INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY
PROGRAM 2025
Monday 30.6.
CRISIS
8:30 Registration
ANDREJ LUKŠIČ: Democracy from yelling to dialogue
BOŠTJAN REMIC: From inequality to strategy through political ecology
Ecosocialism Agains the Crisis of Capitalism
Today’s economic and ecological crises are not exceptions to an otherwise functioning system but integral to its operation. It is naive to see these upheavals as opportunities for reform or revolution. They are the bedrock of the status quo. Fortunately, the vicious circle sustaining capitalism is not founded on an iron law. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to create a historical exception to the rule. Capitalism produces crises and crises reproduce capitalism. We need an ecosocialist way out.
This lecture will present a framework for understanding the crises of capitalism and offer reflections on what an ecosocialist response to the climate crisis could be: why we must begin with the assumption that crises themselves do not work to our advantage, how stark binaries between socialist eco-modernism and degrowth obscure necessary complexity, and how climate activism is (most often) class struggle.
12:00 Lunch
Reproduction of social relationships as orientation framework for ecologic strategies and tactics
In Trump’s world of high uncertainty we should not bind ecologic movements whose objective is de-growth to Green transition as immediate concern. Long-term strategies and tactics are necessary, taking into account multi-level complexity of social processes of environment transformation.
Reproduction of social relationships /RSR/ is hereby treated as an ensemble of intertwined processes of preservation/transformation of environment and of social relations on levels from personal across local and state level to global; everywhere as social (cultural, political) as well as biological in character. These processes are spatialized differently on different levels (e.g. concentrated vs. dispersed). Its temporal modes also differ (e.g. singularity vs. repeatability, different intensity).
The Ecological weight of a social practice is more than a sum of its individual carbon (or digital) footprints. On different spatial levels it has different economic implications; on each level its dependence on political framework, group identities and cultural patterns is different; on each level modes of communication are different. Considered on the plane of someone’s Lebenswelt, its physical conditions and biological consequences in space and time are different to when mediated impact of her/his social bonds on biotic and abiotic ecological process on the Earth is considered.
The RPR scheme should make easier building strategies and tactics. Each point at each level is a crossing of relations open to examination either vertically among levels, and/or among actors on each level here and now in space-time. The immediate concern is to understand better embeddedness of individual engagement in unstable environment of institutions.
14:30 Coffee Break
Discussions on strategic issues often take into consideration tactics and methods, as these levels are interlinked in practice. In theory, the hierarchy is clear: strategy should determine tactics, and tactics should determine methods. Strategy should determine our long-term orientation, tactics our steps in that direction and methods our ways of moving forward. However, a few tactical successes can change the strategic objectives, and the use of certain methods can influence the tactical capabilities of future efforts. Or are methods just neutral modes of action that we select from a set of known modes of action? Is the use of shocking symbolic actions in museums, court proceedings, mass protests and occupations the same from a strategic point of view?
The participants bring to the Summer School a wealth of experience and knowledge of the different campaigns and actions we are taking to address the environmental crisis in a just way. In this workshop, we will try to reflect on these experiences and discover any possible links between the methods, tactics and strategies that shape the successes and failures of diverse progressive actors in the struggle for a good life within planetary boundaries.
Moderator: Saša Kralj
At the end of the first day, we invite you to meet us over drinks and snacks. It will take place in the Faculty lobby or in the garden next to the Faculty (weather permitting).
Tuesday 1.7.
GLOBAL PROCESSES
A subaltern perspective on grassroots efforts towards ecological civilization
Since the concept of “ecological civilization” was written into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2018, it has been promoted as the state’s key strategy in response to developmentalism and environmental degradation. What could this mean for China and for the world? The lecture will explore the challenges and possibilities, stress the importance of taking a subaltern perspective, and highlight the efforts of grassroots communities in charting a viable path for ecological civilization.
10:30 Coffee Break
Navigating Europe's Polycrisis Towards Postcapitalist Transformation
This lecture will explore the challenges and opportunities that the unfolding polycrisis creates for movements seeking postcapitalist transformation, focusing predominantly on the European context. It will argue that polycrisis analysis is needed to illuminate the political possibility space and identify obstacles and trade-offs that counter-hegemonic movements must navigate.
