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Depicting the ocean as a vast space to be explored with speculative promise in new

information and research instrumentalizes nature and justifies the new market

manifest destiny

Helmreich 7 (Stefan, Anthropology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Blue-green

Capital, Biotechnological Circulation and an Oceanic Imaginary: A Critique of Biopolitical Economy,

BioSocieties (2007), 2, 287302 London School of Economics and Political Science)//rh

Abstract Examining the rise and fall of a publicprivate marine biotechnological enterprise in Hawaii, this

article analyses how promises to make products and profits from marine microbes in archipelagic

waters drew upon peculiarly American sentiments about the sea as a politically uncontested

treasure-chest of biodiversity . I argue that attention to the material process by which lab and legal

instruments are calibrated to one another to generate biotech exchange-value must be joined by

consideration of how scientists and their interlocutors imagine the meaning of biologyas discipline

and as corporeal substance and process. Without such symbolic analysis, theorizations of biocapital

remain incomplete.To discuss the genre of capitalism evidenced in marine biotechnological endeavors

in Hawaii, I develop the concept of blue-green capitalism, where blue stands for a vision of the

freedom of the open ocean and for speculative sky-high promise, and green for belief in ecological

sustainability as well as biological fecundity. I show that this vision, dominant in industryuniversity

settings, ran into direct conflict with Native Hawaiian legal epistemologies of the sea. Keywords

biocapital, biodiversity, bioprospecting, Hawaii, marine biotechnology, oceans The globe imagined in

globalization is a closed system, a finite sphere crisscrossed by flows of people, goods and media.

Such an encircling topology coalesced from circuits of mercantilism, capitalism and colonialism. With the

Cold War and the rise of environmentalism, the globe acquired a scientific icon in the image of Earthfrom space, a blue-green orb of mostly oceans. At the millenniums turn, the Pacific, once the

westward limit of the American frontier, morphed into a futuristic forcefield holding together the

Pacific Rim, host to new currents of transoceanic market and telecommunication processes. For

believers in the end of history, West spiraled around to meet East, fulfilling a market manifest

destiny. The ocean has been a key stage for this tale since,as Philip Steinberg argues in The social

construction of the ocean, the West has developed an idealization of the deep sea as a great voidof

distance, suitable for annihilation by an ever-expanding tendency toward capital mobility(2001: 163).

The ocean, writes Chris Connery, has long functioned as capitals myth element(1995: 289), a zone

of unencumbered capital circulation, most evident,perhaps, in oceanic vectors of conquest and

commerce, from the triangular trade to the transnational traffic of container ships. But the ocean hasbeen more than a channel for trade; it has also been a resource. Nowadays, it is being inspected for a

new kind of wealth that might travel into global markets: marine biodiversity transmogrified into

biotechnology. In this article, I consider biotechnology and globalization in the space of the sea,

examining a projectat the University of Hawaii to create a center for marine biotechnology dedicated

to using marine microbes as raw materials for bioproducts and pharmaceuticals . Hawaiis Marine

Bioproducts Research Engineering Center, chartered in 1998 to broker cooperation between US


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academic and industrial science, meant to deliver compounds that could yield what Catherine Waldby

names biovalue, generated wherever the generative and transformative productivity of living

entities can be instrumentalized along lines which make them useful for human projects (2000: 33).

Because this partnership intended to produce profit, such value was to be biocapital, defined by Sarah

Franklin and Margaret Lock as a kind of wealth that depends on a form of extraction that involves

isolating and mobilizing the primary reproductive agency of specific body parts, particularly cells (2003:

8; see also Heller, 2001) and that also banks on promises about the commercial products such

mobilizations might deliver in the future (2003: 1415; on this second point, see also Fortun, 2002 and

Sunder Rajan, 2006).1 Biocapital would emerge when laboratory instruments could be calibrated with

market and legal instruments. The present article, based on ethnographic work I conducted at and

around the University of Hawaii in 2002 and 2003, recounts the rise and fall of academic and industry

scientists hopes that biocapital generated from sea creatures could circulate into world markets. In

describing how marine biotechnology in Hawaii was imagined as biocapital, I argue that theorizations of

biocapital remain incomplete unless they account for how biotech practitioners(and we, as social

analysts) imagine the mechanisms and meaning of biology. A belief in the irrepressible generativity of

biological life forms themselves is often called upon to warrant the promissory character ofbiotechnology, as though biotech has inherited the potentiality associated with genes. Biotic substance

is considered to be the source of mutations and recombinations that create newness,a belief

described by Marilyn Strathern (1992) as a particularly Euro-American notion of biology as a platform for

reproducing thefuture. Such cultural-semiotic specificity or local biology(Franklin and Lock, 2003:

21) suggests that we should attend, as well, to how particular biological substancesmolecular,

cellular, embryonic or, in this article, marine microbial are made to matter in biocapitalisms and

their anticipated globalizations. In Hawaii, marine biotechnology calls upon the cultural force of

images of the islands as a tropical oceanic paradise full of natural promise for health and rejuvenation,

a view held by many mainland Americans, a pool from which biotechnologists in the islands are

mainly drawn. Here, marine biotechnology depends on a view of the sea as life writ large. A vision

of the ocean as endlessly generative mimes and anchors a conception of biology as always

overflowing with (re)productivity. Taking seriously the symbolic charge of marine biotechnology in

Hawaii leads me to describe a form of capitalism I term blue-green capitalism, where blue stands for

(a particularly American vision of) the freedom of the open ocean and for speculative sky-high promise,

and green for belief in ecological sustainability as well as biological fecundity(particularly, as we will

see, of populations of photosynthetic bacteria). Attention to such sentiments, and their contradictions,

leads me to a description of why legal instruments of biotech are fracturing in Hawaii, as some Native

Hawaiians challenge the right of biologists to turn Hawaiian marine life into an alienable resource. It

also allows me to situate the global dreams of American marine biotech alongside other national

projects, with different visions of biology, sea and globe.

Perpetuation of neolib guarantees environmental destructionwell always default to

the cheap fuel and view the ocean as a pool of unexploited capital - overwhelming

thrist for wealth always guarantees environmental collapse and extinction.

Szentes 8(a Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest) 8 (Tams, Globalisation and prospectsof the world society, 4/22http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/-Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-
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_jav..pdf)

It s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace

countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous local wars took

place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and

powerful countries, --arms race and militarisation have not endedwith the collapse of the Soviet

bloc, but escalated and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction and misusingenormous resources badly needed for development, --many invisible wars are suffered by the

poor and oppressed people,manifested in mass misery, poverty, unemployment,

homelessness, starvation and malnutrition, epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and

oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence,the denial or regular infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious

minorities, etc.,and last but not least,in the degradation of human environment, which means that--thewar against Nature, i.e. the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of

natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our environment, is still going on, causing also losses

and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism andinvisible wars we find striking

international and intrasociety inequities and distorted development patterns, which tend

to generate social as well as international tensions, thus paving the way for unrest and

visible wars. It is a commonplace now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of alasting peace between and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation,

but also a systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of invisible wars, of the

structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities, exploitation and

oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic

transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and opportunities for all people,

sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a

pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate system of proportional representation of the world

society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict

management, and thus also a global governance with a really global institutional system. Under the

contemporary conditions of accelerating globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world,

peace is indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war,

andcannot be safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or

invisible wars. Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which canprovide equal opportunities for sustainable development. Sustainability of development (both on national

and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to the need

for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with

overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However,no ecological balance can be ensured,

unless the deep international development gap and intra-society inequalities are

substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any zero-sum-games,in which one can gain at the expense of others, but, instead, the negative-sum-games tend to predominate,

in which everybody must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly, losses. Therefore, the actual question is

not about sustainability of development but rather about the sustainability of human life, i.e. survival ofmankindbecause of ecological imbalance and globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk de la Rive Box was

the president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the state and future of development studies.

