Environmental Crises and Multi-species Justice in the 21st Century: Toward Decolonization Beyond the Human

Convener：Yen-Ling Tsai

“Conflict, Justice, and Decolonization” has foregrounded the questions of what life is and what life matters. The sub-theme project, “Environmental Crises and Multi-species Justice in the 21^st Century: Toward Decolonization Beyond the Human”, seeks to expand and develop the critical sophistication of “Conflict, Justice, and Decolonization” by expanding justice to include the planetary and multi-species justice inherent to a globalized world and an interdependent planetary system.

Through the project of 20^th century de-colonization, scholars of critical theory and cultural studies have examined and theorized the role of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexual orientation, and disability to expose the power dynamics that have oppressed various forms of marginalized peoples. At the same time, in colonized or indigenous cultures, the line between human and nonhuman, the sentient and insentient, the life worth honoring and the life unworthy of consideration, has often been less clearly defined by the line between human and nonhuman. Multi-species studies grows from the new recognition in dominant academic discourse and old recognition in many indigenous cultures and marginalized communities that the process of dehumanization may not be extinguished without recognizing the agency, rights, value, or equality of nonhumans, and honoring the realities of the indigenous cultures and marginalized communities that have always honored nonhumans. Many of the most urgent problems of the twenty-first century—including climate change, species mass extinction, crisis-induced migration, pandemics, animal commodification and abuse, and economic disparity—require a multi-species approach both because humans rely on interdependent multi-species planetary systems and because these problems affect nonhumans as much as humans. The five-year project under the sub-theme brings together scholars from anthropology, religious studies, archaeology, legal studies, contemporary art, and curatorial studies – to critically engage with analysis of, and theorization on, how we account for agency politically, historically, and relationally, in order to explores pathways toward ecological togetherness beyond the apocalyptic imagination of Anthropocene futures.

2024 Achievement Report and 2025 Plan Overview: link

Research Topics