Category: Events

Marcos Pedlowski gives a guest lecture on 11.12.2018:

Tue 11.12.2018: The Brazilian Amazon and the prospects of explosive deforestation after the 2018 presidential elections

The Brazilian Amazon is considered as one of the largest containers of global biodiversity. However, since the early 1960s the region is facing an increased process of perturbation through a combination of outright deforestation for agriculture expansion and different forms of degradation by loggers and miners. After a decade of relatively low rates of deforestation, the Brazilian Amazon is facing an increase in rates of deforestation and forest degradation, mostly because of the expansion of soybeans and sugarcane plantations, cattle raising, mining, logging, and the construction of large hydroelectric plants. The recent election of Mr. Jair Bolsonaro, a vocal opponent of conservation efforts and to the Paris Climate Agreement, will probably increase the pressure on the Brazilian Amazon and the indigenous people living there. Mr. Bolsonaro has already announced that he will dramatically downsize the Ministry of the Environment and place the environmental protection agencies at the Ministry of Agriculture. This move, if confirmed, will increase the prospects of an exponential increase in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This outcome would certainly contribute to weaken the efforts to diminish the pace of climate change.

Time and place: 14:00 – 16:00, Metsätalo, lecture hall 2 (B212), Unioninkatu 40

Dr. Marcos Pedlowski holds a BS in Geography from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (1986), and MSC in Geography from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (1990) and a PhD degree in Environmental Design And Planning from Virginia Tech (1997). Since 1998 he has been an associate professor at the Centro de Ciências do Homem in the Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense in Brazil. Dr. Pedlowski’s interests involve a wide array of topics linked to geographical studies and his research projects focus on the following subjects: land reform, land cover and land use changes; policies of environmental conservation, and urban studies. More information: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YXdaAuYAAAAJ&hl=pt-BR and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marcos_Pedlowski. Dr. Pedlowski is a visiting research in Development Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki in December 2018.

Welcome to the Helsus-Development Studies Seminar:

Lessons from the margin: Indigenous Peace Ecology

– Prof. Alberto Gomes, La Trobe University (AU) and DEEP Network

 

Monday 19th November at 13:00-15:00

Helsus Hub Lounge (Porthania, 2nd floor) or streamed online https://connect.funet.fi/helsus-events/

 

Humanity is confronted with several inter-related crises: ecological, social or humanitarian and growing violence, both direct and structural. Much evidence indicates that solutions implemented to resolve them, from development and modernisation to neoliberalism and sustainable development, have not just failed but paradoxically have exacerbated these crises. Inspired by the life-ways and practices of Indigenous peoples, especially the Orang Asli (Aborigines) in Malaysia, this paper outlines a peace ecology that combines peacebuilding with ecological regenerative strategies. The key contention is that subscribing to an Indigenous peace ecology will foster effective solutions to the triple crisis, entailing a paradigmatic shift from an anthropocentric to an eco-centric perception of nature; from hyper-individualism to a community-focus responsibility; from a competitive outlook to one that is focused on empathy, cooperation, sharing and altruism; and from a growth-fetish to a needs-based regenerative lifestyle.

Alberto Gomes is an Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, Australia, Affiliated Professor at Universitat Jaume 1, Spain, and Global Director of the Dialogue, Empathic Engagement and Peacebuilding (DEEP) Network (https://globaldeepnetwork.org). Well known for his scholarly work on the Orang Asli (Malaysian Aborigines), he has published numerous articles and several books. His books include Modernity and Identity: Asian Illustrations (edited volume, La Trobe University Press, 1994), Malaysia and the Original People (with R. Dentan, K. Endicott, and M. B. Hooker, Allyn and Bacon, 1997), Looking for Money (COAC and Trans Pacific Press, 2004), Modernity and Malaysia: Settling the Menraq Forest Nomads (Routledge, 2007) and Multiethnic Malaysia (edited with Lim Teck Ghee and Azly Rahman, USCI and SIRD, 2009).

Programme:

13:00 Introduction           Paola Minoia, Senior Lecturer, Development Studies

13:15 Presentation          Alberto Gomes

14:00 Discussants:         Karen Heikkilä, Geography

Timo Kaartinen, Professor, Anthropology

14:20 Q&As

Contact: paola.minoia@helsinki.fi

The Discipline of Development Studies of the University of Helsinki cordially invites you to attend a public symposium on contemporary slavery. The symposium begins with a Public Lecture by Professor Kevin Bales on ‘“Unlocking the Science of Slavery”.

