To stimulate rural development, the Indian state of West Bengal is promoting homestay tourism in the district of Kalimpong, on the state’s mountainous margins. This talk situates the homestay market within a broader late capitalist “economy of retreat.” The economy of retreat is an analytical framework for considering the re-valuation of domestic space amid interlinked agrarian, economic, and climate crises. As climate change upends rural livelihoods and threatens urban livability, domestic spaces, and domestic labors, have become renewed sites of political and economic potential. The economy of retreat entails a meeting of urban anxiety with agrarian precarity. This turns homes into environmentally and socially volatile spaces, but also into spaces of new speculative opportunity. Attention to this double movement permits scholars to trace the relationship between capitalism and climate change not in disaster or salvage accumulation but in the material and affective work of remaining in place.

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation! No need to RSVP: just show up and bring your friends! 

The U.S. National Science Foundation Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science (NSF CBIKS) invites you to the fourth speaker in the Indigenous Sciences Speaker Series: Dr. Kiana Frank. Kiana Frank - born and raised in Kailua Oʻahu – studies how microorganisms shape ʻāina (land) for productivity and health by weaving contemporary western techniques with Native Hawaiian Science. Her work evaluates overall ecosystem health and informs current monitoring, restoration, cultivation, and management of Hawaiian resources to sustainably support the people of Hawaii.

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation! No need to RSVP: just show up with your friends!