EVERYTHING IS CHANGING: CLIMATE, SOCIETY, LANDSCAPES

October 6–7, 2023 Yerevan, Armenia

The canonical definition of the era of modernity goes as follows: “All that is solid melts into air.” In the modern epoch, seemingly eternal traditions and institutions, forms of economic life and social organization collapsed under the onslaught of revolutions, industrialization, and secularization. However, in this definition there is one surprisingly stable element – air. For too long, researchers have assumed that nature is a motionless decoration, a passive object that must be conquered or protected. The current planetary environmental crisis demands that we reconsider our conceptualization of “modernity” as an analytical category. Witness, for example, that as the relationship between human civilization and the environment has taken its place at the center of recent scholarly research agendas and public debates, some have abandoned “modernity” altogether in favor of the neologism “Anthropocene.” Simultaneously, environmental studies, previously a separate, and even marginal, field, has become a pervasive theme in the social and natural sciences. The conference Everything is Changing: Climate, Society, Landscapes aims to contribute to efforts to reappraise the relationship between the environment and “modernity.” We plan to discuss how modern human societies conceptualize, use, destroy, and create ecosystems. Likewise, we seek to reflect on how the material conditionality of modern economies, cultures, politics, and social structures shape and are in turn shaped by nature.

Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Natural and social sciences in the era of the Anthropocene
• Environmental protests and green movements
• Social consequences of natural disasters
• Ecology and war
• Practices of adaptation of indigenous peoples to changing environments
• Urban spaces and loci
• Water-use issues: History, Economy, and Cultural Practices
• Extractivism and the rational use of natural resources
• Terraforming and geoengineering
• (De)sacralization of landscapes
• International Law and Environmental Protection
• Climate change and new waves of migration

The languages of the conference are Armenian, Russian, and English. Please, submit your CV and abstracts (400-500 words) to iae.anthropology@gmail.com or anthroposchool@utmn.ru․ The deadline is August 20, 2023.

The organizers are able to offer a limited number of travel grants covering accommodation. There is no application fee.

School for Environmental and Social Studies (AnthropoSchool), University of Tyumen

Center for Science and Technology Studies (STS Center), European University at St. Petersburg

Department of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography NAS RA

“EUSP Center for International Education" Foundation