Threatening Dystopias: politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh

Join us for the launch of Kasia Paprocki’s new book, Threatening Dystopias The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh dominates mainstream narratives of climate disaster. Frequently described as the ‘world’s most vulnerable country to climate change’, the oversimplified specter of a major country slipping underwater has yielded a crisis narrative that erases a complex history of landscape transformation and intense, contemporary political conflicts. Colonialism, capitalism, and local agrarian struggles have so far shaped the country’s coastline more than carbon emissions. Today, both national and global elites ignore this history, while crafting narratives and economic strategies that redistribute power and resources away from peasant communities in the name of climate adaptation. Threatening Dystopias draws on over two years of multi-sited ethnographic and archival fieldwork with development practitioners, policy makers, scientists, farmers and rural migrants, to investigate the politics of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh from multiple perspectives and scales, offering an in-depth analysis of the global politics of climate change adaptation and how they are both forged and manifested in this unique site.

Meet our speaker and chair

Kasia Paprocki (@KasiaPaprocki) joined the Department of Geography and Environment in 2017. Her work addresses issues within and between the study of the political economy of development, political ecology, social movements, and agrarian change. Her research is regionally focused in South Asia, particularly Bangladesh. Her current book project, based on over two years of ethnographic and archival research in South Asia and Europe, examines the political ecology of climate change adaptation in coastal Bangladesh.

Alpa Shah (@alpashah001) is Professor in Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at LSE.

Nikhil Anand (@liquidperson) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Austin Zeiderman (@azeiderman) is Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE.

More about this event

The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change.

You can order the book Threatening Dystopias : The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh (UK delivery only) from our official LSE Events independent book shop, Pages of Hackney.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEClimate

How to attend

This public event is free and open to all. No ticket or pre-registration is required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. 

For any queries email events@lse.ac.uk.