The research literature on various dimensions of globalisation is enormous, yet this project constituted the first major attempt to weave disparate empirical strands together within a shared conceptual framework of crises resulting from the acceleration and intensification of global processes. Although based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the project was comparative and drew extensively on other empirical sources as well.
The period examined by the project, the present era, begins with the discontinuities of 1989–91, characterised by the widespread use of the Internet and mobile phones, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the end of the Cold War, the liberalisation of the Indian economy and the end of apartheid; and the project amounted to a globally comparative investigation of the converging crises of the 21st century.
About
The three major crises of globalisation that were explored in this project were analysed in:
- The realm of environmental issues/climate change, where the quest for transnational legal arrangements ensuring sustainability is counteracted by continued growth in the factors leading to environmental crises.
- The financial and economic realm where the vulnerability of the global system became apparent during the 2008 financial crisis, which continued to send ripples through economies worldwide.
- The area of culture contact and cultural sustainability, where tensions and frictions with strong elements of identity politics intensified owing to increased interaction and resource competition, at the same time as calls for cosmopolitan values and universalisation of human rights constituted attempts to overcome conflicts.
A key term for the project was sustainability in the sense of reproductive capability, and the main research question was to what extent contemporary world society is sustainable in relation to the three crises and their internal dialectics.
The project entailed in-depth ethnographic studies in five continents, global surveys (drawing chiefly on extant research literature) and systematic comparison.
In addition to the three crises identified as constitutive of the global disorder, the project also studied – inter alia – waste, information technology and migration.
Objectives
- To build theory and analyse empirical processes in ways that shed light on and create a fuller understanding of the transitions characterizing the present world.
- To show in what ways overheating (accelerated change) affect communities worldwide.
- To create a new, globally comparative anthropology emphasising systemic connections between places as well as problems.
Research sites
Australia
Growth, sustainability and knowledge regimes in Queensland
Researcher: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Principal Investigator
Peru
Overheating in the Andes: global connections and local articulations of climate change, capitalism and cosmopolitics
Researcher: Astrid Bredholt Stensrud, Post-doctoral Fellow
Philippines and South Korea
Running a Tight Ship (yard)? The “Global Base” of a South Korean company in Subic Bay (Philippines)
Researcher: Elisabeth Schober, Post-doctoral Fellow
Sierra Leone
Hot spots: Land and the three crises of globalisation in up-country Sierra Leone
Researcher: Robert Pijpers, PhD Candidate
Canada
The Good Life and The Oil Industry. Stories of «the good life» in Lac La Biche, Northern Alberta, Canada
Researcher: Lena Gross, PhD Candidate
United Kingdom - Hungary - Norway
Old and New Nationalisms: local responses to the crisis in Europe
Researcher: Cathrine Moe Thorleifsson, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Results
Overheating resulted in a number of academic works, published a book series with Pluto Press, as well as monographs published with others. The edited volume An Overheated World (2018) provides a useful overview of the project, its aims and outcomes.
After the formal completion of Overheating, most of the researchers, including MA students, have continued to develop the ideas and perspectives first introduced during the project. At the time of writing (2024), major publications based on Overheating research are still being published.
Recent and current research building on Overheating includes projects on ports and container ships, smartphones, right-wing extremism, indigenous issues and energy.
The overheating framework continues to inspire academic works, with examples such as "Acceleration and cultural change: Dialogues from an overheated world", by Martina Visentin and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and The open access edited volume "Cooling Down: Local Responses to Global Climate Change" (eds. S. Hoffman, T. H. Eriksen and P. Mendes).
These and other publications show the ways in which overheating perspectives exert a growing influence on the comparative anthropology of the present crises.
The project also resulted in prizes and awards with Principal Investigator Thomas Hylland Eriksen receiving the University of Oslo Research Prize for his work with Overheating In 2017.
In 2022, Eriksen was also awarded the Gold Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography. On that occasion, he gave a lecture entitled "Threats to diversity in the shadow of Anthropocene overheating". A special issue of the Swedish Journal of Anthropology, including the lecture and invited articles by Alf Hornborg, Veronica Strang and Paige West, was subsequently published.
Events
Overheating organised conferences, workshops and a regular seminar series with invited speakers throughout its existence from 2012 to 2017. Most of these events led to publications – edited volumes, special issues and articles.
The final formal event was:
OVERHEATING Closing Conference
Time and place: 1 June 2017, House of Literature, Oslo.
What do you do when a global cooperation pollutes your hometown, while the owners live on a different continent? Who can you complain to when your job is moved to China? The research project Overheating has studied local consequences of globalization and held it closing conference on June 1st 2017.
Examples of other workshops, public events, and conferences held during the period are:
Food’s Entanglements with Life: How Is It Good to Work with?
Time and place: 5. Sep. 2016, Tøyen Hovedgård.
Drawing upon Lévi-Strauss’s notion that food is good to think with, this workshop aimed to use the study of food to explore issues of contemporary life, transformation, and Overheating.
Sustainability Is Not a Number – Climate Crisis and Human Cultural Evolution
Time and place: 29. Jun. 2016, Litteraturhuset, Oslo.
Presentations from two of the world’s leading scholars on the relation between biological and cultural evolution - David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Binghamton and Terrence W. Deacon, UC Berkeley. Subsequent panel discussion with Kalle Moene, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Henrik Sinding-Larsen and the audience.
Climate Change and Capitalism: Inequality and Justice in an Overheated World
Time and place: 25.-27 Apr. 2016, Tøyen Hovedgård.
In this workshop, the overheating team explored the interfaces of climate change and capitalism, and discussed how climate change and environmental crisis intersect with difference, inequality and claims for justice.
Mining Encounters - Extractive industries in an overheated world
Time and place: 27.-28. Apr. 2015, Tøyen Hovedgård.
This workshop asked how different kinds of mining encounters (seen as fields of negotiation involving various actors and stakeholders) bring about forms of accelerated change. The emphasis was on change that involves the environment, the economy, politics and/or social identity.
Globalisation and the roots of the ecological crisis: The Second International Bateson Symposium in Oslo
Time and place: 11.-12. Sep. 2013, University of Oslo.
The symposium presented three of the world’s leading scientists that have pursued the groundbreaking ideas of the anthropologist and polymath Gregory Bateson (1904-1980). Invited commentators contributed to the conversation by exploring the political implications of their ideas.
