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Sponsored by the LEC-SCAU-GIGCAS Joint Institute for the Environment
Ecological Civilization, Urbanization and the
‘Agriculture-Food-Water Environment Nexus’
Workshop at JIE, South China Agricultural University
8th - 9th January 2018
2
Contents
Abstract: 3-7
Workshop Programme: 8-10
Participants Bio’s and Presentation Titles
- Wen Tiejun 11
- Luo Shiming 12
- Robert Biel 13
- Shi Yan 14
- Prasenjit Duara 15
- Wang Mingming 16
- Zou Yi 17
- Nigel Clark 18
- Cui Shenghui 19
- Ali Cheshmehzangi 20
- Xu Honggang 21
- Qian Junxi 22
- Leigh Martindale 23
- David Tyfield 24
Accommodation details 25
Contact information 26
3
“Taking a driving seat in international cooperation to
respond to climate change, China has become an important
participant, contributor, and torchbearer in the global
endeavour for ecological civilization,”- Xi Jinping,
Communist Party Conference, October 2017
Abstract and Outline
Since being initially announced in 2007, ‘ecological
civilization’ has emerged as a leading slogan of the Chinese
central government, guiding its increasingly ambitious and
highly-funded programmes of environmental activity. The
slogan has since been spelt out in several detailed policy
documents, but it remains a term without clear meaning,
and with much development and substantiation still to go in
the coming years.
As noted by global observers of environmental change (e.g.
Sullivan et al. 2016), in this respect alone ‘ecological
civilization’ is a broad policy programme that deserves
significant global attention – and all the more so as China’s
new ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative takes off, exporting
major infrastructural investment across the eastern
hemisphere. For what ‘ecological civilization’ comes to
mean in practice will significantly shape the environmental
footprint not just of a rising China (comprising nearly one
fifth of humanity and soon the world’s largest economy),
but also the trajectories of socio-economic, technological
and cultural development of much of the rest of the world
besides. Ecological civilization, in other words, will
profoundly affect the global responses to the definitive (and
4
currently worsening) socio-environmental challenges of the
21st century, with impacts likely much further into the future.
But ‘ecological civilization’ is of interest also potentially far
beyond these short-term material issues, simply
compounding its likely long-term significance. In particular,
the novel conjunction (in both Chinese and English) of
‘ecological’ and ‘civilization’ not only speaks directly to
these epochal challenges, but also to crucial debates within
culture and academia grappling with ways to conceptualize
and think productively with our emergent global
responsibilities. In studying these concerns, issues of food
– or, more specifically, the complex systems of the food-
agriculture-water-environment nexus (Zhu et al. 2017,
hereafter the ‘Nexus’) – are also particularly pressing and
insightful, bringing what can too easily appear abstract and
distant issues into vivid somatic and diverse cultural
significance.
‘Ecological civilization’ strongly resonates with the broader
issues of an emergent Anthropocene and its corollary of a
technoscientific post-humanism. As a corollary, and
especially when refracted through issues of the Nexus, it
also points directly to major debates about ‘planetary
urbanism’ and the future socio-ecological metabolisms
amongst city, countryside and ‘wilderness’ (terrestrial and
maritime). In its explicit, if still undeveloped, gesturing to
projects of revival of traditional Chinese concepts (including
neo-Confucianism, as well as Taoism and possibly the Indian
import of Buddhism) with a focus on human-nature
harmony, ecological civilization also dovetails growing
interest in the cultural effects of a re-ascendant China on an
5
emergent ‘global’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’; and, potentially, in
ways that are crucial for the development of new paradigms
with which meaningfully to address the global problems
(including those of the environment, of course) that have
been incubated by Western-dominated thinking (Duara,
2014; Beck, 2015).
Moreover, in foregrounding the concept of ‘civilization’ – a
term that has fallen dramatically out of favour in dominant
academic and political parlance, in the wake of post-colonial
critique and post-modern deconstruction – ecological
civilization also proposes the rejuvenation of ways of
thinking that privilege issues such as the longue durée,
‘grand narrative’ (and grand project) and a proudly cultural
sensibility that also resonate with work at the forefront of
current academic work (not least in the West).
