Surplus: Wealth, Waste and Excess event Friday 21 June, 10am-5pm, Birkbeck MAL B34
Surplus: Wealth, Waste and Excess
Friday 21 June, 10am-5pm Room B34
Birkbeck Main Building, Torrington Sq. WC1E 7HX
Register for free at Eventbrite: http://surplus.eventbrite.co.uk/ Further information from a.colas@bbk.ac.uk
In times of austerity it is especially important to think about surplus. All civilizations have been built on surplus - an economic, political or cultural capital over and above a minimum which a given society requires to survive. But how is such surplus defined and measured? How is it produced and distributed? What indeed is the relationship between wealth and waste, excess and poverty, scarcity and conflict? Surplus consists of cross-disciplinary conversations on some of the most pressing social phenomena of our day, ranging from mass unemployment (or 'redundancy') to the 'irrational exuberance' of financial markets; from 'imperial overstretch' of American foreign policy to the 'social explosion' among marginalised urban populations across the world.
Scarcity, Violence and the Global Politi-cal Economy
Sue Branford, Anders Dahlbeck, Anna Stavrianakis, Erik Swyngedouw
Redundancy, Precarity and Surplus Populations
Danny Dorling, Lisa McKenzie, James Meadway, Alberto Toscano
Waste, Luxury and Excess
Simon Choat, Joel McKim, John Scanlan
Chairs: Alex Colas, Sophie Hope, Esther Leslie