6:30pm, Skylight Room

Adriana Petryna in conversation with Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Ecosystem changes are happening with surprising speed and within much shorter-than-projected timescales. Anthropologist Adriana Petryna explores the complexities of such abrupt environmental shifts, how scientists conceptualize an unfamiliar and “runaway” nature, and how uncertainty poses a problem of projection and action. Her ethnography engages points where rapidly faltering projections and policies are meeting the neglected dimensions of emergency response, especially around wildfires. Attuned to the political and existential hazards at work in a science of critical transitions and in a fantasy of a borrowed time, Petryna argues for the importance of a distinct kind of intellectual and ethical labor, a horizoning work, amid physical worlds on edge.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY

For more information: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/intellectualpublics