We agreed that development studies are not any more restricted to the case of underdeveloped countries, as

the developed ones (as well as the former socialist countries) are also facing development problems, such

as those of structural and institutional (and even system-) transformation, requirements of changes in

development patterns, and concerns about natural environment. While all these are true, today I would dare

say that besides (or even instead of) development studies we must speak about and make survival

studies. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical, we live in an almost permanent crisis of
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the world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also socio-

psychological, behavioural, cultural and political aspects. The narrow-minded, election-oriented, selfish

behaviour motivated by thirst for power and wealth,which still characterise the political leadership

almost all over the world, paves the way for the final, last catastrophe. One cannot doubt, of course,that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the world in the last century. Such as

decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some former

fascist or authoritarian states, institutionalisation of welfare policies in several countries, rise of international

organisations and new forums for negotiations, conflict management and cooperation, institutionalisation of

international assistance programmes by multilateral agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of

sovereignty and democracy also on international level, collapse of the militarised Soviet bloc and system-

change3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few. Nevertheless, the crisis

of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of bifurcation that necessarily puts

an end to the present tendencies, either by the final catastrophe or a common solution. Under the

circumstances provided by rapidly progressing science and technological revolutions, human society

cannot survive unless such profound intra-society and international inequalities prevailing

today are soon eliminated.Like a single spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew'divided into two parts: the rich, privileged, wellfed, well-educated, on the one hand, and the poor, deprived,

starving, sick and uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to be

negative-sum-games) can hardly be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society.

Because of global interdependencies, the apparent winner becomes also a loser. The real choice for the world

society is between negative- and positive-sum-games: i.e. between, on the one hand, continuation of visible

and invisible wars, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the other, transformation of the world order by

demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or terminological camouflage can conceal this real

dilemma any more, which is to be faced not in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming

years, because of global terrorism soon having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to

irreversible changes in natural environment.

The alternative is to reject the neoliberal justifications for and action of the plan and

endorse an ethic of social flesh

An ethic of social flesh foregrounds embodied interdependence, substituting an

ecologicalview of relationships for the affs commodity thinkingonly the alternative

can produce ethical institutional decisionmaking

Beasley & Bacchi 7

(Chris, Prof. of Politics @ University of Adelaide, Carol, Prof. Emeritus @ University of Adelaide,

Envisaging a new politics for an ethical future: Beyond trust, care and generosity -- towards an ethic of

`social flesh', Feminist Theory, 2007 8: 279)

The political vocabulary of social flesh has significant implications for democratic visions. Because it

conceptualizes citizens as socially embodiedas interconnected mutually reliant fleshin a more

thoroughgoing sense than the languages of trust, care, responsibility and generosity, it resists accounts

of political change as making transactions between the lessfortunate and more privileged, more

trusting, more caring, more responsible or more generous. Social flesh is political metaphor in which

fleshly sociality is profoundly levelling. As a result, it challenges meliorist reforms that aim to protect

the vulnerablefrom the worst effects of social inequality, including the current distribution of wealth.


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A political ethic of embodied intersubjectivity requires us to consider fleshly interconnection as the

basis of a democratic sociality, demanding arather more far-reaching reassessment ofnational and

international institutional arrangements than political vocabularies that rest upon extending

altruism. Relatedly, it provides a new basis for thinking about the sorts of institutional arrangements

necessary to acknowledge social fleshly existence, opening up the scope of what counts as relevant

(Shildrick, 2001: 238). For example, it allows a challenge to current conceptualizations that construct

attention to the private sphere as compensatory rather than as necessary (Beasley and Bacchi, 2000:

350). We intend to pursue the relationship between social flesh and democratic governance in future

papers. Conclusion In this paper we focus on various vocabularies of social interconnection intended to

offer a challenge to the ethos of atomistic individualism associated with neo-liberalism and develop a

new ethical ideal called social flesh. Despite significant differences in the several vocabularies

canvassed in this paper, we note that most of the trust and care writers conceivethe social reform of

atomistic individualismthey claim to address in terms of a presumed moral or ethical deficiency

within the disposition of individuals. Hence, they reinstate the conception of the independent active

selfin certain ways. Moreover, there is a disturbing commonality withinall these accounts: an ongoing

conception of asymmetrical power relations between strong and weak, carers and cared for,

altruistic and needy. While widely used terms like trust and care clearly remain vocabularies around

which social debate may be mobilized, and hence are not to be dismissed (see Pocock, 2006), we

suggest that there are important reasons for questioning their limits and their claims to offer

progressive alternative understandings of social life. In this setting, we offer the concept of social flesh

as a way forward in rethinking the complex nature of the interaction between subjectivity, embodiment,

intimacy, social institutions and social interconnection. Social flesh generalizes the insight that

trusting/caring/ altruistic practices already take place on an ongoing basis to insist that the broad,

complex sustenance of life that characterizes embodied subjectivity and intersubjective existence be

acknowledged. As an ethico-political starting point, social flesh highlights human embodied

interdependence . By drawing attention to shared embodied reliance, mutual reliance, of people

across the globe on social space, infrastructure and resources, it offers a decided challenge to neo-

liberal conceptions of the autonomous self and removes the social distance and always already

given distinction between strong and weak. There is no sense here of givers and receivers; rather

we are all recognized as receivers of socially generated goods and services. Social flesh also marks our

diversity, challenging the privileging of normativeover other bodies. Finally, because social flesh

necessarily inhabits a specific geographical space, environmentalist efforts to preserve that space take

on increased salience(Macken, 2004: 25). By these means, the grounds are created for defending a

politics beyond assisting the less fortunate. Social flesh, therefore, refuses the residues of noblesse

oblige thatstill appear to linger in emphasis upon vulnerability and altruism within the apparently

reformist ethical ideals of trust/respect, care, responsibility and even generosity. In so doing it puts

into question the social privilege that produces inequitable vulnerability and the associated need for

altruism . Vital debates about appropriate distribution of social goods, environmental politics,

professional and institutional power and democratic processes are reopened.


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Collapse of neoliberalism is inevitable because of economic and environmental trends

multiple structural trends make resuscitation impossible, which means its try-or-die

for the alt

Li 10

(Minqi, Chinese Political Economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social scientist, currently an

associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah TheEnd of the End of History: The

Structural Crisis of Capitalism and the Fate of Humanity, Science and SocietyVol. 74, No. 3, July

2010, 290305)

In 2001, the U. S. stock market bubble started to collapse, after years of new economy boom. The

Bushadministration took advantage ofthe psychological shock of 9/11, and undertooka series of

preemptive wars(first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq) that ushered in a new era of intensified inter-

state conflicts. Towards the end of 2001, Argentina, which wasregarded as a neoliberal model country,

was hit by a devastating financial crisis. Decades of neoliberalism had not only undermined the livingstandards of the working classes, but also destroyed the material fortunes of the urban middle classes

(which remained a key social base for neoliberalism in Latin America until the 1990s). After the

Argentine crisis, neoliberalism completely lost political legitimacy in Latin America. This paved the way

for the rise of several socialist-oriented governments on the continent. Afterthe 2001global recession,

the global economyactually enteredinto a minigolden age. Thebig semi-peripheral economies, the

so-called BRICs(Brazil, Russia, India, and China) becamethe most dynamicsector. The neoliberal

global economy was fueled by the super-exploitation of the massive cheap labor forcein the semi-

periphery (especially in China). The strategyworked, to the extent that it generated massiveamounts of

surplus valuethat could be shared by the global capitalist classes. But it also created a massive

realization problem.That is, asthe workersin the emerging markets were deprived of purchasing

power, on a global scale, there was a persistent lack of effective demand for the industrial output

produced inChina and the rest of the semi-periphery. After 2001, the problem was addressed through

increasingly higher levels of debt-financed consumptionin the advanced capitalist countries (especially

in the United States). The neoliberal strategy was economically and ecologically unsustainable .

