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79746-01 - Seminar: The Battle of Materials: Commodities, Consumption, and Planetary Crisis (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2026 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers |
Miguel Cadórniga Martínez (miguel.cadornigamartinez@unibas.ch)
Adam Przywara (adam.przywara@unibas.ch) Moritz von Brescius (moritz.vonbrescius@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This seminar introduces students to commodity and material histories as key approaches to understanding the origins and drivers of today’s planetary emergency. Focusing on the modern world from the nineteenth century to the present, we examine how “everyday” materials — including rubber, sugar, steel, oil, plastics, and fertilizers — became strategic resources, reshaped landscapes and labor regimes, and underpinned powerful ideologies of abundance and infinite growth. The seminar combines close reading and discussion of foundational scholarship with selected primary sources, including corporate and state propaganda on resource extraction, military reports, and visual campaigns. We will explore how different materials shaped lifeworlds and everyday habits, how they competed for market share and consumer acceptance, and how the material fabric of modernity emerged through marketing, consumer manipulation, and the creation of new desires and demands. Alongside weekly text discussions, several sessions will feature invited external experts and leading scholars, giving students the opportunity to engage directly with current research in commodity history, consumption history, and the environmental humanities. We will also address major concepts and controversies surrounding the Anthropocene and related frameworks, including debates about limits to growth and the politics of scarcity. Throughout, we will ask how historical perspectives can sharpen our understanding of climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality, and how materials connect these crises across empires, periods, and social worlds. |
| Learning objectives | Through intensive reading and discussion, participants will gain a historically grounded understanding of how modern societies built economies of ever-expanding production and consumption through plantations, mines, and factories, often by displacing ecological costs and coercing labor across imperial and post-imperial spaces. Students will strengthen their ability to connect specific commodities to broader transformations in landscapes, consumption, and geopolitics; critically assess competing narratives of scarcity, limits, and technological fixes; and situate Anthropocene debates in relation to older traditions of thinking about abundance, depletion, and planetary change. |
| Bibliography | Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth: A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2024). Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy (London: Allen Lane, 2024). All weekly reading materials will be made available on the ADAM platform. |
| Comments | Enrollment is limited to 30 students. In the event of over-enrollment, priority will be given to students in the Master’s Program in European Global Studies, the BA and MA programs in History, as well as to those whose research projects focus on resources. |
| Weblink | Europainstitut Basel |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Monday | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 14.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 21.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 28.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 05.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 12.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 19.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 26.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 02.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 09.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 16.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 23.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 30.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 07.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Monday 14.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Riehenstrasse 154, Seminarraum 00.022 |
| Modules |
Modul: Areas: Europa Global (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Epochen der europäischen Geschichte: Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Neuere / Neueste Geschichte (Master's degree subject: History) Module: Fields: Environment and Development (Master's degree program: African Studies) Specialization Module Global Europe: Environment and Sustainability (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) Specialization Module Global Europe: Globalized Trade and Business (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | 50% active participation in class 50% two response papers (up to 1,000 words each), each addressing a different session |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | 1-6 0,5 |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | University of Basel |
| Offered by | Europainstitut |