Call for proposals: Liberating spaces from extractivisms

The Nordic Summer University study circle 9, Degrowth and Exnovation, organises a winter 2027 session on 1–2 April, 2027, in Helsinki, Finland. A two-day focused study session bringing together activists, academics, artists, policymakers, and anyone with an interest in liberating real, conceptual and virtual spaces from extractivism, and recovering and recreating convivial alternatives and imaginaries. This call was originally published at the NSU website.

The theme of the session is Liberating spaces from extractivisms: exnovation as the recovery of space for convivial alternatives. Capitalist logics built on foundations of extractivism are irrevocably damaging the spaces of our common heritage. We are witness to this in our forests and our rivers, our fields and our seas, our local homes and our cultures. We are now also witness to the very enclosure and extraction of our spaces of conversation, our attention and even our cognition through technologies meant to disintegrate meaning and community. Across these various horizons of extraction, capital undermines the collective futures of the human and more-than-human worlds.

These activities depend on tools which are often presented as the only choice, but which actually constrain creative thinking about alternatives, lessen the surfacing of harms and prevent understanding of long-term impacts. They depend on fragmentation of resistance and making defiance seem too risky to contemplate. They depend on tired and debunked narratives told in service of frightened old powers. They depend on new visions of the future being suffocated before they take root. Ultimately, they serve to decommission our visions and capacities to organize our spaces differently, in the here and now.

Extractive industries share a common logic – take as much as possible, as fast as possible, from land and labor, with little regard for regeneration, reciprocity, or long-term consequence. Alternative, low-tech approaches offer a counter-logic. They work with natural cycles and local limits rather than against them, favor repair, reuse, and regeneration over one-way resource extraction, and rebuild relationships of care between people and the land and materials they depend on

How should we approach the exnovation of the tools and structures supporting extractive regimes, and how can we remake our many overlapping spaces as playful, participatory and respectful examples of good living that serve and protect those spaces? How can we strengthen and reinforce resistance to extractivism? What initiatives, campaigns, collectives and movements are already doing this work, throughout the Nordics and the wider world, and what lessons can be learnt from them?

These activities depend on tools which are often presented as the only choice, but which actually constrain creative thinking about alternatives, lessen the surfacing of harms and prevent understanding of long-term impacts. They depend on fragmentation of resistance and making defiance seem too risky to contemplate. They depend on tired and debunked narratives told in service of frightened old powers. They depend on new visions of the future being suffocated before they take root. Ultimately, they serve to decommission our visions and capacities to organize our spaces differently, in the here and now.

We are calling for abstracts, papers, perspectives, statements of interest, essays, reflections, literary and artistic contributions on the topic of liberating spaces from extractivisms. We welcome contributions from academics, artists, writers, NGOs, social movements, workers, civil servants, and anybody interested in participating. We seek diverse contributions, interpreting “space” broadly and inclusively, and welcome academic debates, policy discussions, artistic practices, new framings, visions and futures, as well as stories, and practical work in resistance to extractivism in our spaces.

Suggested themes

• Liberating landscapes and creating alternatives / alternative spaces beyond extractivisms: Extractivism reshapes both rural and urban spaces. In rural areas, extractivism is related to intensive material and energy use, including mining, industrial forestry, monoculture agriculture, and large-scale resource extraction. In cities, it may operate through the extraction of labour, attention, data, social reproduction, and everyday life via platform economies, smart city agendas, digital experimentation, and megaprojects. Extractivism creates “left-behind” spaces and communities while concentrating resources and power elsewhere. How communities organise in the defence of land and life, develop convivial and low-tech alternatives, reclaim commons, and create new forms of collective belonging and care? What are the alternative ways of managing forests, agriculture, water, energy, housing, and urban infrastructures? How to build post-extractive landscapes and geographies across rural and urban settings?
• Near and far away spaces: Local geographies are always intertwined with places far away. Efforts to create “sustainable” communities may rely on resources, labour, and ecological capacities located elsewhere. How do we delink from such relations and care for spaces that surround us in ways that recognise the interdependence of near and far, without placing the burdens of extraction on distant territories and people we will never meet? What would more reciprocal relations between places look like, and how might communities reduce their dependence on extractive core-periphery dynamics?
• Liberating social, digital and lived spaces: The tentacles of capitalist logics are sneaking into every imaginable inhabited space, from our public gathering areas to our digital commons, to the intimate corners where we lay down to sleep. How do we take back our living spaces from structural conditions oriented to profit, accumulation, and domination? What social relations, experiences, and emotions do we want to create in the spaces where we live our daily lives – the home, the school, the workplace, the town square, the bar?
• Practices, tactics and strategies for spatial liberation: What practices are people experimenting with on the ground to resist the expansion of extractivism and to create convivial spaces? What forms of occupation and liberation are gaining momentum? What strategies and tactics are effective?
• The role of communities in exnovating extractivisms: Communities can play a key role in defending lands, buildings and spaces from extractivism. They can also appropriate and repurpose spaces for alternative uses. What practical examples of communal organizing can teach us about how to exnovate extractivisms at specific places and times?
• Undoing extractivisms with low-tech: How can low-tech operate as a way to replace extractivism e.g, in forestry, mining, agriculture? How can low-tech agricultural practices (agroforestry, polyculture, seed-saving, no-till methods) restore the soil and biodiversity that industrial monocultures degrade? Can low-tech material practices (reuse, urban mining, repair, smaller-scale and slower extraction) reduce our dependence on large-scale, high-impact mining? Where are the limits of low-tech approaches at scale, and how should communities navigate the trade-offs that come with that?
• Repair, maintenance for communal organizing: How can repair and maintenance practices contribute to reclaiming technology from extractive and growth-oriented systems? What kinds of low-tech and convivial technologies emerge when communities learn to maintain, adapt and repair the things they already have, rather than continuously replacing them? How can repair practices redistribute technological knowledge and agency, challenging the separation between technological experts, producers and consumers? What forms of communal organising can sustain shared capacities for repair, maintenance and material care? And how might participatory repair practices create spaces where people can collectively experiment with technologies that are more understandable, adaptable, sufficient and responsive to local needs? We invite contributions exploring repair, maintenance and making as forms of communal organising and as pathways towards convivial technological futures.

ECTS credits

ECTS credits for PhD students. Through NSU, participants in the session will be granted a letter recommending ECTS credits for participation (1 ECTS for attendance of the session OR 2 ECTS for attendance and presentation of a topic of the student’s choice, that is relevant to the circle).

Cost

We have a three-tier cost to cover attendance of our winter circle. This includes attendance of both days, breakfast, lunch, snacks and coffee served each day as well as a dinner at the end of the first day. Note that all three tiers also cover a 1-year membership to the NSU. Accommodation and travel to Helsinki are not included, please arrange accommodation and travel on your own.

• €50 – Reduced cost: For individuals with an annual income below €25,000 who don’t have institutional support, as well as students without institutional support, or those who are retired, unemployed or working in precarious circumstances.
• €250 – For individuals with an annual income between €25,000 and €50,000 who don’t have institutional support
• €450 – For individuals who are funded by their institution, employer, or research grant, or individuals with an annual income above €50,000.

If you have institutional support, we kindly request that you pay the full €450 fee, as NSU is an entirely volunteer-run organization that depends on these fees for its continued functioning.

To apply for the winter 2027 circle, click on this link.

After we’ve reviewed your application, we’ll send you a link to pay the fee at our webshop.

Deadline to apply: December 1st.