Economically, the debt-financed consumptionin the advanced capitalist countries could not go on

indefinitely. Ecologically, the rise of the BRICs greatly accelerated resource depletion and

environmental degradationon a global scale. The global ecological system is now on the verge of

total collapse . The world is now in the midst of a prolonged period of economic and political instability

that could last several decades. In the past, the capitalist world systemhad responded to similar crises

and managed to undertake successful restructurings. Is it conceivable that the current crisis will resultin a similar restructuring within the system that will bring about a new global New Deal? In three

respects, the current world historical conjuncture is fundamentally differentfrom that of 1945. Back in

1945, the United States was the indisputable hegemonic power. It enjoyed overwhelming industrial,

financial, and military advantages relative to the other big powers and, from the capitalist point of view,

its national interests largely coincided with the world systems common and long-term interests. Now,

U.S. hegemony is in irreversible decline . But none of the other big powers is in a position to replace


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the United States and function as an effective hegemonic power. Thus, exactly at a time when the

global capitalist system is in deep crisis, the system isalso deprived of effective leadership.4 In 1945,

the construction of a global New Deal involved primarily accommodating theeconomic and political

demands of the western working classes and the non-western elites(the national bourgeoisies and the

westernized intellectuals). In the current conjuncture, any new global New Deal will have to

incorporate not only the western working classes but also the massive, non-western working classes.Can the capitalist world system afford such a new New Deal if it could not even afford the old one?

Most importantly, back in 1945, the worlds resources remained abundant and cheap, and there was

still ample global space for environmental pollution. Now, not only has resource depletion reached an

advanced stage, but the world has also virtually run out of space for any further environmental

pollution.


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2

Scientific exploration is incompatible with solving the environmental crisiscoupling

exploration with science will always devolve back into science that distances them

from an understanding of interconnectedness thats key to solve the aff

Science or exploration; Which one do we choose?

voting negative is a refusal to sign the petition on endless scientific exploration,

investing in ocean exploration from the view of the abyssal alienan imagination-

based thought experiment without the 1acs scientific justifications for KNOWING the

oceanthis shift from Manifest Destiny is the only way to counter technocracy and

solve their harms (P)

Montroso 14(Alan, Graduate Teaching Assistant @ George Washington U, Ocean is the New East:Contemporary Representations of Sea Life and Mandevilles Monstrous Ecosystems, March 23, 2014,

http://bacchanalinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/ocean-is-new-east-contemporary.html)//mm

Spring Break was, well, hardly a break at all, but I celebrated its conclusion with some friends from Ohio

who were visiting for the weekend. We dined, we drank, we danced and we toured a few of the MUST

SEE sights of DC. Our last stop was theSmithsonians National Museum of Natural History, where I

reveled in thegorgeous new exhibit: The Sant Ocean Hall. The only one of our cadre enamored of

oceanic discoveries, I hurried from display to display, basking in bioluminescent beings, awe-struck at

extremophilesand trembling before themodel ofPhoenix, the North Atlantic right whale. Deeply

affected by these strange strangers, I stretched my imagination towards the inconceivableand

wondered at the sheer breadth of possibilitiesfor ways of living in these still-occult abyssopelagicregions.I found solace in the evidence thatso many vast and heterogeneous lives can flourish without

the intrusive light of the sun or human reason, and that such animacy is possible in the darkness, in a

world where the Copernican revolution is irrelevant. (1) I attempted to think with and alongside such

creatures, to make myself uncomfortable by imagining myself breathing without oxygen, thrivingat

thermal vents, manifesting light with my own body, an aqueous and somewhat amorphous body

squeezed and strangled by the only just bearable pressures of the deep sea. I attempteda

posthumanist thoughtproject similar to what Stacy Alaimo describes in Violet-Black, her contribution

to Prismatic Ecology, in which she insists that Thinking with and through the electronic jellyfish, seeing

through the prosthetic eye, playing open-ended, improvisational language games with deep-sea

creatures, being transformed by astonishment and desire enact a posthumanist practice. (2)

Responding to the highly-stylized illustrations in books from the Census of Marine Life, Alaimo finds in

such affective imagery an invitation to new ways of thinking life, and consequently the possibility for the

dethronement of terrestrial ideas of sovereignty. Each Smithsonian display, like each vibrantly hued

illustration of marine life, defamiliarizes this planet and renders a world that simply will not surrender

to humanitys hubristic desire for authority. Each impossible way of being, now proven possible, works

to dismantlewhat Mel Y. Chen calls the animacy hierarchy by begging us to reconsider just what the

hell comprises an animate body anyway. (3) And yet, as I wandered from station to station


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examiningthese oceanic bodies summoned from the abysses of the sea, lifeless, entombed in glass

jars and carefully arranged for an American viewing public, I could not forget the relation between

observers and observed, nor that human scienceand politicking still fashion a sovereign/subject

relation between humans and the myriad strangers that populate the seas . Thus as I wandered the

Sant Ocean Hall, I thought about what it means to wander, who gets the privilege of wandering

(Americans, human knowledge-seekers), and what remains the stationary object of scrutiny(the

nonhuman body, the foreign object, the subject of scientific knowledge). Thesemarvelous displays are

discrete islands of monstrous creatures that underscore humanitys desire to safely navigate strange

waters. I chose the adjective marvelous very carefully, for my wanderingabout the various exhibits

reminded me of a medieval journey to the marvels of the East and, more specifically, of Mandevilles

travels around the monstrous islands just past the Holy Lands and off the coasts of Africa and India. For

the ocean, it seems, is the new East, compared against the way the medieval Western hegemony

represented the East in its travel literature. The inhabitants of Earths oceans are put on display to be

navigated, plundered, studied and represented by the sovereign powers of Western thought. Like

Mandevilles tale of fish that deliver themselvesto the shore for human consumption, we expect the

seas to divulge their mysteries for our ravenous desire to control by means of knowledge-making. In Chapter13 of the Defective Version of The Book of John Mandeville (ed. Kohanski and Benson), the narrator announces that, having

completed his tour of the Holy Lands, he intends to telle of yles and diverse peple and bestes(1380). This rather lengthy

chapter is rich in peculiarity and marvel, a veritable encyclopedia of the monstrous. An allegory-generating female spirit grants

riches and doles out commensurate consequences for her supplicants greed. Gendered diamonds mate and spawn resplendent

children, challenging notions about the inertness of lithic objects. Nudists, cannibals, blood drinkers, as well as

pygmies, dog-headed creatures and headless bodies with ocular and oral orifices on their chests and

shoulders roamthese foreign shores. Mandeville fulfills the European desire to believe the East is

wholly Other, a monstrous and invitingly dangerous land abundant in resources and passively

awaiting representation by the Western imagination. Yet, although his descriptions of the diverse

beings of the East are certainly mythical, Mandeville also lends acertain scientific explanation for the

monstrous by repeatedly attending to the extreme heat of this region; Mandeville offers a

climatological cause for the wonders he claims to encounter. Ethiopians hide from the sun under feet largeenough to shield their bodies; men on the isle of Ermes suffer their ballockys hongeth doun to her shankes (1557). In such

intolerable climatesprecious stones spill from river banks, reptiles grow to enormous proportions and, as I mentioned above,

fish are so plenteuous that they offer themselves up for consumption . Heat is generative, and the corporeal

peculiarities of the desertsas well as the fecundity of the tropical East are,in Mandeville, responses to

extreme climate- much like the extremophiles surviving sulfuric blasts of scorching heat from deep sea

vents. Each coastal countryand island in The Book of John Mandeville is a unique ecology, an oikos or

home to thevarious and varying creatures that inhabit these spaces, and like contemporary scientific

attempts to understand the porosity between bodies and ecosystemsonce thought uninhabitable,

