Annual Meeting

Historian Adam Tooze has referred to polycrisis as a situation defined by multiple crises that converge to produce a “whole” that “is even more dangerous than the sum of its parts.” As researchers, how might we recognize people and their social worlds as affected by different crises such as climate change, biodiversity extinction, pandemics, great power struggles, tariff wars, the wars on terror and drugs, hyper-nationalism, and other macro-forces? How are people perceiving the risks, uncertainties, and ambiguities of these interlinked crises? How are they responding through practices of adaptation, attrition, migration, and the search for refuge? This conference invites participants to explore the social, cultural, political, economic, historical, and/or environmental conditions facilitating these disruptive forces, as well as how they are affecting communities in the U.S. South and beyond.