Capitalism, Ecology, and the Politics of Speed

University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Fall 2022                             

From Amazon’s nearly instantaneous deliveries to the endless exponential growth of our economies, infinitely growing speeds and modes of consumption have become a common-sense organizing principle and objective of modern societies, with tremendous social and environmental costs. This seminar examines how this came to be through historical and ethnographic readings that take up the notion of acceleration – and its corollary, ever-increasing speeds – across domains, from abstract notions of the growth of “the economy” to the material and environmental politics of logistics systems. We will examine acceleration through readings that examine themes as diverse as the experience of capitalist modernity, the formalization of economics in the 20th century, and the politics of transportation planning and logistics. At the same time, we will examine how this unending economic acceleration has reshaped not only the way we think, but the environment in a time of another form acceleration: global heating and the climate crisis. To conclude the course, we will examine alternative paradigms, including degrowth, mobility justice, and other radical reconfigurations of our collective relationship to infinite acceleration.

Syllabus available here.