Abstract
Recent meetings of the complex of actors and organizations constituted by the Post 2015 Agenda are marked by the technocratic elite’s epistemic panic over the lack of progress in accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the failure to meet the emission reduction targets established in the Paris Climate Accords. With eight years remaining in the Post 2015 Agenda, the predicaments facing the global community continue their path toward becoming wicked rather than solvable problems. Among the pressing issues is the materiality of our built environment, with one material, cement, playing a key role in determining our common future. This paper explores the place of cement within the predicaments facing the global community in the question of transition from the modern system to a new civilizational complex, a process driven by an age of disruption that is caused by modernity’s ongoing systemic collapse. The paper argues we are in a liminal state of transition between civilization complexes when anachronistic practices, such as the use of cement for the built infrastructure, persist amid the gradual emergence of a new civilization. Cement illustrates to us the reasons for the failure of the Post 2015 Agenda and suggests ways for understanding the brewing epistemic panic among increasingly desperate technocrats.
Presenters
Glen KueckerProfessor, Peace and Conflict Sudies City Lab, DePauw University, Indiana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cement, Materiality, Extraction, Liminal State, Collapse, Technocrats, SDGs. Post 2015