First I will analyze Europe’s ongoing polycrisis, focusing on some of the key intersections between the climate crisis, economic stagnation, energy and food crises, care crises, a crisis of democracy, the war in Ukraine, and Trumpian trade wars.
econd, I will briefly discuss how these intersecting challenges are currently being framed by EU policy elites and why their proposed responses will almost certainly fail to adequately address this polycrisis.
Third, I will explore four alternative futures for Europe:
1) social democratic reform with deepening European integration;
2) postcapitalist and postgrowth transformation with deepening European integration;
3) social democratic reform in the context of EU fragmentation;
4) postcapitalist and postgrowth transformation in the context of EU fragmentation
I will discuss the various trade-offs and risks that each scenario would confront, as well as the counter-hegemonic coalitions and strategies that might make them attainable. I will argue that while scenario 2 is the most desirable future it is also by far the least likely to materialize, while scenario 4 is most likely the only politically plausible scenario for postcapitalist transformation in Europe, though it faces numerous obstacles and trade-offs of its own.
12:30 Lunch
Mobilising against the ecological costs of imperialism and war
Warfare, including investment in and maintenance of military infrastructure, are crucial drivers of global carbon emissions and environmental destruction. The escalation of the threat of war in the Middle East, starting with the ongoing destruction of Palestine by Israel and the US, the proxy war with Ukraine and the ramping up of military mobilisation against China, means potential increases in emissions on a massive scale. Yet the ecological costs of imperialism are underemphasised.
Military budgets and national security are seemingly beyond scrutiny. In the UK, defence spending will increase to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 and 3% by 2030 – at the expense of overseas aid and national welfare. Apart from national security, spending is justified on the spurious grounds of job creation. But weapons manufacturing is estimated to employ a mere 135,000 people directly. Most workers are supportive of transitioning out of the defence industry if it means good jobs, fair wages and retraining opportunities. Yet the general approach of union bureaucracies has been to prioritise immediate economic concerns over serious discussion of either the military-industrial complex or the climate crisis.
This lecture considers the ecological dimensions of imperialist war, assesses the ecological damage of these wars and suggests what a just green transition in the defence industry might involve. Ultimately, if addressing the climate crisis is impossible without demilitarisation, then a just transition requires not only the participation and mobilisation of workers in the industry but also the building of anti-imperialist movements.
15:00 Coffee Break
Doctoral students will briefly present the main theses and ideas of their work or articles.
- Deni Dagalev, Giulia Di Martino, Selma Hasić, Domen Žalac
Moderator: Sultana Jovanovska
The Poster Fair is a space for the presentation and exchange of ideas, which participants will present in the form of posters. Posters are open to everyone (a template will be sent to those wishing to attend) and Master's students who are part of the accredited programme will present their work through these posters. The visual presentations are used as cues for more detailed explorations and discussions.
Submit your poster here: https://forms.gle/
In the evenings, we will continue our discussions and debates in a more relaxed envionment. Come grab a beer or lemonade at the SEM café.
Wednesday 2.7.
WORKER STRUGGLES
Workers and Capitalocene: In and against the ecological crisis
We are in the ecological crisis, and not just as victims of an environmental devastation that is unequally distributed along intersecting hierarchies of class, ‘race’ and gender on a global scale. We are part of the crisis because in our society the vast majority of us rely on capitalist work (our own or that of others) to pay for the things we need to survive. This means we also depend on the infinite growth of commodity production that defines capitalism and drives the ecological crisis.
In particular, the reproduction of the working class as a class is tied to the reproduction of capital as a social relation, and vice versa. Nonetheless, workers’ insertion in capital accumulation also has an antagonistic face, rooted in their very separation from the means of production. Therefore, labour is potentially a crucial collective actor needed to address the ecological crisis.