This is a fascinating but highly (perhaps essentially)
contested space. On the one hand, ‘civilization’ still raises
the hackles of many, for whom it augurs a slide into
dangerous acceptance of a ‘clash of civilizations’, amidst
(and perhaps feeding) the global political turbulence of the
present. On the other hand, a concerted critical
reengagement with ‘civilization’ also resonates with
developments at the very cutting-edge of research of socio-
environmental change (Tyfield, 2017), including: Big History
(Christian & McNeill, 2011; Spier, 2016) and long-run global
histories and ‘civilization studies’ (Morris, 2011; Wengrow,
2011; van der Leeuw, 2012); ‘more-than-representational’
theory (Lorimer, 2007; Jones, 2008) and an anti-utopian
pragmatic politics (Dryzek, 2004; Unger, 2007; Bernstein
2010; Barnett & Bridge, 2013); the new mobilities paradigm
6
(Sheller & Urry, 2004, 2016; Buscher et al., 2017) and
‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ (Beck, 2015; Han & Park,
2015); and governance of uncertain and complex futures
(Fazey et al., 2016; Urry, 2016; Wise et al., 2014) or new
methodologies of ‘situated practical wisdom’ or phronesis
(Flyvbjerg et al. 2013). Research into ecological civilization
also emerges as a key focus and arena for inter-cultural
discourse and ‘traffic’ (Duara, 2014) to develop the new
conceptual and practical resources needed to grapple with
the emergence of global complex systems.
Accordingly, this two-day workshop – convening at a space
specifically established for leading international
collaborative research on the environment, the Lancaster-
SCAU-GIGCAS Joint Institute for the Environment (JIE) in
Guangzhou – draws together a small and select group of
leading thinkers from China, the West and elsewhere on
issues around ‘ecological civilization’ and the Nexus, and
cognate issues listed above, to push forward conceptual
development of research agendas and intercultural
dialogue in this key arena. In particular, discussions will
focus across four overlapping issues:
- Global eco-politics and culture and the changing
meaning of ‘civilization’
- Changing rural/urban relations and metabolisms
- Complex and diverse socio-environmental agri-food
futures
- The circulation of knowledge between the West and
China
7
We are delighted to host as keynote speakers:
- Professor Wen Tiejun 温铁军(Renmin University)
renowned expert on social-economic sustainable
development and rural issues and leading light in
China’s grassroots efforts to revive rural
communities and economies; and
- Professor Nigel Clark (Lancaster University),
leading global theorist of the Anthropocene and
the longue durée of human-environmental-
planetary relations.
8
Workshop Programme
Monday 8th January 2018
Morning
Chinese delegates arrive in Guangzhou (international
arrive over the weekend)
1.15pm - Welcome
Introduction: David Tyfield & Leigh Martindale –
“Ecological… civilization…”
2pm
Keynote 1: Wen Tiejun – Ecological civilization and
agriculture
3pm - Break
3.30pm
Session 1/roundtable: Ecological Civilization and
agriculture
Luo Shiming, Robert Biel (Skype from UK, -8 hours),
Shi Yan
5.30pm - Close
6pm - Dinner
9
Tuesday 9th January 2018
9am
Session 2/roundtable: Ecological civilization, cultural
traffic and the longue durée
Prasenjit Duara (Skype from US, -13 hours), Wang
Mingming, Zou Yi
11am - Break
11.30am
Session 3/roundtable (1): Ecological civilization and
urban/rural relations
Cui Shenghui, Ali Cheshmehzangi
12.50pm - Lunch
2pm
Keynote 2: Nigel Clark – Ecological civilization and the
Anthropocene
3pm - Break
3.15pm
Session 3/roundtable (2): Ecological civilization and
urban/rural relations
Xu Honggang, Qian Junxi, Leigh Martindale
10
5.15pm
Closing remarks / Round-up / Journal information:
David Tyfield
5.30pm - Close
6.30pm
Dinner for those staying in Guangzhou
11
Participants Bio’s (in order of appearance)
Wen Tiejun - Renmin University of China, Institute of
Advanced Studies for Sustainability
Tiejun Wen is a renowned expert
on social-economic sustainable
development and rural issues,
especially in policy studies,
macro-economic, geo-strategy
of south-south cooperatives, and
long-term inclusive growth.
Wen, who also is executive dean
of China’s Institute of Rural
Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, has
received numerous honours and awards, including the First
Rank Award for Science and Technology Progress from the
Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and the First Rank Award
for Teaching and Education from the Beijing Municipal
Government.
As Executive Secretary General of the Chinese Society for
Restructuring the Economic System, he is leading China’s
grassroots efforts to revive rural communities and
economies. As agricultural economist Wen Tiejun won his
fame recently not as a theory maker, but as the creator of
China’s first free farmer’s training centre – the Yanyangchu
Countryside Construction Institute in Hebei Province.
