CrossArea e.V. Annual Conference: Extractivism in comparison

Conference November 24 / 25, 2022

The growing demand for raw materials indicates that extractivism as a social model will continue to shape the political, social, economic and cultural developments of many societies in the Global South. Sustainability strategies in the Global North are further deepening extractivism in the Global South, as the emergence of new "greener" commodities such as lithium and copper already underscores. Extractivism has an impact on international relations and provokes international conflicts, as the war against Ukraine underlines. Within a few weeks, many countries, not only in Europe, began to prepare for supply shortages, review some of their partnerships and initiate debates on resource dependency, energy transition and national security. In short, extractivism is a global phenomenon, and understanding and explaining extractivism remains a challenge for (cross-)area studies, not least because approaches to explaining extractivism differ greatly from region to region, both scientifically and politically. This finding is further reinforced by the current examples of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates once again that the world is globally interconnected and that events in one place inevitably influence the places that connect them. However, reactions to the pandemic have diverged, as have the actual consequences for individuals, social groups and entire societies. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also underscored these global interconnections.

These events pose challenges for current theoretical and methodological approaches in (cross-)area studies in relating global processes and local particularities to one another. The annual conference of CrossArea e.V. aims to discuss the current state of (cross-)area studies, its methodological tools and its future academic role in the research landscape. Based on this discussion, the conference will turn to the topic of extractivism in order to evaluate the significance of supposedly similar patterns of social change in different regions of the world.

The conference will be held in hybrid mode in German and English.

Hybrid mode

The conference will take place in hybrid mode (presence and online). We kindly ask you to register in advance.

Online participation: Please register HERE.

Attendance participation: Please register HERE.

The conference will be held in accordance with the current Covid-19 regulations.

We hope to see many participants on site!

Further information and program
https://extractivism.de/crossarea22/