More than Capitalism: Ecologies of Extraction and Production

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Conference held at ETH Zurich from 2 – 4 of July, 2025

Organised by: Dr. Tomás Bartoletti, ETH Zurich, Senior Lecturer and SNSF-Ambizione Fellow

 

Wednesday 2 July

ETH Main Building, Rämistrasse 101, Zurich

Room: ETH HG F3

 

15:00

Introduction, Tomás Bartoletti, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,  Zurich

15:15 16:45

Panel: Ecological Frictions

– Aparajita Majumdar, Brown University:
«Recalcitrance: How a Failed Commodity Crop Redefines Plant-Human Histories in the India-Bangladesh Borderlands»

– Stuart McCook, University of Guelph:
«Beyond Arabica: Disease, Climate Change, and the Genetic Diversification of Global Coffee Production since 1870”

Break

17:10 – 18:40

Panel: Animals in Mining Environments

– Claudia Leal, Universidad de los Andes
«Endurance: Mules and Long-Distance Commodity Trade in Latin America»

– Elijah Doro, Rachel Carson Centre:
«’What Was it Like to be a Cow?’: 
Gold Mining Capital and More-than-Human Experiences in Southern Rhodesia (Colonial Zimbabwe)»

 

Thursday 3 July

ETH Main Building, Rämistrasse 101, Zurich

Room: ETH HG F3

09:00 – 10:30

Panel: Multispecies Interactions in Plantation Economies

–       Tomás Bartoletti, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,  Zurich:
«Colonial Beetles in the Pacific World: A Multispecies History of Capitalism»

–       Marta Macedo, NOVA University Lisbon:
«Consuming Plantations: More-than-Human Histories of Capitalism in early 20th Century Colonial São Tomé»

Break

11:00 12:30

Keynote: 
Wetlands in the Anthropocene: More-than-human Histories and Rippling Capitalism

by Emily O’Gorman, Macquarie University

Lunch

14:00 15:30

Panel: More-than-human Worlds in Colonial Spaces

– Benoît Henriet, Vrije Universiteit Brussel:
«A Multispecies Contact Zone: Locusts and Humans in Colonial Burundi (1929-1941)»

– Matthew Plishka, Amherst College:
«’Salvage Measures’: Banana Blight and High Modernism in Late-Colonial Jamaica»

Break

16:00 – 16:45

Panel: More-than-human Worlds in Colonial Spaces

– Will Davis, Università della Svizzera italiana: «Topography of Difference: Scaling Stories Between Sumatra and Appenzell»

 

Friday 4 July

ETH Main Building, Rämistrasse 101, Zurich

Room: ETH HG E41

09:00 – 10:30

Panel: Animals in Commodity Frontiers

– Salma Abouelhossein, Harvard University:
«Cattle, Pests, and the Geographies of Social Reproduction in Egypt’s Agrarian Landscape during the 20th Century»

– Hanne Cottyn, Ghent University:
«Yareta, Queñua, and Llamas: A Multispecies Lens on the (Un-)Making of Energy Commodity Frontiers in the High Andes (Chile-Bolivia, first half 20th Century)»

Break

11:00 12:30

Panel: Pests and Biotic Borders

– Quentin Sintès, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,  Zurich:
«Phylloxera Crisis, Biotic Borders and the Advent of a Phytopathological Order in Colonial Algeria (1870s-1910s)»

– Hohee Cho, University of Oxford

«Ecology of Plantations: Coconuts, Animals, and Plants in the Pacific Islands»

Lunch

14:00 – 15:30

Panel: Matters of Commodification

– Utathya Chattopadhyaya, University of California, Santa Barbara:
«Colonial Statistics, Commodity Relations, and Plant Matter»

– Simon Lobach, Geneva Graduate Institute:

«Humans and Microbes Mining Together: Biomining from Secret Alchemy to New Common»

Break

16:00 – 17:30

Roundtable 
Claudia Leal, Universidad de los Andes

Corey D. Ross, University of Basel

Stuart McCook, University of Guelph

 

This conference is generously funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the Ambizione project «Insect Pests and Economic Entomology in Plantations, c. 1870–1930s: A Multispecies History of Global Capitalism», led by Dr. Tomás Bartoletti and supported by the Professorship for the History of the Modern World in the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland.

Organisiert von
Tomás Bartoletti, History of the Modern World, GESS-ETH Zürich
Sprachen der Veranstaltung
Englisch

Kosten

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