 Hello everybody. Hi, I'm Catherine Dolan. I'm the convener of the MA in Global Futures and Sustainability. And today I'm going to provide you with a short introduction to the Anthropology of Sustainability. I'm going to begin by sharing my slides here so that you can see where I'm going. I hope everybody can see them, if not send Rachel a note in the chat. Okay, so what I want to do here today is just provide you with a little taster lecture from the Anthropology of Sustainability module that I convene in the program. And I just want to say if you have any questions at all, please do feel free to ask them at the end of our session or to email me at any time. All right, so let me start by saying that, you know, today our planet contains 7.9 billion people with billions more likely to be added to our population by the end of this century. And we're also amidst this great number of people were a world that's divided between the very wealthy and the very poor, and we face unprecedented environmental challenges. And secondly, as many of you know changing the climate, what species survive on our planet climate, the chemistry of the ocean, the safety of the air, and the access and ability of fresh water for us to drink extreme storms typhoons floods droughts forest fires have become the new normal in our world. And the democratic systems through which we purport to solve our dependence on fossil fuels are themselves premised on fossil fuel dependency. Now, these changes are so profound that geologists have given our current geological era a new name, the Anthropocene to denote the role that human beings are playing or have played in changing the fossil and rock layers of the earth. Humans are not the only species that actually alter their environments, others do too. So you can see here beavers build dams affecting the hydrology of the area surrounding them. Birds build nests and coyotes dig dens, altering their environments in ways that increase their survival or the reproduction of the species as a whole their reproductive success. Now, this is this ability to alter the environment to facilitate the survival of the species is termed niche construction, or what the anthropologist and a thing called species agilities. Now as humans, we excel in niche construction we've done clothing to allow us to live in very cold conditions the same with insulated housing. We've constructed aqueducts, irrigation systems, wells and urban water supply pipes to provide the water that we need to survive, replacing drinking from streams or lakes. We have agriculture and refrigeration and transportation networks that allow us to eat all year round fresh fruits and vegetables. We have health measures such as antibiotics and vaccines that limit the impact of disease as we've seen. So really human niche construction is an amazing thing, but human niche construction also takes a phenomenal amount of energy. Again as most of you know is primarily consisting of fossil fuels. And these fossil fuels alter the global carbon cycle, leading to a buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that cause local as well as global climate change. So one of the examples of this is the way in which we've changed land use. For example, moving from small farms to large farms, from forests to parking lots, all contributing to an increase in the emission of greenhouse gases. Now land use change is a major driver of population extinction. In tropical areas alone, it was estimated that 1,800 species were lost each hour in the 1990s. And according to Colbert, who has done the work that you see here on the sixth mass extinction, he feels that we are headed for what he calls this sixth mass extinction and increase in the rate of species loss on a scale that's only occurred five times in the entire history of the earth. Now, while homo sapiens are excellent in niche construction, it certainly has clear consequences for the climate for species diversity, and for the landscapes we inhabit. Most of these consequences result from the growth based market economies of the global north, North America, Europe, as well as East Asia, that have intensified their resource extraction and consumption and externalize the costs of this on to the species and environments of the global south. And these economies of the global north, really as well as many other places, but largely the global north are based on two logics that anthropologists and sociologists have come to challenge. And the first is this logic of infinite growth. And this is the way in which we take the idea of growth to be a natural, a given an unquestioned and inevitable process. Now this is a very powerful discourse. It's also an evolutionary one, because it's based on the premise that through enhanced technological development, you know, less developed economies will grow into middle income economies which will grow into highly developed economies or high income economies. So countries are placed on this sort of hierarchical scale, as if one will become the, then the other the next on the ladder as a matter of default right through through this process of human progress and development. So this is one logic that many are challenging today. You know we've seen it, for example, in the D growth movement, the way in which the idea of infinite growth is being problematized as one of the kind of key challenges and constraints we face to addressing climate change and its consequences. The second piece of the second logic here is this idea of the separation of humankind from nature. Now, while the idea of that humans are separate from the natural world has is kind of widely accepted. This is really a construction in other words it's a product of history of junior Christian ideas where man was created separately from the natural world and had dominion over it. Now this belief this conviction is really this ideology has calcified over time. For example, in the birth of the scientific method by Francis Bacon during the Renaissance period, as well as an Adam Smith's theory of capitalism, where nature was, you know valued solely because of its ability to satisfy human nature. This is in contrast to many indigenous cultures around the world where there's a familial relationship with nature where nature is considered part and parcel of a society of humans and the natural world working together plants and animals are actually these two narratives of limitless growth and the separation of man and nature are powerful. They've allowed Western economies to destroy the non human world for a very long time. And they're premised on