Webinar held on Wednesday, November 4th from 16:00 (GMT+2)


Discussants:
Prof. Mark Swilling
Prof. Edgar Pieterse
Prof. Johan Schot
Moderator: Dr. Rika Preiser



The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World provides an interpretation of the global economic and ecological crisis from a distinct African perspective. Drawing on a relational epistemology and ontology that emerges from the intersection between contemporary Sub-Saharan African philosophy and western post-humanism, Swilling traverses a vast terrain in order to illustrate his argument that there are multiple transitions already underway at the global, national and local levels. He offers a theory of change that avoids the false promise of superficial reforms (‘greenwash’) and the grandiose claims about ‘structural change’. Instead, he proposes that we need to be radical incrementalists in the way we fuse together real-world experiments and the making of global futures. He argues that the directionality of the global energy transition will shape the way the global political economy evolves beyond the current crisis.

The intellectual and operational bankruptcy of neo-liberal economics opens the way for alternative futures, but these alternatives have yet to consolidate themselves at the global and national levels. They are, however, emerging across all world regions at the local level. This is particularly true when it comes to the emerging commons-based peer-to-peer economies that we see at local and global levels. Unless we understand the complex dynamics of the deep transition already underway, and how this is shaping all our choices about governance, economics, well-being, urban living and cultural norms, we will be ill-equipped for the rapidly unfolding future that we all experience on a daily basis



Mark Swilling is Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Development in the School of Public Leadership, University of Stellenbosch and Co-Director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition. He has co-authored with Eve Annecke Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World, co-edited with Adriana Allen and Andreas Lampis Untamed Urbanism, co-edited with Josephine Musango and Jeremy Wakeford Greening the South African Economy and was the lead author with Ivor Chipkin et. al. of Shadow State: Politics of State Capture. He is a member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel acting as Coordinator of the Cities Working Group and is the Deputy Chair of the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He is co-lead author of The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Sheffield and Utrecht, and in 2018 was the Edward P. Bass Visiting Environmental Scholar at Yale University.


Edgar Pieterse’s research and teaching extends across theoretical and applied concerns. As an urbanist, he is deeply fascinated by the drama of cities everywhere and at different moments in time, including the future, the past and science fiction invocations. Simultaneously, he endeavours to remain grounded in the tough and messy realities of cities—invariably always on the move—working with materialist and aesthetic optics. His own work is rooted in two South African cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town but he also tracks the fortunes of African cities as part of larger discourses on sustainable urban transitions and Southern urbanism. His latest book, New Urban Worlds, co-authored with longstanding collaborator AbdouMaliq Simone, is only the most recent of his prolific work ([ Ссылка ]). His research agenda for the next five years is structured under the broad theme of Adaptive Urbanism with sub-themes spanning Radical Social Economics, Sustainable Infrastructure and many more.


Johan Schot is Professor of Comparative Global History and Sustainability Transitions at the Utrecht University Centre for Global Challenges (UUGLOBE). He is Director of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the Deep Transitions research project. He was previously Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School in the UK from 2014-2018. Johan Schot is an academic entrepreneur that builds bridges between science and practice by applying a transdisciplinary research approach. He is working jointly with actors from different academic disciplines, policy-makers, governments, civil society, NGOs, the media and business world to address the biggest challenges of our times such as climate change and social inequality.


Video: GRYS
Music: AshlamaluevMusic

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