In _Vibrant Matter_ the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events (...) might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the_ _effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy. (shrink)

Umwelt theory is an expression of von Uexküll’s subjective biology and as such usually applied in analysis of individual animals, yet it is fundamentally relational and therefore also suitable for analysis of more complex wholes. Since the birth of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s, there has been growing scientific and political acknowledgement of there being a global environmental crisis, which today manifests itself as a climate change and biodiversity crisis. This calls for a multi-scale ecosemiotic approach to (...) analysis of human ecology at various levels and scales. In this article I explore to what extent ecosemiotic methodology, drawing on Umwelt theory and its consistently subjective perspective, can be applied in analysis of human ecology at different geographical and ecological scales ranging from the global to the local. The article incorporates a case study of human–animal relations in Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in the Central Amazon. This is a seasonal floodplain forest area surrounded by rivers. I investigate aspects of the living conditions and ecology of the reserve, with a main focus on indigenous communities and the circumstances of two primate species, namely the red howler monkey and the black-headed squirrel monkey. I outline matrixes of levels of study in ecosemiotics, and scales in human ecology, and apply two scales to the Mamirauá case. These take an individual animal’s and an individual human being’s subjective experience as their respectively starting points. This allows for multi-scale studies of human ecology from complementary angles. (shrink)

This book analyzes how science-based nature protection campaigns are transforming society and the environment through extensive fieldwork in China's southwestern cities. Furthermore, it examines the role of ecology in constituting state power and social inequality.

Presents a provocatively anthropocentric analysis of the way forward for green politics and environmental movements, exposing the deficiencies and contradictions of green approaches to post-modern politics and deep ecology. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

A timely, well-grounded analysis that reveals an inconvenient truth: we can't save capitalism and save the planet.

This volume examines the nature/politics relationship anew in the wake of recent critiques of the category of "nature." Its essays draw on contemporary and canonical thinkers to reflect on "second nature" as a site or paradigm of political contest and intervene into debates about environmentalism, human rights, and more.

This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'--an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. (...) Coming from both well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings. (shrink)

Encountering the "anthropocene": setting the scene -- The conceptual politics of the anthropocene: science, philosophy and culture -- The "anthropocene" in global change science: expertise, the earth, and the future of humanity -- The "anthropocene" in philosophy: the neo-material turn and the question of nature -- The "anthropocene" in popular culture: narrating human agency, force and our place on earth -- Key concepts and the anthropocene: a reconsideration -- Power, world politics and thing-systems in the anthropocene -- Time and (...) politics in the anthropocene: too fast, too slow? -- Democracy in the anthropocene -- Global justice and the anthropocene: reproducing a development story -- The practices of political study in the anthropocene -- The "good anthropocene" and green political theory: rethinking environmentalism, resisting ecomodernism -- Co-producing knowledge and politics of the anthropocene: the case of the future earth program -- The ethics of political research in the anthropocene -- Epilogue: continuity and change in the anthropocene. (shrink)

This book explores some of the conditions and underlying causes of the multiple environmental crises facing humanity. Rooted in anthropology, but multidisciplinary in scope, it surveys the many socio-cultural and socio-economic errors, foibles, and follies that brought us to these circumstances. Crucially and uniquely, it outlines an array of viable and practical solutions, some of which are radically different from the current status quo and cultural expectations. The first chapter canvasses the emerging, interdisciplinary field of political ecology, then (...) Part I examines details and trends in agriculture. Part II portrays the threats posed by carbon dependent and combustive technologies as well as the hydro and nuclear energy systems now powering the majority of human actions in developed parts of the world and expanding beyond. The third part turns to consider solutions, including green new deals, de-growth policies, localization, agroecology, alternative energy systems, and many more possibilities. The conclusions engage with urgent moral and legal issues and outline social movement strategies-all related to our collective neglect of climate change-and then finally speculate upon possible futures. This book is key reading for researchers and students interested in climate change across the social and physical sciences and humanities. (shrink)

"Political hierarchies and ecological crises are often considered to be two different problems. For example, many speak in the present of parallel concerns : climate change and racial injustice. Parker argues rather that these concerns share a common cause in the polis. Polis is an ancient Greek term for the city-state, from which the English term political derives. But polis is more than a term. It is a philosophy according to which there is one complete human body, (...) and that body is meant to govern all other things. In that sense there are not two concerns, but instead one concern : to perceive the ways in which this tradition of the polis constrains the present. Emily Anne Parker bridges the insights of social constructionism and new materialisms to create a philosophy of elemental difference. Difference, rather than needing to be either dismissed based on it social construction or reified in keeping with the hierarchies of the polis, is crucial for addressing the contemporary crises of the polis.""--taken from back cover. (shrink)

Martin Empson draws on a Marxist understanding of history to grapple with the contradictory potential of our relationship with our environment. In so doing he shows that human action is key, both to the destruction of nature and to the possibility of a sustainable solution to the ecological crises of the 21st century.

