Description
Join us on Thursday, September 11 at 6:30pm for an author talk with writer and political scientist Alyssa Battistoni in celebration of her new book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature.
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems. In Free Gifts, Alyssa Battistoni tackles this paradox head-on.
To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends that we must first understand how some things come to have value under capitalism, and how others do not. To help us do so, Battistoni recovers and reinterprets the idea of ‘the free gift of nature’ used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gratuitously obtain from the natural world. She builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking.
Along the way, she offers fresh insights into influential thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, Friedrich Hayek, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Battistoni shows how understanding capitalism’s blind spots helps explain our current ecological crises, and how we might build a world that truly values nature’s gifts.
Battistoni will be in conversation with Geoff Mann, Professor at Simon Fraser University and Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
This event is free, but please RSVP here as spots are limited.
More about Upstart & Crow:
Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.
Accessibility:
The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.
Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.
Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature
Battistoni addresses four different instances of the free gift in political economic thought, each in a specific domain: natural agents in industry, pollution in the environment, reproductive labor in the household, and natural capital in the biosphere. In so doing, she offers new readings of major twentieth-century thinkers, including Friedrich Hayek, Simone de Beauvoir, Garrett Hardin, Silvia Federici, and Ronald Coase. Ultimately, she offers a novel account of freedom for our ecologically troubled present, developing a materialist existentialism to argue that capitalism limits our ability to be responsible for our relationships to the natural world, and imagining how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.