Keynote Speech Title: National Eco-Civilization
Strategy & Rural Regeneration
12
Luo Shiming – South China Agricultural University,
College of Agriculture
Luo Shiming main research fields
include: (1) sustainable
agroecosystems and ecological
agriculture practices, (2) biodiversity
used in agriculture, (3) allelopathy
among crops and weeds, and (4)
computer simulation in crop
production system. He has delivered
courses on Agroecology, General Ecology, Advance in
Ecology, and Systems Analysis in Ecology. He has trained
more than 50 M.S. and Ph.D. students and published more
than 160 articles and 14 academic books.
He was the President of SCAU from 1995 to 2006, and
Director of the Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Ecology
in South China Agricultural University from 1994 to 2014.
He used to be the Vice President of China Agronomy
Society, Vice President of Scientists’ Association of
Guangzhou, Vice President of China Ecology Society, and
Executive Vice President of International Allelopathy
Society.
He got an award from the Ministry of Education as the
Outstanding Teacher of Higher Education in China, 2007.
He also received his Honorary Doctorial Degree from
Pennsylvanian State University, USA at the same year.
Presentation Title: Agroecology approach for
sustainable agriculture development in China
13
Robert Biel – University of Central London,
Development Planning Unit
Specialising in international political
economy, systems theory, sustainable
development and urban agriculture
Professor Biel has been a member of
DPU staff since 1997-8 - having
previously taught at School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS) and
Birkbeck College. He now works part-
time, teaching on the Masters course in Environment and
Sustainable Development, directed by Adriana Allen. His
book ‘The New Imperialism’ (2000) dealt with structural
issues in North-South relations and has been translated (in
a new revised edition in 2007) into Arabic and Spanish. In
‘The Entropy of Capitalism’ (Leiden: Brill, 2012) proposes a
novel synthesis between systems theory and political
economy. As a practitioner of low-input agriculture as well
as an activist in the Transition Towns movements, Robert is
particularly interested in how the crisis can act as a trigger
for a new community resilience, a subject tackled in his
latest book: ‘Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of the
City’ (2016). Together with Yves Cabannes, Robert has
played a role within the DPU's funded research,
consultancy and teaching on the issue of urban agriculture.
Presentation Title: Linking Marxism with Sustainable
Agriculture through Dialectics
14
Shi Yan – Proprietor of ‘Shared Harvest’ CSA Farm,
Beijing.
Shi Yan, the executive director of
Shared Harvest (Beijing) Ecological
Agriculture Service Ltd, received her
PhD from the Renmin University
School of Agricultural Economics and
Rural Development, and has finished
her postdoctoral research at Tsinghua
University’s School of Social Sciences.
As a young PhD student at Renmin University, she founded
China’s the very beginning CSA Farm in China, growing and
distributing organic vegetables to city consumers and
renting plots of land to city folk interested in getting their
hands dirty. Since then, 1000 similar CSA farms have
opened across the country. She has since moved on to
establish Shared Harvest in Tongzhou and Shunyi in 2012.
She has been inspiring a healthier and more sustainable
way to feed us. She is a pioneering force and active
promoter behind the Chinese organic community-
supported agriculture (CSA) movement.
She has also published one book “My Alternative Farming
Experience in America” and Chinese translations of three
related books: Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming
in China, Korea, and Japan; Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s
Guide to CSA; and Slow Money.
Presentation Title: CSA: A Way to Link Smallholders to
Sustainable Markets
15
Prasenjit Duara – Duke University, History
Department
Prasenjit Duara is the Oscar
Tang Chair of East Asian
Studies at Duke University. He
was born and educated in
India and received his PhD in
Chinese history from Harvard
University. He was previously
Professor and Chair of the
Dept of History and Chair of
the Committee on Chinese Studies at the University of
Chicago (1991-2008). Subsequently, he became Raffles
Professor of Humanities and Director, Asia Research
Institute at National University of Singapore (2008-2015).
In 1988, he published Culture, Power and the State: Rural
North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford Univ Press) which won
the Fairbank Prize of the AHA and the Levenson Prize of
the AAS, USA. Most recently, he has published The Crisis of
Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable
Future (Cambridge 2014). He has edited Decolonization:
Now and Then (Routledge, 2004) and co-edited A
Companion to Global Historical Thought with Viren Murthy
and Andrew Sartori (John Wiley, 2014). His work has been
widely translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and the
European languages.