Taking an eco-socialist perspective, _The Ecological Crisis and the Logic of Capital_ explores the logic of capitalism as a fundamental cause of today’s environmental crisis, in particular the thirst for profit and the capitalist mode of production.

A collection of essays by Timothy W. Luke discussing social and political issues related to ecology, environmentalism, ecocriticism, global climate change, and the Anthropocene.

In the midst of the current ecological crisis, there is often lofty talk of the need for humanity to ‘overcome its divisions’ and work together to tackle the big challenges of our time. But as this new book by Razmig Keucheyan shows, the real picture is very different. Just take the case of the siting of toxic waste landfills in the United States: if you want to know where waste is most likely to be dumped, ask yourself where Blacks, Hispanics, (...) Native Americans and other racial minorities live and where the poorest neighbourhoods are. This kind of ‘environmental racism’ is by no means restricted to the United States: it is very much a global phenomenon. Keucheyan show how the capitalist response to the crisis has been marked by a massive expansion in ‘environmental finance’. From ‘carbon markets’ to ‘pollution permits’, ‘climate derivatives’ and ‘catastrophe bonds’, we are seeing a proliferation of nature-related financial products. Instead of tackling the root of the problem, the neoliberal strategy seeks to profit from environmental risks. Moreover, with the rise in natural disasters, resource scarcity, food crises, the destabilization of the poles and oceans and the prospect of tens of millions of ‘climate refugees’, Western powers are increasingly adopting a military response to ecological problems. The Cold War is over: welcome to the ‘green wars’. From New Orleans to the Siachen glacier via the Arctic floes, Keucheyan explores the landmark sites of this new ‘climate geostrategy’. Through a sharp critique of the way capitalism responds to environmental disaster, this innovative book provides a fresh perspective on some of the most critical issues confronting our societies today. (shrink)

Assuming that liberalism, liberal democracy, and the free market are here to stay, this book asks how sustainability can be interpreted in ways that respect liberal democratic values and institutions. Among the problems addressed are the compatibility of liberal procederalism with substantive "green" ideals, the existence and potential of eco-friendly principles and ideas in clasical liberal political theory, the role of rights and duties and of democracy and deliberation, and the "greening" potential of modern environmentally-focused practices in liberal democracies.

This paper uses structural analogies to competing political philosophies of human society as a heuristic tool to differentiate between ecological theories and to bring out new aspects of apparently well-known classics of ecological scholarship. These two different areas of knowledge have in common that their objects are ‘societies’, i.e. units composed of individuals, and that contradictory and competing theories about these supra-individual units exist. The benefit of discussing ecological theories in terms of their analogies to political philosophies, (...) in this case liberalism, democratism and conservatism, consists in the fact that political philosophies show clear differences and particularities as regards their approach to the concepts of individuality and intentional action. The method therefore helps to expose peculiarities of ecological theories that are usually considered canonical, as well as hybrid forms, and to differentiate between two different types of theories about functional wholes. The basis of this method is the constitutional-theoretical premise that modern paradigms of socialization structure the ecological discourse. (shrink)

With some justification, Michel Serres claimed that he was one of the first to make ecology a central question for philosophy. Many of his books explore the ecological emergency and spell out the need to include the more-than-human in any ethical and political response. Yet Serres’ thought has been generally neglected in scholarly debate outside France. To highlight the importance of Serres’ philosophy, I contrast aspects of his work with Latour’s sustained search for a political (...) class='Hi'>ecology. I contend that Serres’ thought overlaps with but also challenges Latour’s approach that has increasingly turned for inspiration to the theory of Gaia proposed by Lovelock and Margulis. I argue that drawing from science, history, fables, the humanities and his own experience, Serres brings together a narrative of the commonality of all living and non-living things that exposes a contractable obligation and formulates the grounding for a new politics. (shrink)

This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion on materialism in its many forms. While there is little agreement on what 'materialism' means, it is evident that there is a resurgence in thinking about matter in more animated and active ways. The volume explores how debates concerning the new materialisms impinge on religious traditions and the extent to which religions, with their material culture and beliefs in the Divine (...) within the material, can make a creative contribution to debates about ecological materialisms. Spanning a broad range of themes, including politics, architecture, hermeneutics, literature, and religion, the book brings together a series of discussions on materialism in the context of diverse methodologies and approaches. The volume investigates a range of issues including space and place, hierarchy and relationality, the relationship between nature and society, human and other agencies, and worldviews and cultural values. Drawing on literary and critical theory, and queer, philosophical, theological and social theoretical approaches, this ground-breaking book will make an important contribution to the environmental humanities. It will be a key read for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars in religious studies, cultural anthropology, literary studies, philosophy and environmental studies. (shrink)

