On Environment with Anne Rademacher: “Recomposing Urban Life in an Age of Extinction”
Lecture Series
11.12.2024 at 18:30
Location: A125, LMU Main Building, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich
This lecture will be given by Anne Rademacher (Technical University of Munich).
What happens to urban landscapes when a species disappears? This talk will explore how, in the aftermath of the near extinction of Gyps vultures across India, an urban forest with a long legacy of sacred territory was recomposed—that is, imbued with new narratives of purpose, meaning, and value. It will focus on the social processes that galvanize in response to catastrophic species loss and the environmental alliances that can emerge to renarrate the scale and scope of urban environmental stewardship. By attending to the social process of recomposition, Rademacher will highlight how ethical and political claims can redefine the form, content, and value of nonhuman life in the city—dynamics constitutive of moral ecologies of urban landscape. She will consider how recomposition may be fundamental to the coproduction of ecological change. As social groups realign their relationships to transforming urban environments, they also transform the contours of their own claims to territory, belonging, and stewardship of ideas of the greater urban good. Through the dynamics of recomposition, this talk will demonstrate how human-nonhuman relations are remade in the face of fundamental ecological transformation, sometimes in unexpected ways.
This event is part of the lecture series “On Environment.” The series is organized by the Chair of Environmental Humanities at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.
Environment is a broad conceptual idea with a history and many meanings. Today, the term is used ubiquitously. We are closely connected to what surrounds us and live in an environment more and less shaped by humans. In this series of lectures scholars from different disciplines address the concept, providing a lens into what it may mean to think environmentally.