EEI SEMINAR: 'Imperial mode of living and counter-hegemonic struggles' by Ulrich Brand

Title: 'Imperial mode of living and counter-hegemonic struggles'

Speaker: Ulrich Brand, University of Viena

Discussant: Dan O’Neill, University of Leeds

Day: Wednesday, January 17^th 2018

Time: 12.30h

Room: Z/023

Abstract

The concept of “imperial mode of living” attempts to highlight that the current predominance of un-sustainability is sustained by capital and the capitalist state as well as the persistence of resource- and energy-intensive everyday practices. We also want to emphasize with the concept the social and ecological consequences of current dynamics in a North-South context. The imperial mode of living is based on a principally unlimited appropriation of the resources and labour capacity of both the global North and the global South, and of a disproportionate claim to global sinks. In the current constellation of the multiple crisis it contributes to safeguarding social stability in the global North, for example by helping to keep the costs of the reproduction of labour power relatively low, and it provides a hegemonic orientation of development in many societies of the global South. At the same time however, its persistence in the global North and its spread to the rapidly emerging countries of the global South has plunged global environmental politics into a severe crisis, fostering more openly (neo-)imperialist strategies of powerful national states and supranational entities with respect to natural resources and sinks. In that sense, the normality of the imperial mode of living acts as a filter to awareness of the crisis, and as a corridor for its management and it has the effect of making the crisis more acute, just as it makes it processable in a socially and spatially limited dimension. Taking into account the imperial mode of living thus helps to understand the concurrency of persistence and crisis of the neoliberal-imperial constellation as well as to identify starting points for counter-hegemonic struggles.

Bio

Ulrich Brand researches and teaches as professor for International Politics on the subjects globalization and its critique, global governance and transformation of the state, environmental and resource politics as well as social movements at the University of Vienna. He is, amongst others, member of the board of trustees of the Institute Solidary Modernity (ISM), of “Blätter für deutsche und international Politik”, of the scientific advisory board of Attac Germany and of http://mosaik-blog.at/.  He was member of the Expert Commission „Growth, Well-Being, Quality of Life“ of the German Bundestag (January 2011 to June 2013), where he advocated for projects of a leftist political crossover. He is member of the Permanent Working Group “Alternatives to Development”, coordinated by the Quito office of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He was/is involved in the preparation of the International Degrowth Conferences in Leipzig, Budapest and Malmö. One recent publication in Spanish: Acosta, Alberto/Brand, Ulrich (2017): Salidas del laberinto capitalista. Decrecimiento y Postextractivismo. Barcelona: Icaria Publisher, Spain; also published in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. - www.univie.ac.at/intpol