BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.2.3.1//EN TZID:Europe/Amsterdam X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/Amsterdam BEGIN:VEVENT UID:0-24@visions-for-the-future.sites.uu.nl DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260202T150000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260202T163000 DTSTAMP:20260202T153102Z URL:https://visions-for-the-future.sites.uu.nl/events/speaker-series-with- dr-alyssa-battistoni/ SUMMARY:Speaker Series with Dr. Alyssa Battistoni DESCRIPTION:\nFree Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature\n\n\n\nIf y ou would like to receive calendar invites with the links to all our speake r series events and receive updates on our project please email us at a.c. moiteirodasneves@uu.nl. \n\n\n\n\nhttps://youtu.be/O98kQv2N0dw\n\n\n\n\nA bout the session: Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentles s commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspec ts of the nonhuman world\, whether carbon emissions or entire ecosystems.& nbsp\;Free Gifts \;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\, we hav e to understand how some things come to have value under capitalism—and how others do not. The book recovers and reinterprets the idea of the free gift of nature used by classical economic thinkers to describe what we gr atuitously obtain from the natural world\, and builds on Karl Marx’s cri tique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nat ure as free for the taking. This novel theory of capitalism’s relationsh ip to nature not only helps us understand contemporary ecological breakdow n\, but also casts capitalism’s own core dynamics in a new light.\n\n\n\ nAbout the speaker: \;Alyssa Battistoni is Assistant Professor of Poli tical Science at Barnard College\, where she works and teaches on climate and environmental politics\, capitalism\, Marxism\, feminism\, and other t opics in contemporary social and political thought. \;She is the autho r of \;Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature \;(Prince ton 2025) and the \;co-author of \;A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal \;(Verso 2019). \;\n\n\n\nIf you would like to rece ive information about the speaker series\, please email Catarina Neves at a.c.moiteirodasneves@uu.nl. \;\n END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Amsterdam X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Amsterdam BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251026T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:CET END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR