Department seminar: Natalia Buier
The Department of Social Anthropology is happy to announce the upcoming seminar with Natalia Buier, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. The title of the lecture is "Technological modernization, green capitalism and Green New Deals through the prism of the Spanish HSR project".
Main content
Seminar paper
Spain is the European country with the longest high-speed rail (HSR) network, globally surpassed only by China. The development of AVE (Alta Velocidad Española‒Spanish High-Speed Rail) during the last three decades has been hailed as the future of sustainable mobility. It has been influential for the development of ecological modernization agendas in places such as the United States, where the Democratic Party has turned HSR into a pillar of its green agenda.
In spite of the magnitude of the Spanish HSR project, Spain remains a car-dominated society. The share of the railways in the national transport market remains not only low, but below the European average. Through a critical approach to the history of AVE and an analysis of the social relations that underpin its expansion, this presentation challenges the dominant imaginary about the role of HSR in the transition to an environmentally sustainable future. HSR is not an an attempt to transcend the contemporary mobility paradigm, but an expression of the attempts to contain the contradictions that structure the transport market. Historical ethnography casts light on the role of AVE in deepening uneven development and consolidating existing relations of dependency.
About the lecturer
Natalia Buier is Associate at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. Read more about Natalia Buier here.
All interested are welcome!
Join us
Access the digital seminar here
BSAS
Instituttseminaret, kjent som Bergen Social Anthropology Seminars (BSAS), er fagmiljøet i Bergen sitt sentrale forum for dialog og debatt om antropologisk forskning og teoriutvikling.
