Sociologies of Extraction

This event examines how processes of extraction work through, and exacerbate, long-standing inequalities and modes of exploitation. More broadly, it will consider how critical approaches to climate change - specifically from postcolonial and decolonial positions - are needed to counter depoliticized and ahistorical accounts of our current environmental crisis. The speakers will focus on the production and sale of palm oil, and issues of pollution and extractivism.
Speakers:
Dr Su-Ming Khoo is Senior Lecturer and Head of Sociology in the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway), where she also leads the Socio-Economic Impact (Ryan Institute) and Environment, Development and Sustainability (Whitaker Institute) Research Clusters. She researches and teaches on human development, human rights, public goods, development alternatives, decoloniality, global activism, development education and higher education. She is co-editor of four books with Helen Kara: Researching in the Age of COVID-19, Volumes I,II and III (Policy Press, 2020) and Qualitative and Digital Research in Times of Crisis (Bristol University Press, 2021).
Dr Andrea Sempértegui is a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, an incoming assistant professor of politics at Whitman College, and a member of the anti-extractive collective Comunálisis based in Quito, Ecuador.
Dr Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he co-directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).