GEPED Folks: This message with links to a new journal article on climate politics has just popped up on the critical geography forum and I thought it would be of interest to many GEPED folks concerned to think about climate change in critical ways.
If you are wondering about the hot US summer, the wet UK summer or extreme events elsewhere these days, and how to complement a discussion of these things with some readings in addition to Naomi Klein's brilliant essay last November in *the Nation* on Climate and Capitalism, this idiosyncratic take on Schmitt, Job, Hobbes and Mao offers very considerable potential. I also am forwarding it in hopes of facilitating more cross disciplinary discussion of climate change. Here some geographers try a "sovereignty" take on climate change that might provoke such a discussion from those on the GEPED list with an interest in political theory. The explanation below in the forwarded message is somewhat lengthy for non-geographers, but in short Antipode is one of the key journals in the disciplne which draws on a number of radical intellectual heritages. For those of you in the GEPED list who know me and haven't yet heard, I am moving on to the Balsillie School of International Affairs where I have a research chair dealing with climate change mostly. As a geographer starting a new job at an interdisciplinary international affairs school, it seems this intervention is timely indeed for my new responsibilities. (Despite my current relocation I plan to continue using this email for most things for the forseeable future.) Simon Dalby ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nik Heynen <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 6:05 AM Subject: Symposium on Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann's ‘Climate Leviathan’ To: [email protected] (Apologies for cross-posting) Dear friends and colleagues, *Antipode* has long been a place where radical ideas not only assemble but also meet with critical responses. The commentaries on David Harvey’s (1972) now-classic “Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary theory in geography and the problem of ghetto formation”, for example, were commissioned because of a feeling that ‘…there is a lack of controversy in most of the geography journals. A journal like *Antipode* is well suited to commentary and argumentation and we welcome comments on the papers we publish’ (Peet 1972: iv). With AntipodeFoundation.org we hope we can facilitate a lot more commentary and argumentation through which lacunae can be identified, threads drawn out and spun on, and searching questions asked. We begin with Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann’s paper ‘Climate Leviathan<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01018.x/abstract>’. Forthcoming in *Antipode* 45(1), and available online now, it’s a singularly ambitious work; it’s original, innovative, tremendously provocative, and it pushes the boundaries of radical scholarship. As such we think it demands, and is deserving of, some open and critical debate, and we’d like to stage a conversation where others can respond to Joel and Geoff and they in turn can reply to the critique levelled. Ultimately we want AntipodeFoundation.org to become a forum where real dialogue happens as a matter of course, where colleagues/comrades feel comfortable discussing each others’ work. So, we’ve made ‘Climate Leviathan’ freely available (it’s open access – no subscription required) until the end of the year and commissioned four responses to it (by Joshua Barkan<http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/barkan_climate-leviathan.pdf>, Patrick Bigger<http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/bigger_climate-leviathan.pdf>, Mazen Labban<http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/labban_climate-leviathan.pdf>, and Larry Lohmann<http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/lohmann_climate-leviathan.pdf>); we now invite shorter comments from readers (you can participate at the bottom of the page), and after a month Geoff and Joel will reply. http://antipodefoundation.org/2012/07/19/symposium-on-geoff-mann-and-joel-wainwrights-climate-leviathan/ We owe a debt of thanks to Joel and Geoff and their interlocutors – Josh, Patrick, Mazen, and Larry. We’d also like to thank Rhiannon Rees and Dexter Santos at Wiley-Blackwell for helping make this symposium happen. In solidarity, The Antipode Editorial Collective -- Simon Dalby, Ph.D. CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change Balsillie School of International Affairs Co-editor of Geopolitics http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14650045.asp http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fgeo Author, Security and Environmental Change http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745642918 "GeopolSimon" on Twitter (The) "disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments." Adam Smith