Presentation Title: An Agenda for Ecological
Civilization—Debates and Problems
16
Wang Mingming – Peking University, Department of
Sociology
Wang Mingming,
professor of anthropology
at Peking University, has
conducted extensive
fieldwork in the cultural
areas of South Fujian and
Taiwan and Southwest
China as well as rural South
France. His primary
research interest is in the vernacular traditions. In
recent years, he has dwell upon ethnographic studies
of the life worlds in which, as he has argued, the
categories of persons, objects, and divinities are
highly related as both ontologies and ecologies. He
has published extensively on the anthropology
of China, non-Western perspectives of the others, and
civilizations including The West as the other (2007)
and Biography and Anthropology (2010).
Presentation Title: Persons are incomplete without
others: a human ecology of the three 'unions of
contraries’
17
Zou Yi - Fudan University, Centre for Historical
Geography
Zou Yi is associate professor
of historical geography at
Fudan University. He
acquired Ph. D. in history in
the Institute for Chinese
Historical Geography Studies
at Fudan in 2006, and then
stayed on to work there. His
research interests include the study of historical
geography and social economy in the Ming and Qing
Dynasties and the Republican era, especially the study
of traditional rural society and modern urban
development. He has a published monograph entitled
The Tea Industry and the Local Community in Huizhou
since the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1949). His
published papers include The Operation of Social
Public Services in Cities during the Qing Dynasty: A
Sample Survey on Fire Fighting & Prevention Services
in Hangzhou City, Industrial Agglomeration and
Consolidation of Urban Location: The History of Tunxi,
A City of Tea Trade in Huizhou (1577-1949).
Presentation Title: A Review on the Multi-ethnic
Governance of Qing Dynasty through the Integration
of Farming and Nomadic Regions
18
Nigel Clark - Lancaster University, Lancaster
Environmental Centre
Nigel Clark is Chair of Social
Sustainability and Human
Geography at the Lancaster
Environment Centre. He is the
author of Inhuman Nature:
Sociable Life on a Dynamic
Planet (2011) and co-editor of
Atlas: Geography, Architecture
and Change in an
Interdependent World (2012),
Material Geographies (2008) and Extending Hospitality
(2009).
Current research interests include pyrotechnology,
planetary capitalism, the politics of strata, and speculative
geophysical thought around the idea of the Anthropocene.
In particular, Nigel is concerned at how social life is shaped
and perturbed by physical forces by using the idea of the
`Anthropocene’ – the notion of human beings as geological
agents. Nigel’s research is thus focused on research
questions asking how our species acquired its geological
agency? What physical forces we’ve tapped into and joined
up with? How humans have used fire to transform ̀ earthy
materials’ - and in the process, how have we shaped our
social and physical worlds?
Keynote Speech Title: Confronting the Anthropocene:
Society, Politics and the Earth in Western Thought
19
Cui Shenghui – Chinese Academy of Science, Institute
of Urban Environment, Xiamen
Cui is the Vice Director and Professor of
the Key Lab of Urban Environment and
Health at the Institute of Urban
Environment, Chinese Academy of
Sciences.
Dr. Cui obtained his BSc degree in
biology at Fujian Normal University in
1994, MSc degree in environmental science at Xiamen
University in 1997, and PhD degree in environmental
planning and management at Xiamen University in 2003.
Before joining the Institute of Urban Environment, CAS, he
served as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Beijing Normal
University from 2004 to 2006. Dr. Cui has been working on
“Urban Ecological Process and Control”. He acted as PIs for
a Key International Cooperation Project and a General
Project of National Science Foundation of China (NSFC),
and as PIs for sub-projects under National Key Basic
Research Program and the International Cooperation
Research Program of CAS. He has published over 130
papers in scientific journals, including Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America. More than 40 papers were published in SCI
journals.
Presentation Title: Transboundary Environmental
Footprints of Food Consumption in Urbanized China
20
Ali Cheshmehzangi – University of Nottingham
Ningbo, Department of Engineering
Dr Ali Cheshmehzangi is currently
the Head of the Department of
Architecture and Built Environment
at The University of Nottingham
Ningbo China. He is also Associate
Professor of Architecture and
Urban Design, focusing on research
and teaching topics of sustainable
urbanism, integrated urban design,
eco city development, and smart-eco transitions of cities in
China and the EU. He is co-author of a book titled
‘Designing Cooler Cities’, and also a co-author of a
forthcoming book titled ‘Eco-Development in China’.
Ali is also Director of Urban Innovation Lab (UIL) in Ningbo,
a new set-up for innovative research in the field of
urbanism, focusing on big data, urban climate, and urban
planning and design. He is an urbanist by heart and by
profession, with qualifications, practice experience and
research profile in urban design, sustainable urban
planning and development. In 2015, he developed a
comprehensive planning toolkit, called ‘Integrated
Assessment for City Enhancement (iACE)’, which is utilised
particularly for planners and policy makers and is currently
working on numerous eco-city projects with Chinese
partners.