Kevin Bales is Professor of Contemporary Slavery in the School of Politics & International Relations, Nottingham University, UK, and Co-Founder of the NGO Free the Slaves, the US Sister organization of Anti-Slavery International. Bales’ book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy published in 1999, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and has now been published in ten other languages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it “a well-researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery”. In 2008 Kevin Bales was invited to address the Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Paris, and to join in the planning of the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative. In 2006 his work was named one of the top “100 World-Changing Discoveries” by the Association of British Universities. The documentary based on his work, which he co-wrote, Slavery: A Global Investigation, won the Peabody Award for 2000 and two Emmy Awards in 2002. He was awarded the Laura Smith Davenport Human Rights Award in 2005; the Judith Sargeant Murray Award for Human Rights in 2004; and the Human Rights Award of the University of Alberta in 2003, and in 2007 his book, Ending Slavery, won the 2011 $100,000 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Promoting World Order. Bales was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, by Loyola University Chicago, in 2010, and a Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa University of Nottingham, 2015. More about Professor Bales can be found here: [https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/people/kevin.bales]

The programme begins at 2pm sharp. After a brief introduction, Professor Bales will give a public lecture, followed by a 45-minute panel discussion, with panelists Terhi Tafari, senior adviser, National Assistance System for Victims of Trafficking, Venla Roth, Senior Officer, Office of the National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings/ Non-Discrimination Ombudsman, and Anniina Jokinen, an expert on trafficking who worked at the Task force on trafficking in human beings at the Council of the Baltic Sea States and is now with The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control. University of Helsinki Professor Barry Gills will chair the event and introduce Professor Bales, whose lecture will provide the global context for the subsequent panel discussion centred on the problem of modern slavery in Finland.

This event is particularly timely and important because, contrary to common perceptions, slavery did not end in the 19th century. It is estimated that contemporary slavery harms more than 40 million people around the world and, although widespread, the prevalence of modern slavery in modern Finland is not well understood.

All are cordially invited without any need for registration!

Additional Details:
Date: November 8, 2018
Venue: Tiedekulma/Think Corner, 2nd floor, Yliopistonkatu 4,
Time: 2-4pm
Refreshments: Organic Coffee and Fair Trade Tea will be served from 16:00 to 16:45.

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/187523292162484/

 

Direct all enquiries to Professor Barry Gills (bkeithgills@gmail.com)

Organising Committee:
Barry Gills, Mira Käkӧnen, Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Eija Ranta, and Anna Salmivaara.

Welcome to listen to a lecture by Dr. Natalia Mamonova on 16 October 2018, at 12.15-13.45, Metsätalo (Unioninkatu 40), sali 12

Abstract:

This study applies the concept of “naive monarchism” (i.e., the traditional peasant expressions of reverence for the tsar as their benefactor) to study contemporary rural politics in authoritarian Russia. While Russia is not a monarchy, and its rural dwellers are not traditional illiterate peasants, the veneration of its leader manifests itself in many rural grievances. I analyse three types of rural politics that have traits of naive monarchism: written petitions to the president, rural pickets and delegations to the Kremlin, and geographical renaming in honour of Vladimir Putin. Grievances, voiced in this way, are rarely subjects of repression from above, as they reinforce presidential authority and the existing order. This raises the question of whether rural dwellers faithfully believe in a benevolent president or intentionally exploit their subordinate position and Putin’s image as the present-day tsar. Whether sincere or strategic, these rural politics aim to enforce the existing state commitments. Although they are unable to challenge the status quo, they provide rural dwellers with a means to remedy occasional local injustices.

Natalia Mamonova is a Research fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme of The Swedish Institute of International Affairs & Affiliated researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Uppsala University, Sweden. She will be a visiting researcher in Development Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki during October 2018.

Wednesday 26 September from 10-12 pm at Metsätalo, room 27

Encountering Europe Otherwise: On the road with postcolonial travellers

Uma Kothari

Professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Vice-Chancellors Fellow, School of Geography, University of Melbourne

With adventure, exploration and travel primarily conceived of as a Euro-American privilege, travellers in the past were identified as those who embarked on voyages motivated by imperial, educational and recreational imperatives. Empire tourism, a specific form of travel that emerged to enable western tourists to experience the landscapes and people written about by earlier travellers, subsequently fueled the production of colonial imaginaries about other people and places. These travel stories, along with academic accounts, have entrenched highly Eurocentric theories about tourism and travel. Drawing on an extended road trip from England to India undertaken by two non-European, Indian travellers in the 1950s this paper challenges this privileging of western tourists and dominant narratives of travel. It highlights the entangled relationships and connections that generated the encounters, experiences and understandings that emerged during their journey. The swirl of larger events and processes that conditioned their travel routes testify to a different era of globalisation in which distinctive connections were being sought and wrought while others were diminishing. As such, their trip, which took place in a specific geo-political and decolonising context, illuminates shifting colonial imaginaries and the forging of new postcolonial networks and their story foregrounds the neglect of non-western forms of mobility.

Uma Kothari is Professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. She is the co-founder of the Manchester Migration Lab and is currently Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is the principal investigator on an ESRC funded project on Environmental Violence and Everyday Lives and her current work includes research on Visual Solidarity and Everyday Humanitarianism and A Cultural History of the Mission to Seafarers. She has published numerous articles and her books include Participation: the new tyranny?,  Development Theory and Practice: critical perspectives, and A Radical History of Development Studies. She is co-editor of the Frontiers of Development book series published by Oxford University Press and is the Vice President of the European Association of Development. She is on the advisory board of In Place of War, a support system for community artistic, creative and cultural organisations in places of conflict and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She was conferred the Royal Geographical Society’s Busk Medal for her contributions to research on global development.

Contact: Paola Minoia (paola.minoia@helsinki.fi)