The unfolding climate catastrophe provides one of the starkest contexts for understanding the continuing legacies of colonialism within contemporary societies. It took over thirty years, from the first report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for the word ‘colonialism’ to enter its official lexicon. Even where colonialism is mentioned, it is often used as metaphor to describe a variety of acts of domination and control in relation to climate change. The direct and continuing significance of colonialism to climate change is less often articulated. In this talk, I take a historical sociological perspective to the broader topic via an account of the colonial political economy of the British empire in India and its relationship to famine. Famine is of fundamental importance precisely because it is what climate change threatens for a significant proportion of the world’s population. While Amartya Sen has famously argued that democracy is the necessary condition for ending famines, this does not account for the fact that Britain claimed to be a democracy across the period of colonial rule when it was producing famines in India. I focus on the relationship between colonialism and democracy in the context of climate change to ask what is politically necessary to address this situation.
Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Historical Sociology at the University of Sussex. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society and has written extensively on the relationship, and significance, of colonialism to the structure of the social sciences. Her latest research project is on ‘Varieties of Empire’ and she is also lead editor of a forthcoming textbook,The Modern World after Colonialism.
Zoom details:
Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86848164064?pwd=309iF9VxOLdxraz7FR23VNoECHfQuU.1
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