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Drawing on analysis of three films that converge on the Aral Sea and span from 1929 to 1988, Alec Brookes engages with Marxist scholarship on the Anthropocene and Capitalocene to argue that the Soviet ecology rested on the same fundamental principle of the Capitalist world ecology: the alienation of indigenous producers from land in waves of primitive accumulation. The Forty-First (1956) and Turksib (1929) both show how, alongside other devices, the dialectics of film form as theorized by Sergei Eisenstein were repurposed to reframe the conquest of “Man” over “Nature” and ultimately to appropriate land from producers within an ostensibly Marxist framework. In The Needle (1988), on an already desiccated Aral Sea, director Rashid Nugamov suggests that the restoration of Asian land to Asian producers provides a way forward after the decay and depravation of the Soviet ecology. The analysis here suggests that to confront the Capitalist world ecology in the present we must work to restore land to indigenous producers and promote indigenous ecological relations.

Over the past two decades, the cost of electronic journals has continually grown to the point that many academic libraries today find it financially unsustainable. This has made it necessary for librarians to begin cancelling major journal subscription packages, known colloquially as big deal packages. The cancellation of big deal packages is complex, and at present, poorly understood practice revolving around the analysis of a range of quantitative and qualitative data. Moreover, it also has a distinct micro-political dimension as it involves reconciling the, at times, conflicting interests of faculty, students, librarians, and publishers. This panel seeks to initiate a dialogue between a diverse group of stakeholders with interests in this issue. It is expected that this dialogue will increase awareness of the complexity involved in managing the size, scope, and cost of big deal subscription packages and will give voice to multiple perspectives on the issue. As such, it is hoped that the panel will contribute to finding common ground from which we can collectively begin thinking about how the symbiotic relationship between academic libraries and publishers can be reinvented. Au cours des deux dernières décennies, le coût des revues électroniques n'a cessé d'augmenter au point que de nombreuses bibliothèques universitaires se trouvent aujourd'hui dans une situtation insoutenable. Cela a obligé les bibliothécaires à annuler les abonnements aux grands ensembles offert par les plus importants éditeurs commerciaux. L'annulation des grands ensembles de revues est une pratique complexe et, à l'heure actuelle, mal comprise, qui nécessite l'analyse de données quantitatives et qualitatives diverses. De plus, ces désabonnements ont une dimension micropolitique distincte car ils impliquent de concilier les intérêts parfois conflictuels des professeurs, des étudiants, des bibliothécaires et des éditeurs. Ce panel vise à initier un dialogue entre diverses parties prenantes de cette question. Il est attendu que ce dialogue suscitera une prise de conscience de la complexité la gestion de la taille, de la portée et du coût des grands ensemble et donnera la parole à de multiples perspectives sur cette question. Nous espérons que le panel contribuera à trouver un terrain d'entente à partir duquel nous pourrons collectivement commencer à réfléchir à la manière dont la relation symbiotique entre les bibliothèques universitaires et les éditeurs peut être réinventée.