The Magdalena River, linking Colombia’s Andean interior and Caribbean coast, has long served as a conduit for the expansion of colonialism and capitalism in the Americas. Now a state-backed megaproject seeks to transform the waterway into a logistics corridor. 

Austin Zeiderman’s new book, Artery: Racial Ecologies on Colombia’s Magdalena River, relates the river’s fraught past and uncertain future to global entanglements of race, nature, and capital. Zeiderman examines how racial orders shape ecologies and infrastructures, thereby upholding exploitative relations not only among human populations, but also between people and the planet.

Join us for a discussion of Zeiderman’s book in which panelists will reflect on the regimes of extractivism and inequality that continue to afflict the modern world. 

Meet our speakers and chair

Austin Zeiderman is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE.

Majed Akhter is Senior Lecturer in Environment and Society in the Department of Geography at King's College London. 

Gisa Weszkalnys is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at LSE. 

Jake Subryan Richards is Assistant Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. 

Kasia Paprocki is Associate Professor of Environment in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE.

More about this event

The event will be followed by a reception open to all.

This event is co-hosted with the Social Life of Climate Change. 

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.