On Thursday, March 20th, 2025 at 12:00 PM (CET), we are hosting the CAS SEE Seminar with professor Marcus Wissen on “Everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism” in conversation with the RECAS Fellow Peter Langford.
Johannes Krüger
Marcus Wissen
Markus Wissen is Professor of Social Sciences with a focus on socio-ecological transformation at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR). He teaches and conducts research on society-nature relations, the imperial mode of living, and the labour-ecology nexus. He is a member of the editorial board of PROKLA. Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft and the scientific advisory board of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS). Furthermore, he is involved as spokesperson for the graduate program Crisis and Socio-Ecological Transformation of RLS. His publications include The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism (with Ulrich Brand, London, Verso, 2021) and Capitalism at the Limit. A Political Ecology of a World in Crisis (with Ulrich Brand, Polity Press, London, forthcoming in 2025).
About the Seminar
The concept of the imperial mode of living aims to understand both the persistence and, at the same time, crisis-deepening patterns of production and consumption that are based on an – in principle – unlimited appropriation of the resources and labour capacity of both the global North and the global South, and of a disproportionate claim to global sinks (like forests and oceans in the case of CO2). The increase of productivity and material prosperity in the capitalist centres depends on a world resource system and international division of labour that favours the global North and is rendered invisible through the imperial mode of living so that the domination and power relations it implies are normalized. More recently, the imperial mode of living has been reaching its socio-ecological limits, with the consequence of increasing eco-imperial tensions and social conflicts, but also with the possibility to politicize progressive alternatives.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88989643663?pwd=VnZTOWRmdnl0WEZIdTczc1paZWtkdz09
Meeting ID: 889 8964 3663
Passcode: 328897
Fellowship
Fellowships are supported by OSF Western Balkans, ERSTE Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
UNIRI The Moise Palace: Cres Island
An education center of the University of Rijeka. A five-hundred-year-old patrician townhouse and the largest Renaissance palace on the Croatian islands. A venue and forum for various scientific and research activities, it welcomes visiting academics, students and scholars.