Mandeville offered something like a medieval ecological justification for the diversity of beings he

describes. Thus I wonder if we can assume that the imaginative spacesand the marvelous creatures

inhabiting those spacesdrawn by medieval travel literature generated new ways of thinking about

an environmentally and ecologically complex world. Can we not find in such texts an anxiety and

ambivalence about an earth more vast and verdant than Gods rubric allowed? Although giants erupt

from Biblical origins, and blood drinkers, flesh eaters and necrophiliacsmay mark anxieties about their obviousCatholic analoguesremember, Christians believe a man came back from the dead, a man whose actual body and blood

Catholics consume at every Masswhat of the other strange strangers that emerge from the pages of Mandeville, the

Cynocephales and headless figures with sensory organs in their chest? Are these curious beings the imagined consequences of


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thinking through previously un-thought ecosystems? Although fictitious, these tropical creatures seems to signal the

disorienting encounter with evidence that the Earth and its beings are more heterogeneous than

previously believed.There is something disanthropocentric, then, toMandevilles imagining the wondrous

creatures of the East, just as Alaimo insists that encountering the enchantingly strange creatures of

the oceans depths is a sort of posthumanist practice. The Smithsonians website might argue that Its

hard to imagine a more forbidding place than the icy cold, pitch black, crushing environment of the deepsea ocean. Its even hard to imagine anything living there, (4) yet, like Mandeville,we MUST imagine

new possibilities of living on this Earth, we must see through the eyes of the abyssal aliens, feel the

torturous heat with medieval monsters, if we are ever to dethrone Humanity from the heights of

ecological sovereignty.


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Environment

Climate Change Alt cause to bio-diversitylaundry list of reasons it affects all levels of

ecosystems

Bellard et al, 12 (CelinePhD; postdoc work on impact of climate change at the Universite Paris ,

Cleo Bertelsmeier, Paul Leadley, Wilfried Thuiller, and Franck Courchamp, Impacts of climate change onthe future of biodiversity, US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health accepted for

publication in a peer reviewed journal, January 4,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880584/, AW)

The multiple components of climate change are anticipated to affect all the levels of biodiversity,

from organism to biome levels(Figure 1, and reviewed in detail in, e.g., Parmesan 2006). They primarily

concern various strengths and forms of fitness decrease, which are expressed at different levels, and

have effects on individuals, populations, species, ecological networks and ecosystems. At the most

basic levelsof biodiversity, climate change is able to decrease genetic diversity of populations due to

directional selection and rapid migration, whichcould in turn affect ecosystem functioning and

resilience(Botkin et al. 2007) (but, see Meyers & Bull 2002). However, most studies are centred onimpacts at higher organizational levels, and genetic effects of climate change have been explored only

for a very small number of species. Beyond this, the various effects on populations are likely to modify

the web of interactions at the community level(Gilman et al. 2010; Walther 2010). In essence, the

response of some species to climate change may constitute an indirect impact on the species that

depend on them. A study of 9,650 interspecific systems,including pollinators and parasites, suggested

thataround 6,300 species could disappear following the extinction of their associated species(Koh et

al. 2004). In addition, for many species, the primary impact of climate change may be mediated

through effects on synchrony with species food and habitat requirements (see below). Climate

change has led to phenological shifts in flowering plants and insect pollinators, causing mismatches

between plant and pollinator populations that lead to the extinctions of both the plant and the

pollinator with expected consequences on the structure of plant-pollinator networks(Kiers et al. 2010;

Rafferty & Ives 2010). Other modifications of interspecific relationships (with competitors,

prey/predators, host/parasites or mutualists) also modify community structure and ecosystem functions

(Lafferty 2009; Walther 2010; Yang & Rudolf 2010) At a higher level of biodiversity, climate can induce

changes in vegetation communities that are predicted to be large enough to affect biome integrity.

The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment forecasts shifts for 5 to 20% of Earths terrestrial ecosystems, in

particular cool conifer forests, tundra, scrubland, savannahs, and boreal forest (Sala et al. 2005). Of

particular concern are tipping points where ecosystem thresholds can lead toirreversible shifts in

biomes(Leadley et al. 2010). A recent analysis of potential future biome distributions in tropical South

America suggests that large portions of Amazonian rainforest could be replaced by tropical savannahs

(Lapola et al. 2009). At higher altitudes and latitudes, alpine and boreal forests are expected to expandnorthwards and shift their tree lines upwards at the expense of low stature tundra and alpine

communities(Alo & Wang 2008). Increased temperature and decreased rainfall mean thatsome lakes,

especially in Africa, might dry out(Campbell et al. 2009). Oceans are predicted to warm and become

more acid, resulting in widespread degradation of tropical coral reefs(Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007).

The implications of climate change for genetic and specific diversity have potentially strong

implications for ecosystem services. The most extreme and irreversible form of fitness decrease is
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880584/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880584/


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obviously species extinction. To avoid or mitigate these effects, biodiversity can respond in several

ways, through several types of mechanisms.

Conservation projects with alarmist justifications are ruses for neoliberal

expansionism and control of the environmentguarantees that the aff fails.

Bscher et al. 12(Bram, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainable Development at theInstitute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, Sian Sullivan, Katja Neves, Jim Igoe, and Dan

Brockington, Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation, Capitalism, Nature,

Socialism,Volume 23,Issue 2,2012)//rh

Among critics of the neoliberal project, however, there is a notable absence of this kind of analysis with regards to conservation. David

Harvey (2003, 166-168), for example, tends to view environmental conservationas providing alternatives that actively

counter neoliberal capitalism. In The New Imperialism, his list of struggles against accumulation by dispossession is also a litany of

environmental protest. Yet he only glancingly acknowledges that peasants might be dispossessed from their

land as effectively for a national park as by a new sheep run. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, he describesa

sprawling environmental movement hard at work 3 promoting alternative visions of how to better connect political and

ecological projects without tracing the complex politics that tie some elements of this movementfirmly into mainstream political economy(Harvey 2005, 186; Dowie 2006). He does clearly recognize the role of NGOs inpromoting neoliberalism but does not mention conservation NGOs among their number (Harvey 2005, 177). Indeed, conservation does not

appear in these books as a focus of interest. The casting of almost any form of conservation as progressively

opposed to the forces creating environmental crisis is especially problematic when an alarmist

language of crisis is used to justify policies and practices that are injurious to local livelihoods (often

in the name of capturing landscapes for environmental conservation)(Fairhead and Leach 1996; Leach and Mearns

1996; Stott and Sullivan 2000).5 Crisis-driven critiques also often miss the larger point that environmental (and

other) crises increasingly are themselves opportunities for capitalist expansion.Martin OConnor thus writes in

1994 that environmental crisis has given liberal capitalist society a new lease on life. Now, through

purporting to take in hand the saving of the environment, capitalism invents a new legitimation foritself: the sustainable and rational use of nature (OConnor 1994, 125- 126). So, while conservation conventionally is

conveyed as something different, as saving the world from the broader excesses of human impacts under capitalism, in actuality it

functions to entrain nature to capitalism, while simultaneously creating broader economic

possibilities for capitalist expansion. Markets expand as the very resolution of environmental crises that other market forces

have produced. Capitalism may well be the Enemy of Nature, as Kovel so aptly put it. Conserving nature, paradoxically, seems

also to have become the friend of capitalism. Thus we see that 1) conservation is vitally important to

capitalism; and 2) that this importance is often not recognized. These are compelling reasons for a

synthesized critique of neoliberal conservation. In the next section we explain more clearly our emphasis on neoliberalconservation, before attempting to pull together the threads of critique in such a way as to clarify key concerns and positions. 2Why Focus on