This presentation uses the tools of operaista class composition analysis, along with the example of Porto Marghera workers’ struggles against noxiousness in Italy’s Long 1968 and the more recent dispute by Florence’s Ex GKN automotive workers for an ecological conversion from below, to explore the transformations of the global working class over the last decades, offering insights on the possibilities for convergence between workplace and community mobilisations for alternatives to the jobs versus environment dilemma, against the ecological crisis.
10:30 Coffee Break
Movement-level strategies from the bottom and to the left: climate jobs campaign
That the climate justice movement ecosystem needs, simultaneously, a mass movement and a transformative ambition is trivial at this point of the climate emergency combined with the outright authoritarian turn of governments. So someone(s) will have to build exactly that. Yet, repeating this trivial observation without a strategic intervention (intellectualism or theoretical hygiene) and without a clear grasp of the movement ecosystem (reducing it to an amorphous "diversity" where every approach is accepted equally) doesn't change our reality.
This is propositional session, at the starting point of which lie a deep sense of frustration, anxiety and responsibility. We will first discuss what movement-level strategy means, using the tools introduced in the recently published book "All In: a revolutionary theory to stop climate collapse". Then we will explore the concrete experience of the climate jobs campaign building a unifying framework for trade unions and climate justice groups. These campaigns, launched after 2010, have been developed in different countries and have experienced different degrees of success and failure.
12:30 Lunch
When can a strategy be considered successful? Any breakthrough must continue to exist within the framework of the socio-environmental relations that constrain new practices. However, the struggle for survival itself is not generally the strategic goal of an endeavour; the goal is usually the transformation or elimination of these relationships. Examples of successful breakthroughs are of the utmost importance, as they open up the theoretical and practical horizon for breaking away from defensive efforts or attempts to mitigate the worst excesses of society. However, these examples should not be considered pure gold, i.e. as perfect models that can be imitated. Instead, we need to reflect on both the conditions of their breakthrough and their strategic adequacy. At the same time, success must be seen above all as taking the struggle to a higher or more sophisticated level, which brings about a new need to make strategic choices under the new conditions these breakthroughs have helped to co-create.
Moderator: Luka Mofardin
15:00 Coffee Break
Doctoral students will briefly present the main theses and ideas of their work or articles.
- Loris Petrini, Dejan Juhart, Nevio Moreschi, Beatrice Colombo
Moderator: Sultana Jovanovska
Participants will decide on the content and the course of the discussions. Every year, during the summer school, some hypotheses and ideas come up and we run out of time to look at them in more detail. We will provide three or four rooms and a supervisor or administrator for the Wednesday afternoon session, who will be found from among our regular participants. We will only give you a tentative topic for the discussions in advance, to help you find your way around and decide on one of the spaces.
In the evenings, we will continue our discussions and debates in a more relaxed envionment. Come grab a beer or lemonade at the SEM café.
THURSDAY 3.7.
FOOD / ENERGY
Edible Revolutions: Food, Power, and Postcapitalist Struggles
What is the role of food in socio-ecological postcapitalist transformation? This lecture critically examines the tensions inherent in food activism, focusing on the theoretical and practical dimensions of food justice and food sovereignty. It explores divergent approaches to power, the State, and community, assessing their implications for systemic change. Furthermore, it interrogates the intersections between alternative food networks, social movement formation, and alliance-building through the principle of “unity in diversity,” emphasizing their role in fostering radical subjectivities and advancing emancipatory futures.
10:30 Coffee Break
Rural Regeneration in China
This talk argues for the Chinese rural regeneration strategies amid the implosion of financial imperialism. It also provides examples of innovative technological experiments for ecological transformation, and of the strengthening collective village economy for rural revitalization.
Towards postcapitalist renewable energy development: considerations and practices
Socioecological devastation from capitalogenic environmental and climate change is already here. Hegemonic, techno-managerial approaches to mitigate climate change, such as large-scale renewable energy projects, intensify capitalism, creating further devastation. A plethora of initiatives, struggles and praxes across the world actively contest them animating different worlds based on caring relations. Drawing from the “Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE)” approach, the talk will focus on reconceptualizations, practices and strategies for transitioning towards postcapitalist renewable energy development based on commoning that supports emancipation, pluriversal world-making and more flourishing socioecologies.
