The seventh session of the LATTS Seminar will take place on Monday, May 17, 2021.
It will focus on the book:
Les natures de la ville néolibérale : Une écologie politique du végétal urbain (The Natures of the Neoliberal City: A Political Ecology of Urban Plants)
Marion Ernwein
UGA Editions, 2019, 240 p.
Marion Ernwein
, lecturer
in environmental geography at the Open University and associate researcher at the University of Oxford, will present her book. Her work falls within the field of urban political ecology
and currently focuses on the intersection between austerity and the urban environment in the United Kingdom and France.
"Zero pesticides," integrated biological protection, differentiated management: urban green spaces, long designed in the "still life" mode of the horticultural tradition, are becoming increasingly alive. They are also becoming more participatory, as evidenced by the proliferation of community gardening and "green" volunteer programs. However, far from simply reflecting a consensual "ecological transition," these transformations are framed by the logic of urban production and urban services, and in particular by the discourse and instruments of neoliberalism.
Based on field surveys conducted in Geneva, Switzerland, the book illustrates how neoliberal urban policies that emphasize events, managerialism, and public-private partnerships are shaping the emergence of a more vibrant city and the role that humans and non-humans can play in it.
By detailing the treatment reserved for different forms of vegetation—horticultural, food crops, biodiversity—the book proposes conceptual tools for a political ecology of urban vegetation.