Neoliberal Conservation? One of neoliberalisms raison-dtres is to expand and intensify global capitalism(Harvey 2005). Capitalism, in turn, is at the heart of the dramatic ecological changes and crises unleashed

in the last two centuries(OConnor 1998; Foster 2007; Kovel 2002; Burkett 2006).6 With the rise of capitalism, the means for, scale of,

and drive towards ecosystem transformation has grown dramatically. In dialectical interaction with technological

developments and the intensification of colonial extraction(amongst other factors), emerging capitalist

societies became more adept at offsetting local and regional ecological transformationsextra-

locally and extra-regionally, hence laying the foundations for ecological crisis on a world-scale, or a

crisis in the world-ecology,as Moore (2010) puts it. Across space (extensification) and within spaces (intensification), capitalism
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcns20?open=23#vol_23http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcns20/23/2http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcns20/23/2http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcns20?open=23#vol_23


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has disrupted and changed the metabolism of ecological processes and connections (Kovel 2002, 82). Bearing in mind our comments on

environmental crises above, here we emphasize two key aspects of capitalisms propensity to stimulate large -scale ecological crises. The first

has to do with the nature of ecological crisis. Diversity, connectivity and relationships are crucial for the resilience

of ecosystems.Ecology 101 teaches students that everything hangs together with everything else, which is both the reason why

studying ecosystems is both such a joy and so complex. Capitalisms drive to turn everythinginto exchange value (into

commodities that can be traded) cuts up these connections and relationships in order to produce, sell

and consume their constituent elements. Hence, as Kovel (2002, 130-131) shows, capitalism separates, splits

andbecause in principle everything can be bought and or soldalienates and estranges. To

further bring conservation into capitalism, then, is to lay bare the various ecosystemic threads and

linkages so that they can be further subjected to separation, marketization and alienation, albeit in

the service of conservation rhetoric.The second point has to do with the nature of capital, which, as Marx (1976, 256) pointedout, is value in process, money in process: it comes out of circulation, enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within c irculation,

emerges from it with an increased size, and starts the same cycle again and again. Capital is always on the move; if it ceases

to move and circulate, the whole system is threatened. The recent financial crisis has made this abundantly clear. FromWashington via London to Tokyo, all leaders of rich countries were primarily concerned with making sure that banks would start lending again

in order to get money back into circulation. As such, capitalism is inherently expansionist, striving continuously to

bring more and more facets of life into its orbit, including natural worlds at multiple scales.7 Making

clear the (monetary) exchange value of nature so as to calculate what price has to be paid in order to

conserve its services, then, is not just about trying to preserve ecosystems, as the currently popular

adagio payments for environmental serviceswould have it. It is about finding new arenas for markets to

operate in and thus to expand theremit, and ultimately the circulation of capital. Payments go to those able

to capture them, rather than directly to nature, and this explains why conservation responses to

ecological crises, although popularly understood as in contestation to the environmental effects of capitalism, now are providing

such fruitful avenues for further capitalist expansion(Sullivan 2010). One of the key ways in which this has

occurred has been through infusing conservation policy and practice with the analytical tools of

neoliberal economics, without recognizing that these are themselves infused with, and reinforce,

particular ideological positions regarding human relationships with each other as well as with non-human natures. It is to this point that we now turn.

Environmental protection unpopularonce they gather the information there is no

political will to implement climate policies.

Valentine, 7/15,(Katie, reporter for Climate Progress, Congressional Candidate: Most Energy

Problems Are Caused By Environmentalists, Climate Progress, JULY 15, 2014,

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/15/3460398/congressional-candidate-environment/)//erg

In the eyes ofone candidate running for office in Washington, environmentalists arent the ones looking tosolve the countrys energy problems theyrethe ones at fault for them . George Cicotte, a Republican candidate

for Washingtons fourth congressional district, said at a candidate forum Saturday that if environmentalists hadnt stopped

nuclear in its tracks in the 1970s, there would be a lot less greenhouse gas pollution today. Really, when

we talk about energy problems, most of the energy problems are caused by environmentalists, he said. Cicottes

comments came as part of alonger statement on his views on environment and energyissues, during which

he spoke of his all of the above energy preferences but made comments that were dismissive of


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wind energy a resource he claims to support on his campaign website. Wind energy? Ill be honest give me a break, he said.

There would not be a single windmillin this entire state were it not for tons of irrational federal

government spending. Theyre trying to light a brush fire for wind and it aint working.

Zoonotic diseases being solved in status quospecific to the pathogen that their

evidence highlights.Science Codex 12 (Super cool and accurate science website, Preserved Frogs Hold Clues to Deadly

Pathogen, June 20, 2012,

http://www.sciencecodex.com/preserved_frogs_hold_clues_to_deadly_pathogen-93651)//rh

A Yale graduate student has developed a novel means for charting the history of a pathogen deadly to

amphibiansworldwide. Katy Richards-Hrdlicka, a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Forestry &

Environmental Studies, examined 164 preserved amphibians for the presence of Batrachochytrium

dendrobatidis, or Bd, an infectious pathogen driving many species to extinction. The pathogen is found

on every continent inhabited by amphibians and in more than 200 species. Bd causes chytridiomycosis,

which is one of the most devastating infectious diseases to vertebrate wildlife. Her paper, "Extracting

the Amphibian Chytrid Fungusfrom Formalin-fixed Specimens," was published in the British EcologicalSociety's journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution and can be viewed at

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2041-210X.2012.00228.x/full. Richards-Hrdlicka swabbed

the skin of 10 species of amphibians dating back to 1963and preserved in formalin at the Peabody

Museum of Natural History. Those swabs were then analyzed for the presence of the deadly pathogen.

The frog being swabbed is a Golden Toad (Cranopsis periglenes) of Monteverde, Costa Rica. The species

is extinct as a result of a lethal Bd infection. (Photo Credit: Michael Hrdlicka) "I have long proposed that

the millions of amphibians maintained in natural-history collections around the world are just waiting

to be sampled," she said. The samples were then analyzed using a highly sensitive molecular test called

quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) that can detect Bd DNA, even from specimens originally

fixed in formalin. Formalin has long been recognized as a potent chemical that destroys DNA. "This

advancement holds promise to uncover Bd's global or regional date and place of arrival, and it could also

help determine if some of the recent extinctions or disappearances could be tied to Bd," said Richards-

Hrdlicka. "Scientists will also be able to identify deeper molecular patterns of the pathogen, such as

genetic changes and patterns relating to strain differences, virulence levels and its population

genetics." Richards-Hrdlicka found Bd in six specimens from Guilford, Conn., dating back to 1968, the

earliest record of Bd in the Northeast. Four other animals from the 1960s were infected and came from

Hamden, Litchfield and Woodbridge. From specimens collected in the 2000s, 27 infected with Bd came

from Woodbridge and southern Connecticut.In other related work, she found that nearly 30 percent of

amphibians in Connecticut today are infected, yet show no outward signs of infection. Amphibian

populations and species around the world are declining or disappearing as a result of land-use change,

habitat loss, climate change and disease. The chytrid fungus, caused by Bd, suffocates amphibians bypreventing them from respiring through their skin. Since Bd's identification in the late 1990s, there has

been an intercontinental effort to document amphibian populations and species infected with it.