this idea of capitalism that sees the non human world as resources that can be exploited for the human project. How else could we justify our food system for example, if we didn't see cows and pigs as less than us, if we didn't see a division between the value we place on human life and the value we place on all other kinds of lives. If for example, you were a believer in reincarnation, and you followed an Eastern religion, one of the Eastern religions, you know, you or someone you love could one day be a cow. And this creates a very different understanding of food than if you see animals as very distinct from yourself. The understanding of sustainability rests on these assumptions these idea lot of these dip these ideologies. For example, the, the term sustainability was first articulated or used by this guy, Carl Hans Carl von Carl with who managed the mining on behalf of the Saxon court in Friedberg Germany in the early 1700s. And while there were forest regulations at that time, the impact of timber shortages on Saxony silver mining and metallurgy industries was devastating. And Carlowitz actually criticized the short term thinking and remember this was the 1700s. That was allowing more and more of the woodland in the area to be converted into fields and meadows and he argued that would should only be cut if they could be regrown through planned reforestation projects, very much ahead of this time. So this became an important guiding principle of what we know as forestry today. Later in the 19th and 20th centuries we see how sustainability became twinned with conservation. As the dominant approach to managing resources and the natural environment was one of protection to protect them protect, for example, areas of forest and nature from capitalism excesses. But this bifurcation is separation between human beings and the natural world also is reflected in the international institutions that have adopted sustainability as a platform. For example, it was only in the 1970s when we saw environmental sustainability come on into the development arena for the first time as a concept that the UN conference on environment on human environment, excuse me. So here we see also the first separation between the environment the economy and develop and the society within the international development platform. You know and this is continued through various iterations of international declarations international conventions international programs of work. And as even in the 1992 UN conference on environmental environment and development they put forth the agenda 21, which acknowledge that sustainable development required attention to social economic and societal goals. This is also a recognition that's found in the in the 2015 sustainability sustainable development goals excuse me, which focus on economic development, social equity and environmental protection. I think of this as a good thing because at least they're not ignoring the environment at least they're not ignoring the economy at least they're taking into account issues around inequality and social justice and social development. Human Rights Council just noted in their resolution passed in November 2021, right around the time of cop that there's a wreck while there's now been a recognition of the holistic and indivisible nature of human rights and the environment. I think we now see that we can't separate these two things out. These, it doesn't actually. It goes unheeded in global regional and national environmental and climate policy forums, in other words, we're still prioritizing one of these fears, instead of the other. And then there's been very little acknowledgement of how these three spheres interpreting interpenetrate and are mutually implicated. So for example, even the SDGs the sustainable development goals, illustrate how achieving one aspect of the three dimensions can undermine the achievement of the other because you're not thinking in them as intertwined. The goal of eliminating poverty, for example, is intention with the dominant approaches towards protecting territorial ecosystems, hitting conservation against economic development. So anthropologists often challenge these assumptions as sort of taken for granted ideas that are embedded in terms like sustainability, even development or progress or growth and calling attention to the multiple meanings that can be embedded in a particular concept. So the concept of sustainability has been called an empty signifier, that is, that is subject to radical different interpretations and uses, depending on who's actually using the term so we see a sustainable sustainable resources, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture and so forth. It encompasses the movement towards smart and sustainable cities, the trend toward market environmentalism, and the pursuit of sustainable food practices from community gardens to community supported agriculture to food that is local slow food organic and fairly traded. And it's deployed by a range of different actors right including social enterprises NGOs corporations municipal governments international development organizations multilateral organizations nation states. And it even brings traditional antagonists together under the premise that they're all working towards the same goal of sustainability. Now this conceptual fuzziness anthropologists have shown is actually productive because it's the ambiguity of sustainability that allows it to be deployed unproblematically from the biggest of fossil fuel corporations, to the greenest of NGOs, often allowing the status quo to be reproduced while giving token attention to environmental and social issues. So one of the roles of anthropology is to question the narratives and the categories that define our worlds. So let me just finish this brief introduction by highlighting how anthropologists are conceptualizing and challenging ideas around climate change in arguing for a transition to a more sustainable world. First of all, we're trying to challenge the ideology of growth and progress that I spoke about. Now this is difficult because we've all been taught in various ways to aspire to grow to progress to do better and better. It's not only an individual but a national and planetary narrative. But there's nothing inevitable about an economy premised on the idea of infinite growth. Some scholars and activists as I mentioned are advocating an alternative trajectory of D growth, which rejects these assumptions of mainstream economic thinking and sees seeks rather the shrinking of production and consumption as necessary for