\n\u201dLet\u2019s start by stating that after \u2018the rights of man\u2019, the rise of the \u2018the rights of Nature\u2019 is a contemporary form of the opium for the people. It is an only slightly camouflaged religion: the millenarian terror, concern for everything save the properly political destiny of peoples, new instruments for control of everyday life, the obsession with hygiene, the fear of death and catastrophes \u2026. It is a gigantic operation in the depoliticization of subjects\u201d (Badiou 2008: 139).<\/p>\n
Several decades ago, Raymond Williams argued that \u201cNature is perhaps the most complex word in the language\u201d, wrought with all manner of histories, geographies, meanings, fantasies, dreams, and wish images (Williams 1988: 221). Yet, he also concurred that Nature is socially and politically one of the most powerful and performative metaphors of language (Williams 1980). In the wake of the current environmental \u2018crisis\u2019, \u2018Nature\u2019 has gained considerable purchase in political debate, economic argument, and public intervention.<\/p>\n
However, some consider that \u2018ecology is the new opium for the masses\u2019, others \u2013 like \u017di\u017eek — controversially state that \u2018Nature does not exist!\u2019. Yet, it is indisputably the case that many of the world\u2019s environments are in serious ecological trouble and planners, policy-makers and activists desperately search or call for urgent and immediate action in the face of the clear and present danger posed by environmental degradation and possible ecological collapse. Dissecting the challenges posed by the mobilization of \u2018Nature\u2019 or \u2018Ecology\u2019 in a wide range of social sciences, political discourses, social activism, and policy\/managerial practices is absolutely vital in a world in which socio-ecological dynamics like resource depletion, climate change or environmental degradation pose challenges that, if unheeded, might possibly lead to the premature end of civilization as we know it, to the end of us before our sell-by date has expired.<\/p>\n
The main points of argument I wish to unfold are as follows:<\/p>\n
\n- Nature and its more recent derivatives, like \u2018environment\u2019 or \u2018sustainability\u2019, are \u2018empty\u2019 signifiers.<\/li>\n
- There is no such thing as a singular Nature around which an environmental policy or an environmentally sensitive planning can be constructed and performed. Rather, there are a multitude of natures and a multitude of existing, possible or practical socio-natural relations.<\/li>\n
- The obsession with a singular Nature that requires \u2018sustaining\u2019 or, at least, \u2018managing\u2019, is sustained by a particular \u2018quilting\u2019 of Nature that forecloses asking political questions about immediately and really possible alternative socio-natural arrangements.<\/li>\n
- I conclude with a call for a politicization of the environment, one that is predicated upon the recognition of the indeterminacy of nature, the constitutive split of the people, the unconditional democratic demand of political equality, and the real possibility for the inauguration of different possible public socio-ecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and equality.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
Introduction to discussion<\/strong>
\nRen\u00e9 V\u00e9ron and Val\u00e9rie Boisvert<\/p>\nPresentations (10 mn) & discussions (20 mn)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Emmanuel Reynard: Are geoforms part of natural heritage ?<\/li>\n
- Basile Gross: Political agro-ecology and rural economy in West Africa<\/li>\n
- Patrick Bottazzi: Human ecology: toward a complexity paradigm<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Afternoon session: The City as an Hybrid<\/h3>\n
Guest: Maria Ka\u00efka,<\/strong> School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester
\nEcological Utopias as Radical Imaginary<\/em>
\n<\/span>Abstract<\/div>The beginning of the 20
th<\/sup> century saw a proliferation of new imaginaries and alternative ways of thinking about urban environments. However, when these ideas became discredited as authoritarian, the fall of utopian thinking led to a long period of banalisation of urbanism, and a crisis in the ability of western societies to produce new or alternative urban \u2018imaginaries\u2019. Whilst urban scholarship was paralysed by the shrinking of ideas about alternative urban worlds, the future of urban environments was given over to technocratic agendas. This led to an overproduction of socially instituted, globally engineered technocratic \u2018imagineerings\u2019 of urban futures (the global city, sustainable, city, eco-city, culture city).\u00a0 These agendas operate within the logic of a free market economy, and as such are not discredited as \u2018authoritarian\u2019. However, as Jean Nouvel notes, in the 21st<\/sup> century, planning and architectural practice, \u201cmore than ever \u2026 is annihilating places, banalising them, violating them\u201d. Focusing on Eco-Cities as one example of imagineered urban futures, the paper documents how creativity is replaced by repetitive forms in the name of flexibility, corporate identity, and real estate development, and how this leads to the banalisation of urban space.
\n<\/div><\/div>\nIntroduction to the discussion<\/strong>
\nEduardo Camacho-H\u00fcbner<\/p>\nPresentations (10 mn) & discussions (20 mn)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Natasha Cornea: Governing urban environments: the need to give (micro) local governance and politics more attention in Urban Political Ecology<\/li>\n
- Paola Ratu : Urban Water in Switzerland<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Synthesis & Conclusions<\/strong>
\nAlexander Federau et Jo\u00eblle Salomon Cavin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Organized by Alexander Federau and Jo\u00eblle Salomon Cavin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-evenements-passes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/societenature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}