We will explore questions such as how can we rethink ‘renewable energy’ to support difference, autonomy and thriving futures? What insights do transformative initiatives (on energy) bring? How can we practically build renewable energy projects based on commoning and caring relations? What kind of politics and strategies are needed for egalitarian renewable energy systems and how can such politics and strategies nourish broader socioecological change?
13:00 Lunch
Over the last decade, scientific and research institutions have been intensively becoming greener. The environmental crisis has become one of the central pillars of modern curricula. At the same time, however, the study of the environmental crisis and the green transition seems to be undergoing an increasingly clear demarcation, with knowledge (including outwardly critical forms) remaining firmly within academic or technocratic frameworks. How can we, as researchers, break out of these circumstances and contribute to a socio-environmental transformation that serves the interests of the majority? Or to turn the question around: how can activism, which takes on the forms of actionism because of its disconnection from critical theory, be linked to exploring the conditions of progressive practical action that can galvanise the masses in the pursuit of a just green transition?
The debate, which will open with two contributions on co-research and participatory action research, will highlight an alternative approach to research and knowledge production. In this case, the researchers are no longer external "sages" who determine which issues have social relevance, but formulate the essential questions together with the researched group. At the same time, the researchers are not separated from the social reality of the object of their research: in the course of research, people are no longer objects, but participants in the research, thus becoming researchers of their own situation. The knowledge that is produced can take on an emancipatory dimension. The researchers engage in social struggles and use the megaphone of critical theory to articulate the struggles for a just green transition from below, thus contributing to forming the subjects of these struggles.
Panelists: Rita Calvario, Lorenzo Feltrin
Moderator: Boštjan Remic
15:15 Coffee Break
Doctoral students will briefly present the main theses and ideas of their work or articles.
- Jeremy Lienaert, Rio Alfajri, Daria Laricheva, Santos Catarina
Moderator: Sultana Jovanovska
On Thursday, July 3, at 18.00 we invite you to go with us on a cycle excursion through some of the central parts of Ljubljana. We will cycle in a ca. 10km circle with start and finish at the Environmental center for NGOs (Trubarjeva cesta 50).
On the way, you will be able to form your own opinion whether Ljubljana and its inhabitants have found good strategies to address the climate crisis. We will visit different community initiatives and concrete climate projects. The character of the tour is non-sporty, easygoing, informative, and you get the chance to see some of Ljubljana's main sights along the way.
The tour will be guided by Umanotera, the Slovenian Foundation for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with local experts. For logistical reasons, the number of participants is limited to 25. Participants without a bike will get rental bikes free of charge.
Tour guide: Jonas Sonnenschein
A unique alternative tour of Ljubljana, running regularly since 2017. Although it doesn't skimp on the classic attractions, it is packed with alternative art, independent lifestyle hot spots and engaging political insights. The tour combines street culture and historical monuments, avant-garde spaces and old town haunts, graffiti-covered facades and the bridges of the Ljubljanica. It also takes you, of course, to the heart of Metelkova and what once was the famous Rog factory.
Organized byhttps://ptich.si/.
Admission fee is 10 EUR.
In the evenings, we will continue our discussions and debates in a more relaxed envionment. Come grab a beer or lemonade at the SEM café.
Friday 4.7.
DEGROWTH
Degrowth strategies for socio-ecological transformation
How can socio-ecological transformation come about? This lecture will address this question by drawing on the academic-activist discussion on degrowth. Degrowth has been mobilised to show why perpetual pursuit of economic growth is problematic and to elaborate what alternatives to growth and capitalism look like, putting ecological sustainability, social justice and wellbeing to the forefront. Recently, the question how to foster these alternatives and bring about socio-ecological transformation of our societies – namely the question of strategy – has become key. This lecture introduces strategy as a dynamic concept and argues for the importance to think about it analytically. Building on whilst diverging from the vocabulary of Erik Olin Wright, it lays out three modes of transformation, their corresponding strategic logics, as well as dynamics between them, helping to orient, decide and reflect on strategic configurations in different contexts.