This book explores the ways that international politics is a form of interspecies politics, one that involves the interactions, ideas, and practices of multiple species, both human and nonhuman, to generate differences and create commonalities. While we frequently think of having an international politics "of" the environment, a deep and thoroughgoing anthropocentrism guides our idea of what political life can be, which prevents us from thinking about a politics "with" the environment. This anthropocentric assumption about politics drives both (...) ecological degradation and deep forms of interhuman injustice and hierarchy. Interspecies Politics challenges that assumption, arguing that a truly ecological account of interstate life requires us to think about politics as an activity that crosses species lines. It therefore explores a postanthropocentric account of international politics, focusing on a series of cases and interspecies practices in the American borderlands, ranging from the US-Mexico border in southern Texas, to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to Isle Royale, near the US-Canadian border. The book draws on international relations, environmental political theory, anthropology, and animal studies, to show how key international dimensions of states-sovereignty, territory, security, rights-are better understood as forms of interspecies assemblage that both generate new forms of multispecies inclusion, and structure forms of violence and hierarchy against human and nonhuman alike. (shrink)

The relationship between ecology and democracy has a complex history and an uncertain future. Ecological crises threaten all forms of life on earth, and democracy too is endangered, as popular discontent, elite malfeasance, and unresponsive institutions herald crisis if not collapse. It is clear that our present political concepts and institutions are inadequate for meeting the challenges of living in right relation with the more-than-human world and, moreover, that these inadequacies are themselves symptoms of a failing (...) class='Hi'>political-cultural story and a lack of concrete practices of ecological renewal, a story that does not recognize that there is no "people" without the earth and that power is not held by humans alone but in common with the natural world--intensifying weather events effected by climate change are only the most obvious example. Earthborn Democracy upends conventional accounts, which view democracy as a modern invention, by probing deep histories of egalitarian political organization beyond the ancient Athenian efforts so feared by the American founders in the premodern Americas, Mesopotamia, and many other egalitarian cultures. Unlike the constitutional democracies in nation-states, which are in service to economic directives, the political practices and stories excavated in the book illustrate the interdependence necessary to inspire and orient the work of ecological and democratic renewal. Responses to climate catastrophe call for an understanding of how unconscious desire can be a resource for collective democratic action. Developing an embodied account of the unconscious in which a desire for pleasure is central, the authors examine the knowledge and living traditions of Indigenous communities; the incorporation of "pleasure activism" into contemporary social movements and antiracist struggles; and practices of cooperation-cross-species affinity and relational grassroots political organizing around the world. The resonances across these examples trace the possibility for renewal of individual and collective selves through the work of ecological attunement and restoration. Building from re-envisioned democratic histories and this radical rereading of the collective unconscious, they show how contemporary political experiments and practices might cultivate and channel desires for autochthonous-earthborn-democracy, as the Athenian mythos names it. (shrink)

When people suffer they always suffer as a whole human being. The emotional, cognitive and spiritual suffering of human beings cannot be completely separated from all other kinds of suffering, such as from harmful natural, ecological, political, economic and social conditions. In reality they interact with each other and influence each other. Human beings do not only suffer from somatic illnesses, physical pain, and the lack of decent opportunities to satisfy their basic vital, social and emotional (...) needs. They also suffer when they are not able to experience and grasp any meaning of life even if such suffering is not quite as obvious as most forms of physical, social and emotional suffering. Suffering from the lack for the sense of the meaning of life is a special form of emotional, cognitive, and spiritual suffering. Although all human beings share the same basic human need for some meaning of life, the fulfilment of this need is highly individual and personal. Although all forms of human suffering can be a challenge to the meaning of life, the personal conditions of suffering usually are a stronger challenge for the meaning of life. Among the personal conditions of human suffering, the Grenzsituationen cannot be cancelled or raised at all, but only accepted and coped with as existential aspects of the conditio humana. According to Karl Jaspers these are: death, suffering, struggling, guilt, and failing. The challenge for human beings to cope with these Grenzsituationen is a way to move from the mere Being-there to true human Existence. (shrink)

