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SUMMARY:Ringing the alarm for a liveable future: Reproductive anxiety and 
 the climate crisis - Katie Dow (University of Cambridge) and Heather McMul
 len (Queen Mary University of London)
DTSTART:20220531T120000Z
DTEND:20220531T130000Z
UID:TALK173831@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Fleur Nash
DESCRIPTION:This paper draws upon analysis of interviews and textual mater
 ials from organisations and forums in the Global North such as BirthStrike
 \, Conceivable Future and No Future No Children which gather pledges\, dec
 larations and testimonials asserting people’s reproductive intentions as
  statements of concern about climate crisis. Out of this material\, urgenc
 y\, precarity and windows of time - from ‘biological clocks’ to the ti
 me left to save the planet - emerge to generate new reproductive imaginari
 es. What happens to reproduction when the horizon of a liveable future is 
 seen to be so radically destabilised? How do people imagine family life an
 d their children’s futures in relation to their expectations of what cli
 mate change will mean? How do these imaginings express concern about futur
 e life in the Anthropocene? \n\nParticipants share a bedrock of common con
 cerns - existential anxiety around an uninhabitable earth\, species extinc
 tions\, water and food shortages\, societal upheaval\, conflict and forced
  migration. However\, from these shared worries\, a wide range of differen
 t responses and reconsiderations appear\, from re-thinking the very local 
 decision of whether to have children\, through to organising politically a
 nd socially to enable more liveable futures. A shared concern for reproduc
 tion thus generates new and diverse visions: of the roots of the crisis\, 
 its solutions\, and what agency and practise might mean in this imagined f
 uture. In this talk\, we will relate these topical conversations to the ki
 nds of broader questions that animate political ecology\, considering whet
 her and how this activism can be understood in relation to reproductive or
  climate justice\, efforts to undo the political economic structures that 
 have created the climate crisis or contest (hetero-)normative expectations
  of kinship and parenthood. 
LOCATION:Delivered online via Zoom
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