Richards-Hrdlicka's work will enable researchers to look to the past for additional insight into this

pathogen's impact


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Virulent diseases cannot cause extinction because of burnout theory

Gerber 5 (Leah R. Gerber, PhD, Associate Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Sciences,

Ecological Society of America, Exposing Extinction Risk Analysis to Pathogens: Is Disease Just Another

Form of Density Dependence?August 2005)//rh

The density of a population is an important parameter for both PVA and hostpathogen theory. A fundamental principle of epidemiology is that

the spread of an infectious disease through a population is a function of the density of both

susceptible and infectious hosts. If infectious agents are supportable by the host species of

conservation interest, the impact of a pathogen on a declining population is likely to decrease as the

host population declines. A pathogen will spread when, on average, it is able to transmit to a susceptible host before an infected host

dies or eliminates the infection (Kermack and McKendrick 1927, Anderson and May 1991). If the parasite affects the

reproduction or mortality of its host, or the host is able to mount an immune response, the parasite

population may eventually reduce the density of susceptible hosts to a level at which the rate of

parasite increase is no longer positive. Most epidemiological models indicate that there is a host threshold density

(or local population size) below which a parasite cannot invade, suggesting that rare or depleted

species should be less subject to host-specific disease.This has implications for small, yet increasing, populations. For

example, although endangered species at low density may be less susceptible to a disease outbreak,recoveryto higher densities places them at increasing risk of future disease-related decline (e.g., southern sea otters; Gerber et al. 2004). In the absence

of stochastic factors (such as those modeled in PVA), and given the usual assumption of disease models that the chance that a susceptible host

will become infected is proportional to the density of infected hosts (the mass action assumption) a hostspecific pathogen cannot

drive its host to extinction (McCallum and Dobson 1995). Extinction in the absence of stochasticity is possible if alternate hosts

(sometimes called reservoir hosts) relax the extent to which transmission depends on the density of the endangered host species. Similarly, if

transmission occurs at a rate proportional to the frequency of infected hosts relative to uninfected hosts (see McCallum et al. 2001),

endangered hosts at low density may still face the threat of extinction by disease. These possibilities suggest that the complexities

characteristic of many real hostpathogen systems may have very direct implications for the recovery of rare endangered species.


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STEM

STEM labor crisis rhetoric reproduces neoliberal inequality and causes water

shortages, ecological destruction, and economic inequalitylabor shortages are a

myth constructed to control worker wages by creating a surplus of STEM workers

Pierce 14

(Clayton Pierce, assistant professor in the Education, Culture, & Society Department at the University of

Utah, STEM Crisis Myth Revealed: Industry Leaders and Politicians Need a Surplus Army of STEM

Workers, March 26, 2014, http://educationalbiocapital.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/stem-crisis-myth-

revealed-industry-leaders-and-politicians-need-a-surplus-army-of-stem-workers/)

Over the past 10 years especially, calls to increase Science, Technology, Math, and Engineering (STEM)

output from our countrys schools has been deafening. It isimpossible to listen to almost any policy

maker or CEO speaking on the topic of education reform in the U.S. who does not couch their entire

analysis on the STEM worker shortage crisis the country is currently facing. Schools and universities in

the U.S., if they are to do one thing, so the story goes, is to produce a massive STEM workforce that canhelp the economy roll past fast moving competitors such as India and China (insert any other country

that scores better on the trends in international mathematics and science study [TIMSS] test). The

problem with this story, as Harvard Law School senior research associate Michael S. Teitelbaum has

recently pointed out in his study on the STEM workforce shortage, is that it does not match the facts

on the ground. Teitelbaums as well as other recent studies on the STEM workforce show that, in fact,

STEM workers in most fields are suffering from the same rates of unemployment as other professional

degree fields. The constructed perception of a vast open horizon of employment opportunities

awaiting the 21st century student/worker isexactly that: a manufactured discourse driven by

politicians and industry leaders who want to manage the STEM worker population in this country to

their advantage . Given this new data on the STEM workforce in the U.S. it is time to reassesswhat I

have called the Neo-Sputnik narrative driving current neoliberal educational reform in the U.S.

through theactual verifiable contours of the STEM workforce. Here is what I see as the most

compelling and insightful findings from the recent research done on the STEM crisis in this country as it

relates to major K-12 educational reform policy initiatives such as Race to the Top or Rising above the

Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Wages are

stagnate or falling in many STEM fields. This finding is telling because, as Teitelbaum rightly asserts, if

there were truly a STEM work shortage companies would increase wages in order to draw bright young

people into the workforce Wages are not increasing (which should follow if worker demand is high

and supply is low) because STEM industry lobbyists and politicians have passed legislation that allows for

a steady stream of lower-wage workers from other countries (see the legislation for international

student visa waivers that has accompanied many economic recovery acts of late) The few areas

where STEM degree holders are enjoying raises is in booming industries such asthe petroleum

fracking industry Finally, STEM careers are actually among the most unstable and volatile

employment typesin the economy given the short-term, project based nature of the work (1-3 year

post-doctorate work for example makes up a large segment of the STEM workforce). Given these

conclusions what are we to make of the unrelenting STEM driven educational reform drumbeat that


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continues to seize public discourse around school failure and economic recovery in this country?

Moreover, how can corporate actors such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other STEM

reliant industry leaders continue to have credibility in calling for hyper STEM focused education reform

to be the centerpiece for addressing long term social/political problems associated with the so-called

achievement gap and the overall growth of racial and economic inequality in this country? Michael

Anfts Chronicle of Higher Education article makes questions like these more relevant by emphasizingone of the most important findings in Teite lbaums study. In particular that Most of the claims ofsuch

broad-based shortages in the U.S. STEM work force come from employers of STEM personnel and

from their lobbyists and trade associations, says Michael Teitelbaum, a Wertheim Fellow in science

policy at Harvard University and a senior adviser at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Such claims have

convinced some politicians and journalists, who echo them. But if there truly were an across-the-STEM-

spectrum labor shortage, Mr. Teitelbaum and others note, wed be seeing an overall rise in wages in

technology and science fields. And that isnt happening. One of the most important findings from

Teitelbaum and Anfts analyses of the STEM workforce data in terms of its impact on K-12 education

reform is that STEM industry actors in fact benefit from the perception of a STEM workforce shortage in

the U.S. and the reality of not having to pay higher wages for a relatively uncompetitive labor pool. But

how could this be? Heres one way I offer to interpret the intersection of the STEM crisis myth and K-12

Neo-Sputnik school reform (and really K-graduate school) within the context of this new data. To start

with, I think we have to ask the question of who benefits (profits) most from generating the perception

of a STEM workforce crisisin the U.S.? There are many historical examples one could point to suggest a

possible way to answer this question. One I would suggest comes from a classic early critique of

industrial capitalism formulated by a man with an impressive beard and ability to sit for long hours at

the British Museum Library in London. In his classic critique of capitalism, notably in Volume 1 of Capital,

Karl Marx argued(and provided strong evidence on the subject) that one important developmental

aspect of capitalist growth was the establishment of disciplining mechanisms (schools being an

important one) in society capable of shaping the working class population within a competitive wage

labor situation . That is, peasants and farmers didnt just droptheir rakes and ploughs and walk

peacefully into urban factoriesthey had to be coerced and disciplined into a worldview where they

(and in most cases were left with no alternative) had to accept their fate as competitive economic actors

trying to survive on the new productive playing field brought into existence through industrial capital

and wage labor. One of the most effective ways workers were disciplinedinto participating in society

as a competitive economic actor set against other workers who were also selling the only commodity

available to them (their bodys energy as labor power) was, as Marx points out in Volume 1 of Capital,

through the industrial owners/politicians actor network that governed lawssuch as the working day,

amount of education child workers should be allowed, health and safety of workers, and minimum

amount of pay. Forany or all of these governing strategiesover the working class in England (and other

parts of the world) to workhowever there needed to be segmented groups of workerspopulations of

wage workers that could be pitted against one anotherto get around pesky work reform laws such as

the limitation of the working day to 10 hours or a minimum amount of hours children had to spend in

school. Marx of course named this phenomenon, the disciplining and creation of different segments of

the working population, reserve, floating, and semi-permanent worker populations among other

categories. The pattern Marx was onto that is important and relevant to understanding the STEM

myth todayand why schools play such an important role in it is that powerful economic industries


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always need to create and regulate working populations in order to maintain and maximize

profitability and growth. If workers went on strike to increase wages in Birmingham or London, for

instance, it was handy for factory owners to simply compel the reserve working class (or a surplus of

workers) in nearby towns to work in the factory for what the owners wanted to pay or perhaps even

drop wages (thereby increasing the golden egg of surplus value that originates from human labor).

