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PUBLIC EVENT:

The Jack Nissensen Public Dialogue

 on

Earthmasters: Playing God with the Climate

with

Clive Hamilton

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics

Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia

Commentators:

Jim Thomas, ETC Group

Hannah McKinnon, Environmental Defence

Moderator:

Diana Bronson, Food Secure Canada

Date: Monday, May 13th, 2013

Time: 6 pm to 8 pm

Venue: Hall Building, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve West, Room H-763

Spraying sulphur  into the atmosphere to reduce sunlight? Transforming the chemistry of oceans to soak up more carbon? These technologies to "geoengineer" the planet are being developed right now.  Clive Hamilton investigates the science and risks of these desperate "technofixes", uncovering the worrying motives of some of those promoting them.

Clive Hamilton, one of Australia's leading thinkers, and an authority on climate change internationally, is a bestselling author of books including Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change (2010), in which he discusses the politics and psychology of climate change denial, and Scorcher: the dirty politics of climate change (2007), an investigation of the power of energy industry lobbyists on the Australian political process. His two books on the impact of rampant consumerism and overconsumption are Affluenza: When too much is never enough (with Richard Denniss 2005) and Growth Fetish (2003).

New Publication

Karl Polanyi

Per un nuovo Occidente

Scritti 1919-1958

Edited by Giorgio Resta and Mariavittoria Catanzariti

with a Preface by Kari Polanyi-Levitt

Il Saggiatore, Milan, 2013

http://www.ilsaggiatore.com/argomenti/economia/978-88-428-1908-0/per-un-nuovo-occidente/

“It is not for the economist, but the moralist and the philosopher to decide what kind of society we should deem desirable. An industrial society has one thing in abundance, and that is material welfare more than is good for it. If to uphold justice and freedom to restore meaning and unity in life, we should ever be called upon to sacrifice some efficiency in production, economy in consumption, or rationality of administration, an industrial civilization can afford it. The economic historians’ message to philosophers today should be: we can afford to be both just and free”. This is the message that Karl Polanyi has always tried to send throughout his life and which was one of the main themes of his unfinished book on the “New West”. The author of The Great Transformation strongly believed in the value of freedom; at the same time he rejected the tendency of the Old West to reduce freedom to the guarantees of free enterprise and private ownership. The unfolding economic crisis has proven once again that his powerful critique of “market fundamentalism” was well founded. His analysis of the development of capitalism is still a necessary tool not only to understand the deep roots of the current crisis and the challenges faced by contemporary democracies, but also the inherent weaknesses of neo-liberal ideologies.

This collection of previously unpublished lectures and manuscripts of Karl Polanyi, from the early 1920s to the late 1950s, revisits the collapse of the liberal economic order and the transformation of Western democracies in the inter-wars and post-war years. It also sheds light on Polanyi’s social and political philosophy, by presenting his perspectives on the “New West”, the “meaning of peace”, the “problem of freedom” in a changing world, and the “contribution of institutional analysis to social sciences”. The essays collected in this volume are a valuable contribution to the understanding of the ideas and legacy of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Society for the Study of Social Problems

63rd Annual Meeting

New York City, NY
August 9-11, 2013

Panel Session

Polanyian Political Economics:

Between Material Conditions and Ideas

This panel seeks to highlight political sociological and political economic scholarship from a Polanyian perspective. The ideal panel will include work that reflects the “holistic” nature of Polanyian analysis – specifically, work that examines both material and ideological structural interaction. There are no restrictions on substantive content only that the panel seeks to highlight both material and ideological applications of current Polanyian-inspired scholarship.

http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/502/2013_Annual_Meeting/

Please note that non-US based academics are eligible to apply for some travel support to NYC if accepted onto the panel.

For more information contact:

2013 SSSP President, Ricardo Dello Buono

ricardo.dellobuono@manhattan.edu

SSSP Organizer, Cory Blad

cory.blad@manhattan.edu