Vasna Ramasar

Building a pluriverse of alternatives through practices of regeneration and re-existence

Byggande av ett mångfald av alternativ genom livgivande praktik (detta blir på engelska)

In this talk, Vasna will reflect on some of the fundamental breaks in our society today – framing the current polycrisis in terms of the deep ruptures to life and relations to each other and the rest of nature. Calling for a decolonization of the imaginary, she opens up an exploration of how we carry out emancipatory world-breaking and world-making across different scales from our body to the global. Drawing on the praxis of communities across the world who are weaving the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, she illustrates how communities are creating other ways of being, knowing and doing. This extends from a deep understanding of care, community and commoning to the practical aspects of solidarity economies, radical democracy and alternative food system strategies. In conclusion, she shares her own longings for the present as an invitation to participants to dream and highlights the everyday actions that can be taken to build the worlds we want to live in.

Vasna Ramasar (she/her) is a scholar-activist from South Africa based between Copenhagen and Lund for the last 15 years. She is an Associate Professor at the Division of Human Ecology, Lund University and Director of the Master’s Programme on Culture, Power and Sustainability. Beyond her academic role she is a founding member of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, a global process weaving radical alternatives to the failing hegemonic system. She has also founded the Collective Against Environmental Racism in Denmark; is part of Post Extractive Futures Collective and is on the steering committee for Women Against Destructive Extractivism in Africa. She focuses on feminist and decolonial approaches to social and environmental justice and finding alternatives to the current destructive development paradigms through research, teaching, activism and artistic practice.  More fundamentally, she identifies as a being on this planet, a mother,  sister, comrade, and learner.  After years of fighting for social and environmental justice, Vasna is intent on doing the work to build the world we want to live in. Inspired by the many grassroots actions that are building a pluriverse, she is committed to transformative change through the small and large acts needed to achieve this – starting always from a place of radical love and care.