Having an escape valve to release the pressure of exploitative work relations, in other words, is part ofhow a capitalist economy is organized and regulated as Marx showed us 150 years ago in his analysis of

industrial capital and the creation of surplus working populations. I think this is one important (if not the

most) explanation as to why high-tech industry leaders in fields such as pharmaceuticals, biomedical,

biotechnological, and information technologies have taken control of educational reform policy and

based it upon the false premise of a STEM workforce labor shortage. K-12 schools, as it turns out, are

one of the most important and influential spaces in society that such a strategy can play out, one that is

interested in producing not necessarily 21st century skilled workers but 21st workers that can be put

into competition with one another. The STEM crisisin other words and the call for a total curricular

overhaul to address this need should be read, I am suggesting, as a crisis in the reserve STEM working

population a role that has largely been filled by workers from other countries. What seems to bemissing, and is what I see as one of the driving forces behind the STEM crisis myth, is the need to grow

out a larger domestic surplus in the STEM workforcein order to increase the overall pool of available

labor that can be set into competitive relation to each other. But the project to create and regulate a

surplus population of STEM workers does not work exactly the same as it did during the industrial period

of capital. As researchers (such as Kaushik Sunder Rajan and Melinda Cooper) who have looked at the

nature of capitalism in its high-tech/biocapitalist phase have pointed out, production in knowledge

society is largely based on some promissory or speculative future. Things like the next wonder drug, for

example, are years down the road and investments need to be made now in order to realize their

potential value or at least to participate in the high risk/reward economic gamble that many

biocapitalist ventures are based upon. The domestic STEM workforce similarly is built on the samespeculative bubble: the jobs will eventually come some time in the future and we (biocaptialist

actors/policy maker networks) need to start building the promissory workforce to meet this perceived

labor demand. Schools , in other words, have become a hedge fund site for the speculative needs of

industries with an eye toward the futureone where a whole new standing and reserve army of

workers needs to be created so profitability and growth can be realized. Instead of being held

hostage by the speculative agents of the countrys educational future, shouldnt we be focused on the

present that is beset with realsocial and ecological crises like global climate change , water

shortages , widespread environmental injustices in working class and communities of color or simply

let communities decide for themselves what problems should be addressed? In our present momentthe educational future is being decided by those who are focused on solving very different problems ,

and for them, all we need to do is fall in line to help our country recover by doing our part to stem the

STEM crisis.

Doesnt lead to peacestatistics show unipolarity actually leads to war

Montiero 12--Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University


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Nuno, Unrest Assured, International Security, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Winter 2011/12),

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Unrest_Assured.pdf

How well, then, does the argument that unipolar systems are peaceful account for the first two

decades of unipolarity since the end of the Cold War? Table 1 presents a list of great powers divided

into three periods: 1816 to 1945, multipolarity; 1946 to 1989, bipolarity; and since 1990, unipolarity.

46 Table 2 presents summary data about the incidence of war during each of these periods.

Unipolarity is the most conflict prone of all the systems, according to at least two important

criteria: the percentage of years that great powers spend at war and the incidence of war involving

great powers. In multipolarity, 18 percent of great power years were spent at war. In bipolarity, the

ratio is 16 percent. In unipolarity, however, a remarkable 59 percent of great power years until now

were spent at war. This is by far the highest percentage in all three systems. Furthermore, during

periods of multipolarity and bipolarity, the probability that war involving a great power would

break out in any given year was, respectively, 4.2 percent and 3.4 percent. Under unipolarity, it is

18.2 percentor more than four times higher. 47 These figures provide no evidence that

unipolarity is peaceful .48

Hegemony is the superpower syndromea fear of vulnerability that breeds

unnecessary violence to showcase Americas omnipotenceimpact is an imperial

wake of destruction

Lifton, professor of psychiatry at Harvard, 3[Robert Jay Lifton, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry

at Harvard Medical School, previously Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the

Graduate School and Director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of

Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, 2003 (Superpower Syndrome: Americas Apocalyptic

Confrontation With The World, Published by Thunders Mouth Press / Nation Books, ISBN 1560255129,

p. 125-130)]

It is almost un-American to be vulnerable. As a people, we pride ourselves on being able to stand up to anything, solve allproblems. We have long had a national self-image that involves an ability to call forth reservoirs or strength when we need it, and a sense of a

protected existence peculiar to America in an otherwise precarious world. In recent times we managed, after all, to weather the most brutal

century in human history relatively unscathed. THE BLESSED COUNTRY Our attitude stems partly from geography. We have always claimed a

glorious aloneness thanks to what has been called the Free security of the two great oceans which separate us from dangerous upheavals in

Europe and Asia. While George Washington was not the isolationist he is sometimes represented to be, he insisted on his celebrated Farewell

Address of 1796, Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world. That image has been

embraced, and often simplified or distorted, by politicians ever since. (He warned against permanent alliances, not alliances in general).

The idea of our separateness and safety from faraway conflicts has had importance from the time of the early settlers, many of whom left

Europe to escape political religious, or legal threats or entanglements. Even if one came as an adventurer or an empire-builder, one was leaving

a continent of complexity and conflict for a land whose remoteness could support new beginnings. Abraham Lincoln absolutized

that remoteness and security from outside attack in order to stress that our only danger came from ourselves: All the armies

of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their

military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or

make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.However much the world has shrunk technologically in

the last half century, and however far-ranging our own superpower forays, that sense of geographic invulnerability has

never left us. We have seen ourselvesasnot only separate from but different from the rest of the world, a specialnationamong nations. That sense of American exceptionalism was intensely observed by Alexis de Tocqueville, the brilliant French politician and

writer, in the early nineteenth century. In de Tocquevilles view of America, A course almost without limits, a field withou t horizon, is revealed:

the human spirit rushes forward and traverses *it+ in every direction. American exceptionalism has always been, as the


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sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset has pointed out, a double-edged sword. In the psychological life of Americans it

has been bound up with feelings of unique virtue, strength, and success. But this has sometimes led

Americans to be utopian moralists, who press hard to institutionalize virtue, to destroy evil people,

and eliminate wicked institutions and practices.That subjective exceptionalism has been vividly expressed in the historian

Richard Hofstadters observation, It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one. At the

time of the Puritans, sentiments of exceptionalism were expressed in biblical terms: America was an Arcadian image of the New World anEden from which the serpent and forbidden trees had been thoroughly excluded, and a new Promised Land and a New Jerusalem. The

language was that of a postapocalyptic utopia, and remnants of such sentiments persist whenever we speak of ourselves in more secular terms

as the new world. Important to this feeling of exceptionalism has been a deep sense that America offered unparalleled access to regenerative

power. As Richard Slotkin explains: The first colonists saw in America an opportunity to regenerate *end page 127+ their fortunes, their spirits,

and the power of their church and nation, though the means to that regeneration ultimately became the means of violence. Even when

Americans played what has been called a shell game of identity, they could experience an unlimited capacity for renewalendless new

beginnings as individuals or as a nation. Slotkin speaks of a new relationship to authority in this new world. While in Euro pe all men were

under authority; in America all men dreamed they had the power to become authority. These claims of new aut hority extended to the country

as a whole, to Americas authority among nationsa claim to new national authority that was expanded over time thanks to Americas

considerable achievementseconomic, technological, scientific, and cultural. American exceptionalism has often had the

overall psychological quality of a sense of ourselves as a blessed people, immune from the defeats

and sufferings of others. But underneath that sense there had to be a potential chink in our

psychological armorwhich was a deep-seatedif hidden sense of vulnerability.OMNIPOTENCE AND VULNERABILITY

