La prochaine séance du séminaire d’économie politique du CEPN aura lieu ce mardi 6 décembre de 12h30 à 14h en salle K301.

Nous accueillerons Lynne Chester (U. of Sydney) sur le thème “An exit strategy to capitalism’s ecological crisis”.

Comme à l’accoutumée, des sandwichs, salades, fruits et bouteilles d’eau seront à la disposition des participant-e-s.

En vous espérant nombreuses et nombreux mardi.

 

Abstract

This presentation contends that an effective exit strategy from the ecological crisis does not lie within the current options presented by the broad dichotomy of alternative policy prescriptions: those advocating the reform of capitalism using the same mechanisms which have embedded the ecological crisis (e.g. ecological economics, steady-state economics); and, those proposing a new albeit highly unlikely socio-economic system (e.g. ecological Marxism, socialist ecology). Instead, there must be a significant shift in our thinking to design a strategy that directly addresses the interdependencies between the spheres that constitute the social and economic organization of capitalism. This presentation, based on a forthcoming publication, provides a preliminary contribution to this complex policy task through an analysis of the dialectical relationship between the ecological, energy and economic spheres and proposes a new regime of capitalist accumulation in which the imperative of ecological preservation is compatible with capitalism’s mode of production.

 

The author

Lynne Chester is recognised as a leading Australian scholar in the empirical application of French Régulation theory, a heterodox (non-conventional) school of economic thought inspired by Marxist and institutional economics. Her research focuses on a range of energy issues (affordability, security, markets, price formation, the environment) and the policy responses of capitalist economies through different institutional forms. Recent research projects have included: household energy unaffordability; financialisation and electricity sectors; privatisation of the Australian electricity sector; contemporary industrial policy; re-conceptualising an ‘institution’; the nature of heterodox economics. In 2016, she commenced two projects: household energy storage determinants; and the potential conflict between economic and safety regulatory regimes for energy companies.

She is author of Neoliberal Structural Change and the Electricity Sector: A Régulationist Analysis (Routledge, 2017), and co-editor of the Handbook of Heterodox Economics (Routledge, 2017) and Challenging the Orthodoxy: Reflections on Frank Stilwell’s Contributor to Political Economy (Springer, 2014). She is co-editor of the Review of Political Economy. She has contributed chapters to the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics (Edward Elgar, 2016), Advancing the Frontiers of Heterodox Economics (Routledge, 2016), A Modern Guide to Rethinking Economics (Edward Elgar, 2017), and Neoliberalism: Beyond the Free Market (Edward Elgar, 2012). Her research has also been published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Australian Journal of Social Issues, Economic and Labour Relations Review, Economic Papers, Energy Policy, European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, International Journal of Green Economics, Journal of Australian Political Economy, Journal of Economic Issues, and Review of Radical Political Economics.