Professor Horacio Machado Aráoz, from the National University of Catamarca and researcher of the CALAS-IEAT Chair program, will deliver the Conference “Anthropos-ceno”, crisis de la humusidad de la Tierra. Reflexiones desde (y para) una nueva GeAlogía Política on December 15^th at the Auditorium 3 at the School of Economics at UFMG, at 16:30 p.m.

The conference will be held in Spanish, no simultaneous translation, and a certificate of attendance will be issued to those who register through the Sistema Gestão de Eventos and confirm their presence on the day of the event .

According to professor Horacio Araóz, the concept of “Anthropocene” is the voice that evokes the radical nature of the crisis of our time: a crisis of temporality and political spatiality that is looming over the Earth. Approached by researchers from different fields of Humanities, ”the “Anthropocene” is the great “concept-diagnosis” of the present Era (Maristella Svampa) that speaks to us of the decomposition of the terrestrial world (Bruno Latour); of an epoch whose sign is the suffocating scarcity of shelter for humans and non-humans (Donna Haraway), thus condemned to have to (over)live among ruins and unpredictable environmental catastrophes (Anna Tsing)” – highlights Horacio.

Finally, Professor Horacio Machado Aráoz explains that he intends to discuss the anthropocentric crisis, starting from the perspective of the Political Ecology of the South. “By reviewing the historical-political roots and factors that marked its geo-social emergence, we seek to understand it as the result of a catastrophic Great Transformation of the Earth, resulting from the arrogance of Reason and the proliferation of imperial ecologies. To address its effects and implications, we will attempt to postulate some clues to rethink the nature of the affections between the Earth and (the humusity) of bodies.”- he concludes.

About the guest

Horacio Machado Aráoz holds a degree in Political Science (Catholic University of Córdoba), a diploma in Social Planning for Local Development (Sur-Cepal, Santiago de Chile), a Master’s degree in Social Sciences, and a PhD in Human Sciences (National University of Catamarca). He is an independent researcher for the National Council of Science and Technology (CONICET, Argentina), at the Regional Institute of Socio-Cultural Studies (IRES-CONICET-UNCA), where he coordinates the Southern Political Ecology Research Collective. He is also a regular lecturer in Sociology II of the Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work (Faculty of Humanities, National University of Catamarca).

He has been director of the PhD in Human Sciences (Faculty of Humanities, UNCA, 2016-2020) and is a member of the academic committee of the PhD in Agrarian Social Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences, UNC). He has been a guest lecturer in Postgraduate Programmes in different Latin American universities (Universidade Federal Fluminense; Universidade Federal de Paraná; Universidade Católica de Paraná (Brazil); Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; Universidad de Guadalajara (Mexico); FLACSO, Sede Ecuador; Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador. She is currently on the faculty of the Masters in Political Ecology and Alternatives to Development at the Andean University and the PhD in Agrarian Social Studies at the National University of Cordoba. His field of research is the Political Ecology of the South, in which, along with academic work, he participates in various networks, organisations and assembly spaces in defence of the territories, learning and animating together with socio-territorial movements in the region on the civilising disputes around the reappropriation of Nature and the construction of emancipatory horizons from popular environmentalism.