Making and Unmaking the Actually Existing Green Transition
Bush House, Strand Campus, London
About the Seminar
Despite the applaudable reflexivity of transition scholars to include considerations of politics (among other things) in their frameworks, we argue that this is not enough, as the mainstream anglophone debates still suffer a fatal flaw: an inability to grasp the form taken by the actually existing hegemonic transition globally.
This, we contend, is shaped by two recent political economic developments: the concentration of capital in large pools (either under asset management or in Sovereign Wealth Funds) invested on financial markets on the one hand; and the “de-risking” Wall Street Consensus on the other.
Because the mainstream anglophone transition debates still shy away from discussing the two (dialectically interwoven) main drivers of anthropogenic climate change colonialism and capitalism – they remain unable to explain form assumed by the hegemonic green transition and what this means going forward.
Scholars from the Latin America, particularly Argentina, in contrast, are confronted by the sharp end of financial markets and green extractivism. Their lived experience of the dark underpinnings of the green transition shaped by finance and extraction has sparked vibrant critical debates over alternatives to the dominant transition narratives that both act as a tonic to the de-politicised mainstream anglophone debates and offer provocations to more critical anglophone scholars.
About the Speaker
Dr Angus McNelly is an interdisciplinary scholar interested the politics of transformative change and twenty-first century capitalism.
He joined the Department of International Development at King’s College London from the University of Greenwich in 2024. His research examines the Left in Power, state-social movement relations, the political economy of development in Latin America, natural resource-led development and extraction and energy transitions.
His first monograph, Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2023. He is currently writing a book on the economic history of Bolivia and has three research projects addressing meat planes in Bolivia, finance, extraction and the green transition and the politics of knowledge production across postcolonial spaces respectively.
About the Just Transitions and Interdisciplinary Peace (JTIP) Seminar Series
The JTIP Seminar Series involves regular presentations and discussions convened in a hyflex format, where speakers share their ongoing and impactful research on the themes outlined above. Participation is open to the general public, although the JTIP research group is based at the Global Institutes at King’s College London. Please get in touch if you want to be involved.
At this event
Lecturer in International Development (Politics)
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