IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Economics (oikos-nomia) is supposed to be the management of the home. Ecology (oikis-logos) is supposed to be the science of home. Yet these are two disciplines that rarely speak to one another. For various reasons the management of the home has not made its basis the science of the home. Today, climate change and worsening ecological crises have brought home the great limitations of the very paradigm of development economics from which they emerge as undesirable by-products. Many of those concerned about the problems brought about by the industrial model of development have looked to environmental climate science and ecology for answers. But are there limits to the paradigm itself from which the disciplines of economics, environmental science and ecology all emerge? Can we understand the limits of our current paradigm and open new doors of thinking? Where can we find the new wisdom to shift direction?

About Speaker: Aseem Shrivastava is a writer, teacher and ecological thinker with a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has taught at universities in India and the West, and has offered over several years courses on Global and Indian Ecosophy at Ashoka University. He has lectured across the world on ecological issues emanating from globalisation. He has been guiding and mentoring a number of graduate students and young people working in the realms of Philosophy, Ecosophy, Ecology, and Political Economy. He is the author (with Ashish Kothari) of the books Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India, and Prithvi Manthan. He is currently at work on several books on Ecosophy that dialogue with the ecological challenges of 21st century global modernity, including the upcoming title: The Grammar of Greed: Reflections on a Fatal Ecology.