Jason W. Moore
Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University

The rise of capitalism after 1450 marked a turning point in the history of humanity's relation with the rest of nature. It was greater than any watershed since the rise of agriculture and the first cities. In relational terms, it was even greater than the rise of the steam engine. This history has assumed new salience in an era of runaway global warming and the Anthropocene narrative, which purports to explain the origins and prime movers behind such deepening planetary instability. In this talk, environmental historian Jason W. Moore explains why and how the early modern origins of capitalism, understood as a world-ecology of power, capital, and nature, have shaped the crises of the twenty-first century.

Jason W. Moore is an environmental historian and world historian at Binghamton University, where he is Associate Professor of Sociology and Research Fellow at the Fernand Braudel Center. He is author of Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015) and editor of Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (PM Press, 2016). He is presently completing Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism, an environmental history of the rise of capitalism, and with Raj Patel, Seven Cheap Things: A World-Ecological Manifesto, both for the University of California Press. He is coordinator of the World-Ecology Research Network.

Thursday, September 29, 4:30pm • Downey 113

For further information about the event or the Certificate, please contact Professor Matthew Garrett (mcgarrett@wesleyan.edu).