a democratic just and sustainable future. And certainly right now, there's all the more reason to challenge this idea of growth as we find ourselves in a hydrocarbon war, where, you know, we now have a moment, given the illumination that's been played on our addiction to hydrocarbons to reconsider are the way in which we grow our economy, perhaps on a different footing of non fossil fuels. Secondly, anthropologists call for examining how resources are distributed scarcities are not only generated through absolute limits right no more food, but through the unequal access to resources across populations of race, class, gender, ethnicity, geographic location. So disadvantaged groups often suffer disproportionately from any issue of climate change, experiencing what's called a double inequality. And in fact the term the Anthropocene mass the fact that not all human beings have the same impacts on earth, Amazonian Indians, Indians or Congolese hunter gatherers for example, have very different ecological impacts than we do here in Britain. Thirdly, we need to shift from this idea of value to values. Since industrialization, the value of nature has been equated solely with its value to people as humans extend control over species and the material world. So value means that landscapes and species are increasingly seen as natural capital, valued in financial terms and exchanged in global markets. So we need to move away from solely this capitalist idea of value to a way to thinking about the way that value connotes social justice equality and the common good. Fourth, we need to think beyond capitalism. We've come to know capitalism as an economic and cultural system that continually spreads and bends societies to their own needs. Whether we're studying ecological disasters pandemics conflict and violence capitalism is often seen to be the root of the problem. Because capitalism assumes such a determinant force, the only alternatives that we can envision are those possible, given the realities of the class, the capitalist system, but anthropologists have shown the way in which people engage in non capitalist activities, economic activities such as gifting and bartering and exchanging beyond markets, producing cooperatively distributing collectively and democratically interacting with one another and the natural world in ways that are not based on individual resource maximizing self interest. Finally, the. It's important that we think about supporting diversity. What we're seeing are the development of monocultures uniformity homogenization in our world. We should be thinking about what our true our Eskibar calls plural versus struggles against capitalist accumulation such as those put forth by indigenous groups peasants and landless movements. So instead of an idea of a global world in which we're all trying to fit into the same idea of progress and development together, we would want we want to see difference we want to see how the struggles of the zapatista's in Mexico can help us understand strategies for addressing climate change and and the destruction of the earth. And finally, it's important for us here at so as to ensure that we're not just studying these issues but that we're actually contributing to the solutions and to the the way in which they're addressed in both policy circles as well as among wider publics anthropologists. We believe, get out of the classroom and think about the impact of their work on the wider publics and wider world. So I'll just finish with this one slide because I think it says, it kind of encapsulates what we hope to achieve through the MA and global futures. It's by Henry at a more of the UCL's global solidarity unit in conceiving of a sustainable human future we need to do more than think about who we have been and who we are. We need rather urgently to focus on the question of who we are hoping to become, and how we are going to get there. Thanks for your attention. Thank you Catherine I'm sure everyone found that as interesting as I did. Unfortunately, we had hoped that another academic would be joining us sort of the other half of this session today but I've just been told that they're not very well today so our apologies there that unfortunately they can't join us but what I will do is pop their email address in the chat box and send this out to all of you so that if you did have any questions that you can sort of follow them up with her. And also this might be a great opportunity if anyone does have any questions for Catherine that they may want to also pop in the chat and if they want to raise a hand I can also unmute you. But perhaps about this module, it could be about what Catherine was just talking about if you had any sort of follow on questions that might be quite interesting. Or just about the course in general. I'll just pop that in now but yeah if anyone has any questions feel free to also contribute as well. Yeah, sure if you guys have any questions or comments. Please don't be shy. You know I'm happy to answer any questions you have on the program or these topics or tell you a little bit about the courses that are the core courses of the program. Any kind of questions that you might have do feel free to fire them away. Is that somebody in the chatter is that spark a day away. Oh, for for net for the 2122. No, you mean the 2223 academic year. All our lectures right now are online and all tutorials are face to face. They haven't yet made a decision about what will happen in 2223 I would imagine if the levels of COVID remain as they are now we will be resuming face to face, but with COVID you just never know what's going to happen so I would say stay tuned, keep in touch about that. But I think that worse it would be lectures online tutorials face to face the way it is now. What is the type of work that students go on to explore. Oh this is interesting because I run a kind of a seminar series of professionalization series with the end make global future students and just yesterday we have one so this person that came works with the forest peoples program on indigenous basically indigenous rights human rights in Latin America. People have gone this is our first year of the MA global futures and sustainability so I don't know where they're going to go on to but it was previously we had an MA in the anthropology of development. There's a lot of different kinds of work in terms of environmental and social organizations and gos international development that people went on to work in through that program. I'm seeing that these current cohort is also interested in very similar