Climate change and the 'crisis of reason'
A symposium to honour the life and work of val plumwood
9am - 5pm, 20 June 2008
Fenner School of Environment and Society
CRES Seminar Room
Hancock Building (West)
Australian National University
(location)
Fenner School of Environment and Society
CRES Seminar Room
Hancock Building (West)
Australian National University
(location)
Dr Val Plumwood worked at the leading edge of eco-philosophy nationally and globally. Like many people, she could see that the way of life developed in the western world was not only unsustainable but was so destructive that it would take an unimaginably terrible toll on the natural world. Her analysis started with the anthropocentrism of western ethics and practice, and its devastating effects. Her feminist analysis connected the logic of the oppression of women and minorities with the logic of the oppression of the natural world. Her commitment at all times was to an environmental ethic that would include humans within the natural world and that would lead toward a new culture of connectivity and responsibility. In living her vision she was an activist and an ardent lover of the natural world. Now that the evidence for global climate change is taking the foreground in public discussions, we need ever more urgently to connect human cultures, practices and life values with other living beings, ecosystems, and global systems. In this symposium, climate change will be viewed and reconsidered from within the theoretical frame of reference that she provided.
Speakers include Will Steffen (Climate Science, Fenner School of Environment and Society, ANU), Freya Mathews (Philosophy, Latrobe), Kate Rigby (Eco-criticism, Monash), John Dryzek (Political Science, ANU), Judith Ajani (Ecological Economics, Fenner School, ANU), Thom van Dooren (Science and Technology Studies, University of Hull, UK).
