argued in his book, \u201cthe\ndistribution of power in the world \u2026 lies at the core of the climate crisis.\u201d\nThis discussion reminded me of a piece by sociologist Andrew Jorgenson, talking\nabout the link between higher inequality and increased environmental damage with\nrespect to emissions of heat-trapping gases. As he claimed, \u201creducing\ninequality may have the potential to both increase human well-being and enhance\nclimate change mitigation efforts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I end this post by talking about Arijit Sen\u2019s presentation on\nthe relationship between architecture, Anthropocene, and the climate change. He\nalso talked about the collective failure to imagine and address the climate\nchange. As Sen argued, scholars of architecture and the built environment are mostly\ninterested in examining the everyday performances of people and the politically\ncharged nature of the mundane in order to find the link between the climate change\nand the built environment. He discussed the politics of public space in the\ncity of Milwaukee; \u201cthe politics of public space is implicated in chorographic\nacts of governmental and planning agencies that designate boundaries of\nhistoric and cultural districts, neighborhoods and tracts, and various forms of\nvested economic territories.\u201d He critically discussed the tourist map of the\ncity by emphasizing on the deliberate invisibility of an inner city\nneighborhood, which is home to a vast majority of poor and minority residents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are living in the Anthropocene era, when humans are the leading power influencing the earth\u2019s future. Environmental systems and ecological processes are clearly in action; however, it is hard to understand their expressions apart from human activities. On his lecture on November 1st at UWM, entitled as \u201cEmbattled Earth: Commodities, Conflict and Climate Change […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leila-saboori"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag9B1-2v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.c21uwm.com\/tennessenscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}