types of work, although there's a few of them that are interested in working and I guess you would call it. It's business but not, you know, not major corporations but businesses that are working on adjusting to certain environmental regulations thinking about how to introduce sustainability measures into their businesses, and so forth so I would say, predominantly I think there's a lot of international aid institutions development organizations and NGOs but with this new core I'm seeing more into kind of, you know, research institutes think tanks and businesses. I'd like to know about the core modules of the anthropology MA. So I'm talking about the MA in global futures and sustainability. So this is different than the MA and social anthropology but just for us for MA of global futures and sustainability you take anthropology of sustainability in term one, you take anthropology of climate change and anthropology and how to change things of course it that focuses on how you move from these ideas to actually making change in the world in term to those are all those three are just your cohort. You also take ethnographic research methods. You also take a theory course on anthropological theory so you're required to take those five courses, and then you have three courses that you can that are known as options which you can take in language or you can take in any other department each department has a list of option courses that make available to people outside their department. So first connect education with activism with the school specifically. Well there's a couple, there's a couple of different ways this occurs for example I also teach on the MA and the anthropology of food. We have directed practical study where students are, you know, we'll work with an organization. For example, you know foraging organization in northern London that's about protecting areas for for public foraging. And we also have a program in migration that students can do an internship on migration with an organization that obviously makes a clear connection between your academic work and your practice. But I would also say, for example in the global futures we do have this course called how to change things where there is an emphasis on advocacy, and what you can do to actually make a difference in the world. Are there usually recordings of lectures even though they are held in person yes every lecture is recorded. What are the main differences with the m a global purchase via the MSc sustainable development course. I think you, is it is the MSc sustainable development in development studies. If you can let me know that I don't know where the MSc sustainable development is but I mean I think that we used to get a very similar course question about what is the difference between the anthropology of development and development studies. I guess it's in the development studies department and I think I think the major difference between these courses is in the approach. I mean anthropology is trying to understand challenge and somewhat problematize the way in which we understand the MSc the world that has led to particular outcomes, particularly with a focus on those who have been marginalized by processes of development or economic growth. Development studies is more apt to be a how to this is this is what sustainability. This is what sustainability means in various places this is how you actually institute sustainability in various programs and practices. So I would say that if you development studies tends to take a more common comments, if you will common sense accepted wisdom orthodox approach to development, whereas anthropology would challenge and question how we've we've come to the place we are. Again anthropology is really focused on how people all over the world construct their worlds construct their cultures. You know that is the focus of anthropology the field work, the knowledge is generated through the process of field work so you don't get that in development studies not to say development studies isn't great but it's a very different approach. How many mature students do you generally have. If you're looking at the anthropology of food, a lot anthropology of food, perhaps, maybe even half. Maybe, maybe, maybe a third, maybe a third hard to know what constitutes mature exactly but in the anthropology of food we tend to have a lot of people that have been out there practicing working, you know whether be in restaurants and pubs and the food industry and you know the whole gamut media. So they then come back to the MA anthropology of food to read to kind of reconnect the ideas that they've developed, but you know by being out there in the world and connecting them with the kind of academic practice. You say the readings and think are studied within the schools diverse southern and northern thinkers absolutely. I mean we've made a big. We had a big push and we're still in the midst of it to decolonize our curriculum, and to decolonize the institution more broadly at so as that is an a principle upon which education is based at so as. And so, you know, you find in most courses that there, there's, you know, as much representation of people from the global south as a global north, in order to kind of rectify the inequalities that you know the asymmetries and knowledge production that have been evidenced in higher education. So, okay that's orchid I don't know what is the focus of the students it's very broad sense. Okay, so it, I mean I could say that just from the anthropology of sustainability module. From ideas around what sustainability is to issues in the Anthropocene and climate change to how particularly extractive industries have contributed to both our miss reading of the environment and society but also the devastation that was brought to the earth as a result of mining and fossil fuel extraction. We talked some some about infrastructure, particularly water, water electricity infrastructure, and the inequalities and accessing infrastructure right efforts to make infrastructure more sustainable through greening the city through green growth. What else do we talk about we talk about food and sustainability. We deal with indigenous communities and the way in which indigenous communities are fighting for the protection of their land and resources. What are the alternative economies, in other words we discuss what are the alternative trajectories that are available to rethink where we are now and how can we achieve that that can be through, you know, whether we're talking about deep growth campaign circular economies, green growth. There's