10:30 Coffee Break
Doctoral students will briefly present the main theses and ideas of their work or articles.
- Sumiran Rastogi & Balbina Nyamakura, Isa Sánchez Cecilia, Janette Kotivirta, Davorin Žnidarič
Moderator: Sultana Jovanovska
11:45 Coffee Break
The closing discussion will reflect on the summer school, discuss new concepts and exchange ideas for future efforts toward a just green transition.
Based on the papers prepared by the PhD students, we will extract some key theses that will serve as a framework for discussing strategies and tactics.
Moderators: Boštjan Remic, Sultana Jovanovska
13:30 Lunch
LAU KIN CHI
is one of the founding members of Global University for Sustainability, and director of its executive team. She teaches at Lingnan University and is a board member of PeaceWomen Across the Globe. She has written on China’s ecological and socio-economic sustainability, the Fukushima catastrophe, the Zapatistas, traditional Chinese medicine, alternative theories and practices, women’s movements, and subaltern studies.
RITA CALVARIO
is an integrated researcher at DINÂMIA'CET-Iscte, the Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies at the University of Lisbon. With extensive experience in rural sociology, peasant studies, and political ecology, her work primarily focuses on rural social movements, agrarian change, food transitions and alternatives, and the power dynamics within agrifood systems, particularly in Southern Europe.
SINAN EDEN
is an activist in Climáximo with a wide range of experience from direct action to alliance building, from mobilization to international work, in a variety of topics including just transition, climate justice, energy democracy, political ecology, social movements, strategy and organization. Sinan is the co-author of the recently published book »All In: a revolutionary theory to stop climate collapse« on movement-level strategy and organization.
ZOI CHRISTINA SIAMATA
is a human geographer and political ecologist, currently collaborating with the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research and publications focus on so-called renewables and energy transitions in terms of both critique and transformative alternatives.
EKATERINA CHERTKOVSKAYA
is a researcher based at Lund University working on degrowth and critical organisation studies, with a focus on strategies for social-ecological transformation. She co-edited »Degrowth & Strategy« and »Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth«.
MICHAEL J. ALBERT
is a lecturer in Global Environmental Politics at the University of Edinburgh. His first book - called »Navigating the Polycrisis: Mapping the Futures of Capitalism and the Earth« - investigates the possible futures of the world-system in an age of intersecting crises and imagines pathways of socio-ecological transformation beyond capitalism.
LORENZO FELTRIN
is a Marie Curie Global Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice’s Department of Humanities. His research interests are in the areas of labour, social movements, and political ecology. His current project relates to the political economy of phosphate and the history of labour and environmental conflicts in Porto Marghera, Venice.
JOŽE VOGRINC
is a retired sociologist. He taught at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where he lectured, among other things, on social change and development; he is now interested in historical materialism as a theory of the reproduction of social relations.
FEYZI ISMAIL
teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests include the politics of protest, labour and the climate crisis, social movement strategy and organising, NGOs, and anti-imperialism. She is active in the British anti-war and trade union movements.
SIT TSUI (MARGARET JADE)
is an associate professor at the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, Chongqing, China. She is a board member of Asian Regional Exchanges for New Alternatives (ARENA). She is one of founding members of Global University for Sustainability and a core member of the current rural reconstruction movement (2000 – the present) in China.
STÅLE HOLGERSEN
is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. His most recent book is Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World. Holgersen has previously published numerous books, including White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (with The Zetkin Collective and Andreas Malm), and co-edited Political Ecologies of the Far Right: Fanning the Flames. His current research interests include urban planning and development, class, crises and climate, urban and social geography, and sustainable development and climate denialism.
ORGANISERS
Contact
- info@politicalecology-ljubljana.si
Links
Co-funders
LIFE IP CARE4CLIMATE (LIFE17 IPC/SI/000007) is an integrated project, financed by the European Comission's LIFE Programme, the Slovenian Climate Fund and partners' own contributions.
The opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and should not be considered as representative of the European Union's official position.
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