Please join us for a conversation with Alyssa Battistoni, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, about her new book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. In Free Gifts, Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature, arguing that the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. To understand contemporary ecological problems from biodiversity collapse to climate change, she contends, we have to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. Battistoni’s book is a major new work of environmental thinking that ranges widely, offering new perspectives on everything from the politics of existentialism to the Wages for Housework campaign.
Sponsored by the Umwelt Center for Germanic Studies & Environmental Humanities, the Political Theory Workshop, and the the Environmental History Initiative.