a variety of different sort of policy platforms that have been advanced in other, you know, to basically address the social and environmental challenges we face so we kind of, you know, basically discuss those as a group and critique them and find them. So I'd say in a nutshell what we're doing is really looking at the kind of the on the one hand the problems we face in the world with an unsustainable environmental social and economic model, and then secondly, how those problems are advanced in different places around the world right so that you get a broad perspective from anthropologists who have worked in the global south as well as the global north, and then the third part of the course is focused on okay so what do we do about all this Are BAs required desires for this study? What BAs? No BAs are required or desired. You don't need to have a BA in anthropology and we accept all BAs so there's no specificity there. What is website I can search more about the article in anthropology of social rope by lecture, I'm really interested in anthropology through evidence, what is website I can search more about the article. I want to know. You want to read an article that somebody at SOAS is written. If you go to our department and you hit, you press the toggle for, I think it's faculty or staff. It's one of those people, you know, and then we all have our individual profiles there. You can hit the tab for, press the tab rather sorry, publications and under publications you will see a list of the publications by each of the lecturers. If you're interested in one of them and you can't get access to them do feel free to contact that lecture to get directly saying that you're interested in their work or you know you can contact me and I can see if I can help you to find it. So when you mentioned working with indigenous community of chance again with students. No, I think that so as offers, we don't we do not I don't want to clarify that as part of the anthropology department we do not connect to you directly with different indigenous communities. We have a small dissertation grant small. That allows you to do research for your MA dissertation. But that entails you identifying your own contacts and making arrangements for your own field work we provide advice we provide support. We provide in some cases connections and you know ideas about how you could access different networks in the global south because we're an institution with lots of connections to the global south. But in terms of a sort of a program in which you are a son you are given the opportunity to work with a specific indigenous community. So that kind of internship program we're more like brokers were more in the sense of facilitating your connection with places rather than making that happen for you I hope that makes sense. Hey lovely. We don't have any more questions I think we can wrap up a little early there. We've got another one that's just come in. I'm actually going to be putting a list of readings that I'm going to suggest for people that are that are accepted into the program and want to do a little bit of pre reading. So a good sense of climate change and sustainability I'm not sure that you know the book by Brightman the anthropology of sustainability would be that useful to you and I might suggest that you focus more on the social and human aspects of sustainability in other words how are people in the global south conceptualizing their world. And that might be of more help for you than more sciency stuff. You could contact me directly at CD 17 so as I'd be happy to send you a few things that that you could that you could might find interesting. Can this be approached via art and communities. I guess you mean your dissertation. You can do your dissertation can be focused on you know really anything that is related to sustainability it's very much a broad church. You can include graphics films and things in your dissertation but as a present the dissertation still exists in the narrative form. In other words you would still have to write a dissertation even though you could include. You know different artistic representations in your dissertation so I guess I'm answering that from two different vantage points one is, you could look at our sustainability as part of your, as a focus of your dissertation project, but you wouldn't be able to for example, submit a painting as in lieu of your dissertation. However, you could, you know, include photographs of paintings or images of paintings in it as part of a wider narrative form. Okay, I think that's it for now. Thank you again. My email address is I'll just pop it in. I'll just pop that in the chat. You can see there's one last question that's coming in about internship opportunities. So maybe Catherine if you wouldn't mind finishing with that query, just while typing that in I will plug a session that we have coming up. So if anyone has any remaining questions or they want to talk to anyone from the recruitment team then we will have a session on the 13th of April, it's a live chat session. We will be emailing you about it so today this session was recorded, and we'll also be emailing you with the recording of that so you can rewatch it review it and if you do have any remaining questions, either specifically about the course then do you get in touch with Catherine, or if it's anything to do about your application or sell us more broadly, then you can come along to that session and ask our team as well. Catherine, if you wouldn't mind just quickly talking about internship opportunities. Before that we have an internship opportunity in the MA anthropology of food and in the MA migration studies, which is interdisciplinary not anthropology. We have informal internship opportunities that we have we are, as I mentioned earlier we, this is the first year that we've run the global futures and sustainability MA so we currently don't have an internship program. We are looking to develop one along the lines of the MA anthropology of food I doubt that will be 2223 it may be but it's, it's, it may not be. I did mention also that we have a course called how to change things which is based on advocacy and taking your educational learnings into the real world of practice so it's not an internship but it's similar to, I mean it has a practice focus I should say. Okay, lovely. Well, thank you again for everyone who joined us today and Catherine for her time. And we hope to be seeing some of you at the last very soon. Enjoy the rest of your day and take care. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.