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Group

Ethics, Ecology, Identity

Unit(s) of assessment: Social Work and Social Policy

Research theme: Sustainable Futures

School: School of Social Sciences

Overview

This cluster forms part of the Politics and International Relations academic team.

There is perhaps no more pressing issue for this generation than Global Climate Change. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased." For many, this and numerous other environmental problems are not simply technical issues, requiring ingenious technological fixes or shallow societal reforms. Instead they are held to bear witness to a deeper ethical and existential malaise concerning the very nature and status of the 'human' and her relationship to the complex, vibrant and multifarious 'nonhuman' world in which we reside and upon which we depend absolutely. At issue, therefore, is the ethical, political, ontological and relational form of the human and the other-than-human; at stake is no less than the character, bearing and future tenability of human civilisation.

The newly formed Ethics, Ecology, Identity research cluster provides a focal point for a number of academics engaged in an interdisciplinary manner with issues relating to the nature of ethics, politics and identity, especially as they pertain to the ethics, politics and identity of nature. We draw upon a wide range of philosophical resources and traditions to develop innovative and rigorous theoretical work that can help us to understand the deeper issues precipitated by global social and ecological challenges. Our research therefore gravitates around three interrelated thematics:

  1. Theories of identity and difference, taken both conceptually and concretely (via notions of subjectivity and gender).
  2. Eco-logics: developing more philosophically appropriate, non-centric ways of conceiving the relationship to the other-than-human, and more socially effective ways of engaging with nature through discourses of sustainability and forms of green political activism.
  3. The interrogation of the nature, and interrelation, of ethics, ontology and the political.

Collaboration

  • Nottingham Contemporary
  • The Environmental Politics Specialist Group
  • CONCEPT (The Nottingham Centre for Normative Political Theory)
  • Dr Andrew Goffey (University of Nottingham)
  • Prof. Arto Haapala (University of Helsinki)
  • Dr Tom Tyler (Oxford Brookes University)

Publications

Hague, R. (in press) Between the waves: currents in contemporary feminist thought, Political Studies Review.

Hague, R. (2011) Autonomy and Identity: The Politics of Who We Are. London: Routledge.

Harrison, O. (forthcoming), Revolutionary subjectivity in post-Marxist thought: Laclau, Negri, Badiou.
Aldershot. Ashgate Press.

Harrison, O. (2012), Revolutionary subjectivity in post-Marxist thought: the case of Laclau and Badiou, in Johnson, M. ed. (2012), The Legacy of Marxism: Contemporary challenges, conflicts, and developments. London. Continuum. Pp. 183-198.

Harrison, O. (2011), Negri, self-valorization, and the exploration of the common, in Subjectivity, 4 [1], pp. 29-46.

Love, K (ed) (2012) Ethics in Social Research. Bingley: Emerald.

Love K (2012) Toward a Speculative Ethics in Love, K (Ed) Ethics in Social Research. Bingley: Emerald.

Love, K (2010) Technology and the end of ethnography. in New Frontiers in Ethnography. Hillyard S (Ed). Bingley: Emerald Press (Awarded the Emerald Literati Outstanding Author Contribution Prize 2011)

Love, K (2008) Being Startled: Phenomenology at the Edge of Meaning. PhaenEx: revue de théorie et culture existentialistes et phénoménologiques; journal of existential and phenomenological theory and culture. Vol 3 No 2. pp. 149-178.

Love, K (2007) Emanuel Levinas and the Question of Theophany. Angelaki. Journal of Theoretical Humanities. Vol 12 Iss 3. pp. 65-79.

Installations and Exhibitions

Love, K. (2012) Recto-Verso, 27 October 2012, George and Jorgen Gallery London, in association with David Reid and Peter Ainsworth.

Love, K. & Reid, D. (2012) Metaphors of Insularity in Archipelago. Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, 8th-10th February.

Love, K. (2011) Untitled in The Aesthetic Dimension. Royal College of Art (with live webcast), London, 30th June 2011, in association with Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University, Houston.

Lycouris, S. & Love K (2008) Place and Policy in Movement. Multimedia installation in the policy spaces of the Government Office of the East Midlands, Nottingham.