Ironically, superpower syndrome projects the problem of American vulnerability onto the world stage. A

superpower is perceived as possessing more than natural power. [end page 128] (In this sense it comes closer to resembling the

comic-strip hero Superman than the Nietzschean Superman.) For a nation, its leaders, or even its

ordinary citizensto enter into the superpower syndrome is to lay claim to omnipotence, to power that is

unlimited, which is ultimately power over death. At the heartof the superpower syndrome then is the need to

eliminate a vulnerability that, as the antithesis of omnipotence, contains the basic contradiction of the

syndrome. For vulnerability can never be eliminated, either by a nation or an individual. In seeking its

elimination, the superpower finds itself on a psychological treadmill. The idea of vulnerability is

intolerable, the fact of it irrefutable. One solution is to maintain an illusion of invulnerability. But the

superpower then runs the danger of taking increasingly draconian actions to sustain that illusion. For to do

otherwise would be to surrender the cherished status of superpower. Other nations have experiences in the world that render them and their

citizens all too aware of the essential vulnerability of life on earth. They also may be influenced by religious and cultural traditions (far weaker in

the United States) that emphasize vulnerability as an aspect of human mortality. No such reality can be accepted by those clinging to a sense of

omnipotence. At issue is the experience of death anxiety, which is the strongest manifestation of vulnerability. Such a deep-seated[end

page 129] sense of vulnerability can sometimes be acknowledged by the ordinary citizens of a

superpower, or even at times by its leaders,who may admit, for instance, that there is no guaranteed defense against

terrorist acts. But those leaders nonetheless remain committed to eliminating precisely that

vulnerabilitycommitted, that is, to the illusory goal of invulnerability. When that goal is repeatedly underminedwhether by large-scale terrorist acts like 9/11, or as at present by militant resistance to American hegemony in Iraq and elsewhere in the

Middle Eastboth the superpower and the world it acts upon may become dangerously destabilized.

Their STEM advantage is rooted in an ideology of economic competitiveness makes

environmental and economic collapse inevitable

Bristow(School of City & Regional Planning, Cardiff University) 10(Gillian, Resilient regions: re-placeing regional competitiveness, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and

Society 2010, 3, 153167)

In recent years, regional development strategies have been subjugated to the hegemonic discourse of

competitiveness, such that the ultimate objective for all regional development policy-makers and


21/24

practitioners has become the creation of economic advantage through superior productivity performance, or

the attraction of new firms and labour (Bristow, 2005). A major consequence is the developing

ubiquitification of regional development strategies (Bristow, 2005; Maskell and Malmberg, 1999). This

reflects the status of competitiveness as a key discursive construct (Jessop, 2008) that has acquired hugely

significant rhetorical power for certain interests intent on reinforcing capitalist relations (Bristow, 2005;

Fougner, 2006). Indeed, the competitiveness hegemony is such that many policiespreviously

considered only indirectly relevant to unfettered economic growth tend to be hijacked in supportof competitiveness agendas(for example Raco, 2008; also Dannestam, 2008). This paper will argue,

however, that a particularly narrow discourse of competitiveness hasbeen constructed that has a

number of negative connotations for the resilience of regions. Resilience is defined as the regions

ability to experience positive economic success that is socially inclusive, works within

environmental limits and which can ride global economic punches(Ashby et al., 2009). As such,

resilience clearly resonates with literatures on sustainability, localisation and diversification, and the

developing understanding of regions as intrinsically diverse entities with evolutionary and context-specific

development trajectories (Hayter, 2004). In contrast, the dominant discourse of competitiveness is

placeless andincreasingly associated with globalised, growth-first and environmentally malign

agendas(Hudson, 2005). However, this paper will argue that the relationships between competitiveness

and resilience are more complex than might at first appear. Using insights from the Cultural Political Economy

(CPE) approach, which focuses on understanding the construction, development and spread of hegemonic

policy discourses, the paper will argue that the dominant discourse of competitiveness used in regional

development policy is narrowly constructed and is thus insensitive to contingencies of place and the more

nuanced role of competition within economies. This leads to problems of resilience that can be partly

overcome with the development of a more contextualised approach to competitiveness. The paper is now

structured as follows. It begins by examining the developing understanding of resilience in the theorising and

policy discourse around regional development. It then describes the CPE approach and utilises its framework

to explain both how a narrow conception of competitiveness has come to dominate regional development

policy and how resilience inter-plays in subtle and complex ways with competitiveness and its emerging

critique. The paper then proceeds to illustrate what resilience means for regional development firstly, with

reference to the Transition Towns concept, and then by developing a typology of regional strategies to show

the different characteristics of policy approaches based on competitiveness and resilience. Regional resilience

Resilience is rapidly emerging as an idea whose time has come in policy discourses around localities andregions, where it is developing widespread appeal owing to the peculiarly powerful combination of

transformative pressures from below, and various catalytic, crisis-induced imperatives for change from

above. It features strongly in policy discourses around environmental management and sustainable

development (see Hudson, 2008a), but has also more recently emerged in relation to emergency and disaster

planning with, for example Regional Resilience Teams established in the English regions to support and co-

ordinate civil protection activities around various emergency situations such as the threat of a swine flu

pandemic. The discourse of resilience is also taking hold in discussions around desirable local and regional

development activities and strategies. The recent global credit crunch and the accompanying in-crease in

livelihood insecurity has highlighted the advantages of those local and regional economies that have greater

resilience by virtue of being less dependent upon globally footloose activities, hav-ing greater economic

diversity, and/or having a de-termination to prioritise and effect more significant structural change (Ashby et

al, 2009; Larkin and Cooper, 2009). Indeed, resilience features particular strongly in the grey literature

spawned by thinktanks, consul-tancies and environmental interest groups around the consequences of

the global recession, catastrophic climate change and the arrival of the era of peak oil for

localities and regions with all its implications for the longevity of carbon-fuelled economies,

cheap, long-distance transport and global trade. This popularly labelled triple crunch(New Economics

Foundation, 2008) has power-fully illuminated the potentially disastrous material consequences of

the voracious growth imperative at the heart ofneoliberalism andcompetitiveness, both in theform of resource constraints (especially food security) and in the inability of the current system

to manage global financial and ecologicalsustainability.In so doing, it appears to be galvinising


22/24

previously disparate, fractured debates about the merits of the current system, and challenging public and

political opinion to develop a new, global concern with frugality, egalitarianism and localism (see, for example

Jackson, 2009; New Economics Foundation, 2008).

No STEM crisiswe already have a huge excess of STEM grads.

Roberts 13

(Robert N. Charette, Posted 30 Aug 2013, The STEM Crisis Is a Myth Forget; the dire predictions of a looming shortfall ofscientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, Charette is a Fellow with Cutter'sBusiness Technology Strategies

practice. He is also President of ITABHI Corporation, a business and technology risk management consultancy. With 35 years

experience in a wide variety of international technology and management positions, Dr. Charette is recognized as an

international authority and pioneer regarding IS, IT, and telecommunications risk.)

The Georgetown study estimates that nearlytwo-thirds of the STEM job openings in the United States,

or about 180 000 jobs per year, will require bachelors degrees. Now, if you apply the Commerce

Departments definition of STEM to theNSFs annual count of science and engineering bachelors

degrees,that means about 252 000 STEM graduates emerged in 2009. So even if all the STEM openings

were entry-level positions and even if only new STEM bachelors holders could compete for them,

that still leaves 70 000 graduates unable to get a job in their chosen field. Of course, the pool of U.S.

STEM workers is much bigger than that: It includes new STEM masters and Ph.D. graduates (in 2009,around 80 000 and 25 000, respectively),STEM associate degree graduates (about 40 000), H-1B visa

holders (more than 50 000), other immigrants and visa holders with STEM degrees, technical

certificate holders, and non-STEM degree recipients looking to find STEM-related work. And then

theres the vast number of STEM degree holders who graduated in previous years or decades.Even in

the computer and IT industry, the sector that employs the most STEM workers and is expected to grow

the most over the next 5 to 10 years, not everyone who wants a job can find one . A recentstudy by

the Economic Policy Institute(EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more

than a third of recent computer science graduates arent workingin their chosen major; of that group,

almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available.Spot shortages for certain STEM

specialists do crop up. For instance, the recent explosion in data analytics has sparked demand fordatascientistsin health care and retail. But the H-1B visa and similar immigrant hiring programs are meant to

address such shortages. The problem is that students who are contemplating what field to specialize in

cant assume such shortages will still exist by the time they emerge fro