OVERHEATING (completed)

The three crises of globalisation: An anthropological history of the early 21st century.

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Trevor Nicholls: The Gathering.

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 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.

A recent publication which provides insight especially into the issues of culture and identity is the open access book "Acceleration and cultural change: Dialogues from an overheated world", by Martina Visentin and Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

The open access edited volume "Cooling Down: Local Responses to Global Climate Change" (eds. S. Hoffman, T. H. Eriksen and P. Mendes) also shows ways in which overheating perspectives exert a growing influence on the comparative anthropology of the present crises.

In 2017, Thomas Hylland Eriksen received the University of Oslo Research Prize for his work with Overheating.

In 2022, Thomas Hylland Eriksen was 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 seminars 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 this:

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.

 

This is a sample of events organised by Overheating.


Overheating seminar: “Cooling down” in an overheating world: the inhabitants of an ecovillage and their narratives and practices for deglobalizing

Time and place: 8. Feb. 2017, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Hugo de Carvalho Ferreira,PhD student at the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences, Europa-Universität, Viadrina.


Overheating seminar: Is Racism an Environmental Threat?

Time and place: 27. Oct. 2016, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Ghassan Hage, Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne.


Workshop: 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.


Workshop: 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.


Overheating seminar: Indigeneity as a moral model in anthropology? Three cases of ethnic classification and anthropological knowledge production

Time and place: 14. Mar. 2016, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Ulrika Persson-Fischier, Doctoral student at Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and lecturer at Department of Engineering Sciences, Industrial Engineering & Management at Uppsala University, Sweden.


Overheating seminar: Writing Impurity/Methodologies of Contamination

Time and place: 7. Mar. 2016, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Oscar Hemer, Professor of Journalistic and Literary Creation at Malmö University.


Overheating seminar: Home ownership and debt culture: the tragedy of the future that will never come

Time and place: 25. Aug. 2015, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Alesya Krit, Post-Doctoral Fellow Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.


Overheating seminar: 'Decommodification for a just and "sustainable" economy: food values in self-managed organic food supply chains in Catalonia

Time and place: 16. Jun. 2015, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Sílvia Gómez Mestres, Associate professor, Department of Social Anthropology, Autonomous University of Barcelona.


Overheating seminar: Freedom and nature

Time and place: 8. Jun. 2015, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Sigurd Hverven, Master student at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Arts and Ideas, University of Oslo.


Workshop: 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. 


Overheating seminar: The Future of Solidarity: Food Cooperativism as Labour in Greece

Time and place: 13. Apr. 2015, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Theo Rakopoulos, Postdocoral fellow, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen.


Overheating seminar: The critical transition: from morphodynamics to teleodynamics

Time and place: 12. Jan. 2015, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Terrence Deacon, Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.


Overheating seminar: Applied anthropology in Europe: Past, present and future

Time and place: 6. Nov. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Dan Podjed, of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art / University of Ljubljana.


Overheating seminar: Applied anthropology in Europe: Past, present and future

Time and place: 6. Nov. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Dan Podjed, of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art / University of Ljubljana.


Overheating seminar: Following the Flip-Flop Trail: the perils and pleasures of doing ethnography from inside the logics of travel

Time and place: 3. Nov. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Caroline Knowles, Director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.


Overheating seminar: The backstory of the risk-free asset: How government debt became "safe"

Time and place: 13. Okt. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Nina Boy, Senior Researcher in Financial Security, PRIO.


Overheating seminar: Caribbean routes, shortcuts and short-circuits

Time and place: 6. Oct. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Kristian van Haesendonck, of the Centre for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon.


Overheating seminar: Ethical concerns in global investment chains: Are more equitable outcomes possible?

Time and place: 8. Sep. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Tijo Salverda, Research fellow at the University of Cologne's Global South Studies Center and a research associate of the University of Pretoria’s Human Economy Programme.


