ICS Seminar Series - Manuel Tironi

Date: Thursday, 21 October 2021
Time: 11.30 a.m.–1.00 p.m.
Venue: The seminar will be hosted online via Zoom. Please RSVP to e.blight@westernsydney.edu.au by 20 October, 5:00 p.m., to receive the Zoom details.

Subterranean justice: cosmo-geology, extractivism and unthinkable politics in the Salar de Atacama

Presenter: Associate Professor Manuel Tironi

Abstract

In the Salar de Atacama, northern Chile, two forms of geology clash: the extractive geology of the mining complex against Atacameño extended cosmo-geological relations. In this talk, Manuel Tironi reflects on the consequences of this collision for the perseverance of Atacameño worlds and the (unthinkable) politics needed to counter extractivist violence.

Biography

Manuel Tironi is Associate Professor and convener of the Critical Studies on the Anthropocene group within the Instituto de Sociología at P. Universidad Católica de Chile. He is also principal investigator at the Center for Integrated Research on Disaster Risk Reduction (CIGIDEN) and the Millennium Research Nucleus on Energy and Society (NUMIES). He works at the intersection of environmental sociology, science studies, and political theory to think about ecologies of practice and political conflicts in and with more-than-human worlds. His latest projects have engaged with issues of toxicity, environmental justice, disaster cultures, citizen science, and geological modes of knowing, and he is currently leading a research initiative on Indigenous knowledge and geoclimatic disruptions. His most recent articles have been published in Society and Animals, Sociological Review, Geoforum, and Science Technology & Human Values, and he is co-editor (with Israel Rodríguez-Giralt and Michael Guggenheim) of Disasters and Politics: Materials, Experiments, Preparedness (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), winner of the 2015 Amsterdamska Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology

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