Matthew Soener (Sociology, UIUC), "Global Capitalism, Climate Change, and Emerging Fault Lines"
Wednesday, November 19, 12pm.
Coble Hall 306 & on Zoom.
Description: One important trend in recent decades is the rise in greenhouse gas emissions in the Global South. In this talk, Prof. Soener will first discuss a few perspectives for situating the climate emergency. Rather than frame emissions and related socio-economic problems in sweeping terms, he approaches this issue through historically specific capitalist configurations. This includes the rise of export-led growth, the spread of global value chains, and Washington Consensus policies since the 1980s. He shows that Global South emissions grew under International Monetary Fund lending terms and amid heightened competition in global production. The result has been higher worker exploitation, constraints on decarbonization, and stagnating growth. However, it is also increasingly clear that these same dynamics are giving way to new institutional changes such as the “Wall Street Consensus” and hegemonic rivalry between the US and China, which includes energy investment. What these recent trends mean for decarbonization is not yet clear, but situating it within world-system terms is a helpful start.
Bio: Matthew Soener is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the UIUC. His research focuses on the political economy of climate change, financialization, and inequality. Currently he is working on a project about the reconfiguration of the world economy after the 1973 oil shock.