Overheating seminar: Civilizational Analysis and the Study of Identity in Anthropology

Time and place: 28. Apr. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Chris Hann, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Senior Researcher in the Overheating project.


Overheating Seminar: Mobility, family life and the European citizenship: marriages between legally precarious African migrants and peripheral Europeans in the Netherlands

Time and place: 27. Mar. 2014, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Apostolos Andriakopoulos, PhD Research fellow at the University of Amsterdam.


Conference: 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.


Overheating Seminar: Ecology, Flexibility and Learning in Local and Global Civilization

Time and place: 10. Sep. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Fred Steier,  Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida.


Overheating Seminar: ‘SODOM AND GOMORRAH’ THE POLITICS OF HUMAN WASTE IN ACCRA, GHANA

Time and place: 27. Aug. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Ronald Stade, Professor at Malmö University.


Overheating Seminar: The Bulldozer State - Chinese socialist development in Xinjiang

Time and place: 18. June. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Ildikó Bellér-Hann and Chris Hann, respectively  Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.


Overheating Seminar: “Water is Life" - Ethnographic reflections on well-being and prospection in Arequipa, Peru

Time and place: 11. June. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen, PhD-fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen; affiliated to the anthropological research projects “From Ice to Stone” and “Waterworlds”.


Overheating Seminar: Living in Denial - Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life

Time and place: 3. June. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Kari Marie Norgaard, Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon.


Overheating Seminar: The Mountain in the Hearts- Controversial Development Plans near Dubrovnik's Heritage City

Time and place: 21. May. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Celine Motzfeldt Loades, Phd Research Fellow at the Center for Development and the Environment/Institute for Social Anthropology.


Overheating seminar: Icarus in the Heat- Anthropological Perspectives on the Icelandic Financial Meltdown

Time and place: 30. Apr. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Gísli Pálsson, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Iceland.


Overheating seminar: Energy consumption as cultural pratice: implications for a low energy transformation, and Space, Time and Socio-material Relationships: Moral Aspects of the Arrival of Electricity in Rural Zanzibar

Time and place: 16. Apr. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Harold Langford Wilhite and Tanja Winther, respectively professor and researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.


Overheating seminar: Beyond purifications- exploring conservation and its critique

Time and place: 9. Apr. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Knut Nustad, associate professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.


Overheating seminar: Challenging inevitability - The three spheres of transformation in a changing climate

Time and place: 12. Mar. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Karen O'Brien, Professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo.


Overheating seminar: Crisis, criticism and hypocrisy: semantic, rhetorical and temporal perspectives

Time and place: 5. Mar. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Helge Jordheim, Associate Professor at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo.


Overheating seminar: Backwardness Revisited- the case of Eastern Europe

Time and place: 12. Feb. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring Chris Hann, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Senior Researcher in the Overheating project.


Overheating seminar: Recovering Power from Energy? Anthropologies of Oil, Gas and other Socio-Economic Practices

Time and place: 22. Jan. 2013, University of Oslo. 

Overheating seminar featuring John-Andrew McNeish, associate professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.


 

Publications

View all works in Cristin

Tags: Social Anthropology, Crisis, Globalisation, Overheating
Published Jan. 23, 2013 12:34 PM - Last modified Mar. 17, 2024 1:26 PM

Contact

Principal Investigator:

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

 

Trevor Nickolls: Warmun Mandala © Trevor Nickolls/BONO

 

Participants

  • Thomas Hylland Eriksen Universitetet i Oslo
  • Wim Van Daele Universitetet i Oslo
  • Elisabeth Schober Universitetet i Oslo
  • Astrid Bredholt Stensrud Universitetet i Oslo
  • Lena Gross Universitetet i Oslo
  • Robert Jan Pijpers Universitetet i Oslo
  • Henrik Sinding-Larsen Universitetet i Oslo
  • Cathrine Thorleifsson Universitetet i Oslo
  • Chris Hann
Detailed list of participants