Towards a new eco-social imagination. Narratives and transitions in the face of the crisis of civilization 

Directed by Jaime Vindel, a member of PEI management. European Doctor of Art History and a Master in Philosophy and Social Sciences. Researcher with the Ramón y Cajal Programme of the Institute of History of the Spanish National Research Council, where he is working on a study on the relationship between the metaphors of thermodynamics and the cultural metaphors of fossil modernity.

All conferences that are not in Spanish or Catalan will have simultaneous interpretation. Watch the streaming live in the MACBA atrium. On the same day, if seats are available, you may book an individual session. Please, be on time.

Biographies

Miriam García Torres is an ecologist and feminist. She is an activist in the sphere of anti-globalization, peace and solidarity with Ecologists in Action, works with Peace Brigades International (PBI) and is part of the collective Miradas Críticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo. She holds a master’s degree in socio-environmental studies from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-Ecuador) and is specialized in socio-ecological conflicts, feminist political ecology and human rights. She lived in Latin America for a number of years where she accompanied and learned from the processes of resistance of indigenous communities and women in defence of the territory against extractive megaprojects. 

Luis González Reyes is a member of Ecologists in Action, where he was confederal coordinator for nine years. He is a member of Garúa S. Coop. Mad., which is committed to facilitating eco-social transitions by promoting specific practices, training, investigating and accompanying processes. His work in these four areas is mainly focused on topics relating to ecology, economy and pedagogy. In this sphere he is a regular collaborator with several universities. He also works at FUHEM, where he is the coordinator of eco-social education, and manages healthy and ecological school canteens. He is the author or co-author of some twenty books on different facets of social ecology. Among them are En la espiral de la energía and Educar para la transformación ecosocial. He holds a PhD in chemistry.

Yayo Herrero is an anthropologist, social educator and agricultural engineer. She works as a professor and collaborator with the UNESCO Chair of Environmental Education and Sustainable Development (UNED) and is a founding member of Cooperativa Garúa. She is an accomplished researcher in the European eco-feminist and eco-socialist sphere and has participated in numerous social initiatives on the promotion of human rights and social ecology, a field in which she has published more than twenty books and numerous articles. She was director general of the foundation FUHEM from 2012 to 2018 and coordinator of the Centro Complutense de Estudios e Información Medioambiental of the Fundación General Universidad Complutense de Madrid from 2009 to 2012. As well as a member of the editorial board of Hegoa and the editorial board of Papeles, she was also confederal coordinator of Ecologists in Action from 2005 to 2014. 

Laura Laguna is an eco-social activist with different collectives such as the Red Ecofeminista. She holds a master’s degree in gender from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in feminist studies at the university.

Aura Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic, community feminist, teacher, defender of life, the earth and territories and spokesperson for the K’iche Peoples Council. Coordinator of the Community Consultation in Santa Cruz del Quiché in 2010 in which 87 communities with a total of more than 27,000 assembly participants rejected transnational extractive companies in the mining, oil, hydroelectric, forestry monoculture and other industries. Since then Lolita has been threatened, persecuted, criminalized and prosecuted for her actions in defence of the land and the territory. She has been granted precautionary measures of protection by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She is a direct petitioner in complaints against the Guatemalan State filed before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and in international complaints against transnational corporations. 

Ánxela Louzao is a biologist and in recent years she has worked in the sphere of scientific research developing a doctoral thesis in the field of genetics. She is currently participating in the MACBA Independent Studies Programme where she is investigating the link between art, science and ecology. 

Joan Martínez Alier nació en Barcelona en 1939. Estudió Economía y Derecho en la Universidad de Barcelona. En 1961 se desplazó a Oxford, y después a Stanford, para estudiar Economía Agraria. Fue becario de investigación en el St. Antony’s College, en Oxford, entre 1963 y 1973. Es autor de libros sobre luchas agrarias en Andalucía, Cuba y Perú, y colaborador del Journal of Peasant Studies, además de miembro de la editorial Ruedo Ibérico de París. Regresó a la UAB en 1975 como catedrático de Economía e Historia Económica y, posteriormente, de Economía Ecológica. Fue cofundador del ICTA-UAB. En 1990 puso en marcha la revista Ecología Política. En 2019 publicó su autobiografía, titulada Demà serà un altre dia. Una vida fent economia ecològica i ecologia política. Es codirector del EJAtlas (ejatlas.org), y está preparando su último libro sobre conflictos ambientales: Terra, aigua, aire i llibertat. Recibió el premio Leontief de Economía en 2017, y se le concedió una beca ERC Advanced Grant (EnvJustice, 2016-2021). 

Cara New Daggett es profesora del Departamento de Ciencias Políticas en el Virginia Tech, donde investiga la política energética y medioambiental. Su libro The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke, 2019) traza la relación entrelazada de las políticas del trabajo y la energía tras el descubrimiento de la energía en el siglo XIX. También ha escrito en torno a la «petromasculinidad», exponiendo la estrecha relación entre la misoginia y la negacionista climática en los movimientos de extrema derecha. Su investigación actual, que desarrolla en colaboración, se pregunta cómo los enfoques feministas sobre el poder y la justicia son la mejor manera de imaginar y diseñar los sistemas de energía. 

José Platzeck holds a licentiate degree in modern letters from the Department of Philosophy and Humanities of the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. He is pursuing a doctorate from the university through the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). He is a student of the MACBA Independent Studies Programme. His work seeks to relate extractivism, aesthetics and coloniality. He is involved with several research teams on biopolitics, control, decolonial studies, ecopolitics and gender studies. He is the co-editor of Sujetos sitiados: biopolítica, monstruosidad y neoliberalismo (Cocco, Giorgi, Mezzadra, Torrano, et al.).

Emilio Santiago Muiño, PhD in social anthropology with a dissertation on the systemic transition in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union. He has been a doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Spanish Philosophical Thought at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has been part of the Transdisciplinary Research Group on Socio-Ecological Transitions (as part of the HUAMECO project: Environmental Humanities – Strategies for Ecological Empathy and the Transition to Sustainable Societies) as well as the board of the Institute of Human Rights, Democracy and Culture of Peace and Non-Violence (DEMOSPAZ, Autonomous University of Madrid). He is the founder of the social transformation project Rompe el Círculo (Móstoles) and an activist with the Rompe el Círculo Transition Institute. He currently works as director of the environment for Móstoles City Council.

Marian Simón Rojo is a doctor of architecture and associate professor at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning of the ETSAM, Technical University of Madrid (UPM). Joining the Bajo el Asfalto está la Huerta collective was a turning point for connecting the concerns about vulnerable neighbourhoods and ecological deterioration with community-managed agro-ecological alternatives. At present she is working in militant research on social and ecologically responsible urbanism, agroecology, integration of the agro-food system in planning and comprehensive rehabilitation of neighbourhoods. The founder of Surcos Urbanos, she has backed the Madrid Agroecológico and Extinction Rebellion platforms since their inception. 

Daniel Tanuro is an agricultural and environmental engineer from Belgium. He is the author of Green Capitalism: Why it Can’t Work (Fernwood Publishing, 2014), Le Moment Trump, une nouvelle phase du capitalisme mondial (Demopolis, 2018) and Il est trop tard pour être pessimiste (in press).