We need a structural transformation of the modern resource relationship
The discourse of sustainability has dominated global environmental politics for decades and has gained even further traction as the understanding of humanity’s impact on the Earth System has increased. The sustainability challenge posed by the Anthropocene is often represented as a matter of reducing humanity’s use of global natural resources and sinks within certain measurable limits, while ensuring that resources are used efficiently, and the distribution of the utility gained from resource use is just. However, this presentation argues that such quantitative approach to sustainability fails to account for qualitative differences between forms of organizing resource use, or resource relationships. The concept of resource relationship is developed in the speaker’s ongoing dissertation project. A resource relationship is a nexus of relations between ecosystems, processes of social metabolism, and symbolic systems, that make it possible for something to appear as a resource of a certain kind.
The modern resource relationship is distinguished by its tendency to radical simplification of the forms of material exchanges between societies and ecosystems. In the speaker’s dissertation it is argued that these simplifications have been integral for the processes of reorganization and integration of social metabolic orders into the present, ecologically irreflexive and resource intensive world system. To illustrate the need for accounting for the resource relationships in contemporary sustainability issues, the presentation discusses how policies based on exclusively quantitative conception of sustainability tend to lead to unplanned and unsustainable consequences. On the basis of these considerations, the presentation proposes that a sustainable society might not be achievable without a structural transformation of the modern resource relationship as a whole.
PhD researcher Janne Säynäjäkangas
The speaker, Janne Säynäjäkangas, is currently finalizing his dissertation at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥. His dissertation develops the theory of resource relationships by drawing from a number of fields and schools of thought, including postmetaphysical ontology, political economy and ecology, and theories of the commons. In addition to his dissertation research, Säynäjäkangas has also researched pulp capitalism in forest politics, acted as the editor-in-chief of the philosophical magazine Paatos and co-edited a non-fiction book Matkasanakirja hiljaisuuteen (Veijola & Säynäjäkangas 2018). Before embarking on a researcher’s path Säynäjäkangas worked briefly as a subject teacher of philosophy, history, and society at secondary school.
Join us on-site or online
We encourage you to take a moment away from your desk and participate on-site at the House of Wisdom (officially known as the Gardener´s House, J-building), where coffee and tea will be served for all. However, remote participation is also possible. You are warmly welcome to join the event either way!
To join the event remotely, use the link below (passcode 584941). In addition, use your own name as you join to be let in from the waiting room.
