The ecological continuation of empire in the Arab world

The entanglement of colonialism, capitalism, and environmental exploitation has shaped the modern global order in ways that continue to structure global inequality. Mainstream approaches in international relations often obscure the violent histories of dispossession, domination, and extractive economies that drive contemporary political and ecological crises, producing racialized geographies of land, resources, labor and environment that endure.

Drawing on Fred Halliday’s critique of narratives that portray the Arab world as inherently locked in conflict, economic failure, or cultural clashes, this lecture situates climate and human vulnerabilities within the region’s (settler-) colonial, extractivist or war-torn past and present in contexts such Algeria, Palestine and Syria. By arguing that modernity, global capitalism, environmental destruction and epistemic erasure remain inseparable from imperial legacies that favor new forms of ecocide and green colonialism, it calls for rethinking security as justice.

Meet our speakers and chair

Marwa Daoudy is an Associate Professor of International Relations and the Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her last book, The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security, received the Harold and Margaret Sprout Prize from ISA.

Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE. She specialises in anti-colonial theory and history, and the politics of empire, race and knowledge production. She is currently writing a book on ‘Racial Militarism’, using a postcolonial framework to analyse the relationship between race, militarism, and the state in both imperial metropoles and post-colonies.

Rohan Mukherjee is Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of LSE IDEAS in the Department of International Relations at LSE. His research focuses on rising powers and how they navigate the power and status hierarchies of international order. His regional focus is on the Asia-Pacific, particularly how major powers such as India, China, the United States, and Japan, and smaller states in south and southeast Asia, manage the regional effects of global transitions.

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This event is part of the Fred Halliday memorial lecture series.

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