Call for Abstracts

(De)nat­ur­al­ising Ex­tract­iv­ism: In­vest­ig­at­ing its so­cial or­ders and res­ist­ances

Online conference on 20-21 October 2020

Keyowords: Extractivism, Capital, Dispossession, Commodification, Decolonisation, Resistance, (De)naturalisation

The 7th Annual Conference for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences & the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change explores the (de)naturalisations of extractivist practices. Extractivism refers both to material extraction of natural resources prevalent in industries such as mining and agribusiness, as well as old and new extractivist practices forming around e.g. data, cultures, knowledge, and bodies. We understand extractivism as inherently linked with the operations of capital, but also with the shaping of social processes. Our conference asks how extractive practices — and the industries and capital enacting them — are made out to be part of a naturalised and thus often invisible social order. We also wish to bring forth perspectives on how such naturalisations are resisted and deconstructed in diverse discourses and practices, in and beyond decolonial research and activism.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological papers discussing the social orders that produce and reproduce extractivism in all its forms, and the ways they are debated, resisted, and made visible. We hope to attract diverse methodological and disciplinary inputs into these questions. We also encourage you to reflect upon the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on different forms of extractivism and decolonial research and activism. Are we going to face a post-pandemic world after a rapid reconfiguration of values and social orders or are we going to slowly return to the pre-pandemic status quo?

The following themes are (non-exclusive) examples of the kind of topics the submissions might engage with:

  • Commodification of identity, bodies, cultures and environment
  • Interconnections and disassociations between coloniality and extractivism
  • Global and local practices of resistance
  • Extractivism as a concept - could it be useful in my research?
  • Environmental and Indigenous rights and extractivism
  • Knowledge extractivism in the neoliberal academia and alternative ways of knowledge production in research
  • Exclusion and dehumanization in extractivist logics
  • Extractivism and corporate social responsibility
  • Global power relations in labour extractivism
  • Data extractivism and surveillance capitalism

We warmly welcome doctoral candidates from the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences and the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change at the University of Helsinki to propose papers.

The 7th Annual Conference for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences & the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change is organized as an online pre-conference to the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT) Symposium 2020.

The deadline for abstract submission was 31st August 2020.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact exalt@helsinki.fi.