Ethics, Ecology, Identity Research Cluster

Description

This cluster forms part of the Politics and International Relations academic team.

There is perhaps no more pressing issue for this generation than Global Climate Change. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased." For many, this and numerous other environmental problems are not simply technical issues, requiring ingenious technological fixes or shallow societal reforms. Instead they are held to bear witness to a deeper ethical and existential malaise concerning the very nature and status of the 'human' and her relationship to the complex, vibrant and multifarious 'nonhuman' world. At issue, therefore, is the ethical, political, ontological and relational form of the human and the other-than-human; at stake is no less than the character, bearing and future tenability of human civilisation.

The newly formed Ethics, Ecology, Identity research cluster provides a focal point for a number of academics engaged in an interdisciplinary manner with issues relating to the nature of ethics, politics and identity, especially as they pertain to the ethics, politics and identity of nature. Members draw upon a wide range of philosophical resources and traditions to develop innovative and rigorous theoretical work that can help them to understand the deeper issues precipitated by global social and ecological challenges. The Cluster research therefore gravitates around three interrelated thematics:

• Theories of identity and difference, taken both conceptually and concretely (via notions of subjectivity and gender).
• Eco-logics: developing more philosophically appropriate, non-centric ways of conceiving the relationship to the other-than-human, and more socially effective ways of engaging with nature through discourses of sustainability and forms of green political activism.
• The interrogation of the nature, and interrelation, of ethics, ontology and the political.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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University affiliation(s)

Nottingham Trent University
50 Shakespeare St
Nottingham
NG1 4FQ

Partner Infrastructures

Environmental Politics Specialist Group

The Environmental Politics membership includes many scholars researching or teaching in the area of environmental politics, broadly conceived.  The Specialist Group in Environmental Politics was … read more about Environmental Politics Specialist Group

Political Studies Association
Unit 2
Regent House, 1-6 Pratt Mews
London
NW1 0AD
United Kingdom