Events

This symposium is jointly organized by the Science, Technology & Society (STS) Clusters at Asia Research Institute, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore.

A new legal agreement for tackling climate change was agreed to by the global community in Paris last November. In the meantime, critical social sciences and humanities have long been exploring interpretive dimensions of climate change and its different possible worlds. What insights do the interpretive human sciences bring to bear on the anthropogenic climate and the global orders it has engendered? Does Paris make a difference for our understanding of climate change and society? Fundamental questions hinge on our epistemic capacities to model and predict. And yet the in vivo experiment of annually pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere continues to outstrip and out-perform our meager imagination of climate change futures. This past year, 2015, was likely the last year that atmospheric carbon dioxide will ever drop below 400 parts-per-million for the indefinite future. As we ask if Paris makes a difference, we may wonder whether anthropogenic climates leave any hope of global order.

PROGRAM

PANEL 1 – GEOLOGY OF MANKIND

The Anthropocene and the Limits of Experience: Or Why It is So Hard to be Human in the ‘Geology of Mankind’
Mabel Wong | University Scholars Programme, NUS

When All That is Urban Melts into Air: Concrete and Climate Change after Paris
Eli Elinoff | Asia Research Institute & Department of Sociology, NUS

The Indefinite Future: Accounting for Atmosphere before Paris
Jerome Whitington | Asia Research Institute & Tembusu College, NUS

PANEL 2 – GLOBAL ORDERS

How Not to Talk About Climate Change
Matthew Lepori | Department of Political Science, NUS

Prospects for Alternative (Agrarian) Modernities in the Age of Capitalist Natures
Lee Zhe Yu | Tembusu College, NUS

PANEL 3 – IMAGINATIVE FUTURES

Climate Models and the Limits of the Anthropocenic Imagination
Axel Gelfert | Department of Philosophy, NUS

Blue Skies: Readiness in the Anthropocene
Eric Kerr | Asia Research Institute & Tembusu College, NUS
Malini Sur | Asia Research Institute, NUS

REGISTRATION

Due to limited seats. We would gratefully request that you RSVP to fasssts@nus.edu.sg indicating your name, organization, and email address.