We're very fortunate to have Jason Cons from the University of Texas at Austin visit us and talk about his current work in the Bengal Delta at the Department of Anthropology's 60 Minutes seminar. This will take place in Hörsaal XII (University of Cologne main building) on Wednesday, June 8, 2-3pm. 

Jason Cons has conducted research along the India-Bangladesh border for many years and published widely on environmental politics, borders, territory, agrarian change and research methods. You can find more info on his website jasoncons.net

Jason's talk is titled "Delta Futures: Time, Territory, and Capture on a Climate Frontier".

The abstract for his presentation reads as follows:

This talk outlines a broad project exploring the making of incommensurate futures in the Bengal Delta—specifically, Bangladesh's southwest delta zone. The delta is a space regularly described as one of the most climate vulnerable places in the world. It is home to, among other things, the Sundarbans—the world’s largest remaining mangrove forest. It is also a borderland space, shaped by the past, present, and future politics of the India-Bangladesh border. Ethnographically tracing climate resilient projects, conservation initiatives, criminal networks, policing initiatives, fishing cartels, industrialization, and more, Delta Futures makes a case for thinking this delta zone as a climate frontier. That is to say, the Bengal delta is a place where opportunity, expropriation, and exploitation are increasing organized around and in relation to climate change. Delta Futures maps the ecologies of power that unfold in and through this climate frontier. It shows the ways that networks of more-than-human capture, the material complexities of the delta, and competing projects of bringing about conflicting futures in the present overlap in often surprising and troubling ways to produce a hydroscape rife with emergent forms of predation and peril.

The seminar is open to all, and we're looking forward to seeing many of you there.