Workers of the Earth: Labour, ecology and reproduction in the age of climate change
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm
- Venue
- SOAS DLT & Online
- Room
- Kamran Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT)
- Event type
- Seminar & Webinar
About this event
Capitalism is destroying our planet, but like most social progress in the last two centuries, ecological justice can only be achieved through working-class struggle.
In Workers of the Earth, Stefania Barca uncovers the environmental history and political ecology of labour to shed new light on the potentiality of workers as ecological subjects. Taking an ecofeminist approach, this ground-breaking book makes a unique contribution to the emerging field of environmental labour studies, expanding the category of labour to include waged and unwaged, industrial and meta-industrial workers.
Going beyond conventional categories of ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ as separate spheres of human experience, Barca offers a fresh perspective on the place of labour in today’s global climate struggle, reminding us that the fight against climate change is a fight against capitalism.
About the speaker
Stefania Barca is Associate Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Santiago de Compostela and coordinates the international Just Transition and Care network. Her previous books include Forces of Reproduction (Cambridge U.P. 2020) and Enclosing Water (White Horse Press, 2010), winner of the Turku book award from the European Society for Environmental History and Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich.
Chair
Alessandra Mezzadri, Professor in Global Development and Political Economy at SOAS.
Seminar series
This seminar is part of the SOAS Global Development Seminar Series co-organised with the Global Feminist political Economy @SOAS Working Group and the Global Labour and Social Justice research cluster.