Presentation Title: Eco-Development Directions in
China: Future Urbanism in the hands of Innovation?
21
Xu Honggang - Sun Yat-Sen University, School of
Tourism and Management
Professor, Ph.D. School of Tourism
Management, Sun Yat-sen
University. Her interests are mainly
in tourism geography studies,
including the tourism lifestyle
mobilities, sustainable tourism
development and tourism planning.
She has published over 100 journal papers both inside Chin
and international journals.
Servicing as associate editor of Tourism geographies and
editor boarding member of Tourism Management,
Mobilities, Journal of Sustainable tourism, and ect. She is
the vice chairman of Chinese tourism geography
commission and member of Tourism and Recreation
Commission of International Geography Union. In 2016,
she obtained Wolf Roy Wolfe Award for Contributions to
the Advancement of Recreation, Tourism and Sport
Geography by the AAG Recreation, Tourism and Sport
Specialty Group, March 2016.
She is also active in applying knowledge to practice. For
example, she has been leading the formulation of national
accreditation programs for wetland tourism, wellness
tourism and ecotourism in China, advising on sustainable
tourism in Huangshan and Hongcun world heritage sites.
Presentation Title: Eco-Civilization from the
Perspective of Eco-tourism
22
Qian Junxi - Hong Kong University, Department of
Geography
Junxi is a social and cultural
geographer who works at the
intersection of geography, urban
studies and cultural studies. He
holds a BSc in Urban and Regional
Planning from Sun Yat- sen
University, China (2010), and a
PhD in Human Geography from
University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2013). Prior to
joining the University of Hong Kong, he worked as a
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Singapore
Management University, Singapore, advised by Prof
Lily Kong. Junxi's research interests include place
politics, urban public space, modernity, religion,
China's ethnic minorities/frontiers, and China's recent
urban transformation. Most of his published works
partake in one or several of these themes.
Presentation Title: Civilising the ecology? Discourse of
nature and environment in China's rural renaissance
movement
23
Leigh Martindale – Lancaster University, Lancaster
Environment Centre & JIE, Guangzhou
I am a PhD student whose
research examines China’s
recent project of ‘Ecological
Civilization’ and its
relationship with small-scale
green movements,
specifically ‘Alternative Food
Networks’ (AFNs).
The hope of the project is to assess and explore
Ecological Civilization potential formation through the
lens of Chinese AFNs. Indeed, the emergence of the
new and diverse forms of food procurement that are
occurring in China, as a response to fears of food
safety, can perhaps offer not only insights into what
Ecological Civilization might become, but also
alternatives ways of thinking regarding the thorny
question of how AFNs (in the West) are able to scale-
up.
I have also publish on the Anthropocene, exploring
the notion of human beings acting as geological
agents.
Presentation Title: What is Eco-Civilization? A Food-
Based Perspective
24
David Tyfield – Lancaster University, Lancaster
Environment Centre & JIE, Guangzhou
David’s research develops
interests in the normative and
political/power dimensions of
the processes of knowledge
production and their
interaction with issues of
global cultural political
economy, especially regarding
critical analysis of the
emergence of a globalised "knowledge-based"
economy, climate change and the rise of China. He
has been studying the process of low-carbon
transition in China since 2007, especially regarding
urban mobility. This has culminated recently in
Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China: Global Crisis,
Innovation & Urban Mobility (Routledge, 2017). As of
2017/18, he is leading a programme on ‘Oeconomics
for the Anthropocene’ at Lancaster’s Institute for
Social Futures. He is also an editor of Mobilities
journal.
David is an Executive Director of LEC-SCAU-GIGCAS
Joint Institute for the Environment, having lived in
Guangzhou to establish it from 2014-16.
Presentation Title: Ecological… Civilization..: a new
agenda
25
Accommodation Details
Address: (Nearest metro station: Wushan 五山)
广州市天河区五山华南农业大学竹园宾馆
Zhuyuan Hotel, South China Agricultural University,
Wushan, Tianhe, Guangzhou, China.
Location of Workshop: (5-10 minute walk from hotel)
Room 614, Science and Technology Building, College
of Natural Resources and Environment, South China
Agricultural University
(华南农业大学资源环境学院科技楼 614会议室 )
Zhuyuan Hotel
Workshop
26
Contact details
Re Programme/Talks:
David Tyfield – [email protected], WeChat:
davidtyf
Re Travel/Logistics:
Leigh Martindale – [email protected],
WeChat: leighmartindale
Jinghan Wang – [email protected],
Phone: 13651722861