「Energy, Ecology and the Culture of Cities」International Symposium
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張貼時間：2018-11-06 10:43:38
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單位人文與社會科學研究中心
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「Energy, Ecology and the Culture of Cities」International Symposium
About the Symposium
There is a long tradition conceiving of the city as a kind of parasite – the seat of powerful elites which, as geographer Guy Brechin has argued with respect to San Francisco, syphon food, raw materials, and labor from the “contado,” as medieval Italians referred to the territory controlled by a particular city state. Marx and Engels described this uneven relationship in terms of a “metabolic rift,” where the natural fertility of the soil is flushed down urban sinkholes. Contemporary theories of uneven development continue this line of thought. Forests are cut, hills strip-mined, oceans depleted, and the countryside depopulated to feed the city’s maw. The greater the city, the greater its hunger for energy and labor, and the larger its ecological footprint.
But if a city is the visible expression of the energy system which made it possible, it can never be just the opposite of the countryside. Rather, their relationship resembles that between the sporocarp and the mycelium of a fungus: far-flung, barely visible filaments gather nutrients which the fruitbody assembles into a tangible shape – and eventually disperses in the form of spores.
What does the city give back? The obvious answer would be: culture. For this symposium, we invite papers that examine cultural expressions of urban life in terms of their energetic and ecological implications.
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| Time: | November 23-25 |
| Venue: | Humanities Building, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan |
| Keynote speakers: | Ursula K. Heise (UCLA) Chang Chia-ju (CUNY) |
| Registration: | goo.gl/xwsj1A |
| Website: | http://precious-rhinoceros.w5.wpsandbox.pro |
| Organizers: | Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, NCHU Innovation and Development Center of Sustainable Agriculture (IDCSA), NCHU |
| Co-organizers: | Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, NCHU |
About the Symposium
There is a long tradition conceiving of the city as a kind of parasite – the seat of powerful elites which, as geographer Guy Brechin has argued with respect to San Francisco, syphon food, raw materials, and labor from the “contado,” as medieval Italians referred to the territory controlled by a particular city state. Marx and Engels described this uneven relationship in terms of a “metabolic rift,” where the natural fertility of the soil is flushed down urban sinkholes. Contemporary theories of uneven development continue this line of thought. Forests are cut, hills strip-mined, oceans depleted, and the countryside depopulated to feed the city’s maw. The greater the city, the greater its hunger for energy and labor, and the larger its ecological footprint.
But if a city is the visible expression of the energy system which made it possible, it can never be just the opposite of the countryside. Rather, their relationship resembles that between the sporocarp and the mycelium of a fungus: far-flung, barely visible filaments gather nutrients which the fruitbody assembles into a tangible shape – and eventually disperses in the form of spores.
What does the city give back? The obvious answer would be: culture. For this symposium, we invite papers that examine cultural expressions of urban life in terms of their energetic and ecological implications.
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