Agrarian Studies, Climate Change, and the Future of Work
When & Where
Date & Time
Location
Cornell University
700 Clark Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
United States
Overview
The future of work is hot. Literally. Unpredictable seasons, droughts, floods, warming temperatures, rising seas, and a host of other climatic factors are changing what work is, what it means, and what it does to the body. These effects are unevenly felt across geographies and forms of difference.
These effects spill out beyond the factories, fields, and construction sites scholars conventionally associate with legible acts of labor. Self-employed or “informal” workers in cities face new threats from the compounding factors of rising heat and air pollution. Ecotourism sectors have been reconfigured to make climate crisis, extinction, and other consequences of planetary change into sites for “disaster tourism” and consumption. A low-paid service industry coalesces around climate dystopia. The bodily effects of heat and work are newly burdening women, who disproportionately perform unremunerated, devalued reproductive labor in domestic spaces. Questions about the future of work in the context of climate crisis, then, are as much about techno-fixes as they are about home and family.
AGENDA
Breakfast
Introductory Remarks by Sarah Besky (Cornell)
Harnessing and Containing Insects Amidst Climate Change
Ectothermic Horizons: Climate Change, Vectorborne Diseases and The Humble Brick, Ann Kelly (King’s College London) and Liz McCormick (North Carolina – Charlotte)
The Appetites of Armigera: Bio-economies of Hybrid Cotton in Central India, Aarti Sethi (UC Berkeley)
Title TBA, Jamie Cross (Glasgow)
Break
Extraction and Decolonization: Land, Labor and Agriculture in the Global South
Agrarian Change from Palestine: Devaluations of Land, Labor, and Environment, Paul Kohlbry (Cornell)
The Costs of Unimagined Transitions and the Clash over Agricultural Price Policy in India, Mekhala Krishnamurthy (Ashoka)
Green Extractivism and the Carbon Rush: Expropriation of Emission Rights and the “Hidden” Role of Labor, Natacha Bruna (Cornell)
Lunch
Experiencing Heat: Vulnerabilities, Measurement and Management of Labor
Caliente: Navigating Heat in Fluvial Colombia, Austin Zeiderman (LSE)
Reframing Heat Vulnerability, Ashley Carse (Vanderbilt), co-authored with Zachary Wampler
Atmospheric Fixes and Climate Equity in Sugarcane Plantations, Alex Nading (Cornell)
Contested Mangroves: Agrarian Justice and the Climate Change Adaptation Regime, Diana Ojeda (Indiana – Bloomington)
Reception