Re-Imagining Ecological Democracy offers an original, thought-provoking, and engaging treatment of why and how democracy should be re-imagined in reaction to today's ecological crisis. The book explains that one need to re-imagine both the view on nature and democratic ideals within the same framework in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch of human-made instability in the Earth system and its planetary boundaries. This book proposes unique and challenging readings of green political theory and its development of ecological democracy (...) in the last four decades. The book is the first to offer a systematic and detailed interpretation of the role of critical theory vis-à-vis green political theory through an update regarding current non-anthropocentric critical theorists and how they may contribute to the further development of ecological democracy. Re-Imagining Ecological Democracy builds further on deep ecology, ecophenomenology, and animism by articulating an ecocentric view on nature which defends an intrinsic moral value of all existence as well as formulating the democratic principle of all ecologically affected parties. This book provides a sophisticated, convincing, and accessible argument for how to re-imagine ecological democracy as ecocentrism in practice: ecological love. To love ecologically means caring for and encountering all existence on the Earth and in the cosmos. This book is multi-disciplinary and will be of great value to researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students from many disciplines. (shrink)

This is the first book to outline a basic philosophy of ecology using the standard categories of academic philosophy: metaphysics, axiology, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. The problems of global justice invariably involve ecological factors. Yet the science of ecology is itself imbued with philosophical questions. Therefore, studies in ecological justice, the sub-discipline of global justice that relates to the interaction of human and natural systems, should be preceded by the study of the philosophy of (...) ecology. This book enables the reader to access a philosophy of ecology and shows how this philosophy is inherently normative and provides tools for securing ecological justice. The moral philosophy of ecology directly addresses the root cause of ecological and environmental injustice: the violation of fundamental human rights caused by the inequitable distribution of the benefits and costs of industrialism. Philosophy of ecology thus has implications for human rights, pollution, poverty, unequal access to resources, sustainability, consumerism, land use, biodiversity, industrialization, energy policy, and other issues of social and global justice. This book offers an historical and interdisciplinary exegesis. The analysis is situated in the context of the Western intellectual tradition, and includes great thinkers in the history of ecological thinking in the West from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.​ Keller asks the big questions and surveys answers with remarkable detail. Here is an insightful analysis of contemporary, classical, and ancient thought, alike in the ecological sciences, the humanities, and economics, the roots and fruits of our concepts of nature and of being in the world. Keller is unexcelled in bridging the is/ought gap, bridging nature and culture, and in celebrating the richness of life, its pattern, process, and creativity on our wonderland Earth. Holmes Rolston, III University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University Author of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth Mentored by renowned ecologist Frank Golley and renowned philosopher Frederick Ferré, David Keller is well prepared to provide a deep history and a sweeping synthesis of the "idea of ecology"—including the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical aspects of that idea, as well as the scientific. J. Baird Callicott University Distinguished Research Professor, University of North Texas Author of Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic. (shrink)

While 'space' and 'place' appear as key concepts in the study of culture, their complexity and mutability require ever-new frameworks when approaching them critically. Including chapters by authors from different fields, career stages, and geopolitical backgrounds, the contributors in this edited collection scrutinize the changing dynamics of space and place in relation to current political, social, and environmental urgencies across the globe. With chapters investigating both real and imaginary spaces and places, the diversified discussions included in this collection provide (...) a cohesive study for disclosing latent understandings of multiple phenomena characterizing the world in which we live. From the protests in Egyptian and Turkish squares, to the power-related narratives embedded in institutional buildings, from the development of the commercial arena in Victorian and Edwardian London, to the effects of current environmental concerns on the evaluation of urban and rural locations, the volume ultimately serves as a progressive connection of fields, minds, and outlooks through an innovative, pluralistic vision. This interdisciplinary focus not only emphasizes the centrality of spaces and places when disentangling the complexities comprising our past and present, but also suggests a more pluralistic approach for exploring fundamental concepts in future spaces and places studies. (shrink)

This is an agenda-setting exploration of the relationship between green politics and liberal ideology. Ecological problems provide unique challenges for liberal democracies.; This challenge is examined by the author who aims to fill the gap between short-term ecological modernization and the politically infeasible longer term utopian approaches.

How aesthetics—understood as a more encompassing framework for human activity—might become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. These essays make the case for a reignited understanding of aesthetics—one that casts aesthetics not as illusory, subjective, or superficial, but as a more encompassing framework for human activity. Such an aesthetics, the contributors suggest, could become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. Departing from the “critical” stance of twentieth-century artists and theorists who embraced a (...) counter-aesthetic framework for political engagement, this book documents how a broader understanding of aesthetics can offer insights into our relationships not only with objects, spaces, environments, and ecologies, but also with each other and the political structures in which we are all enmeshed. The contributors—philosophers, media theorists, artists, curators, writers and architects including such notable figures as Jacques Rancière, Graham Harman, and Elaine Scarry—build a compelling framework for a new aesthetic discourse. The book opens with a conversation in which Rancière tells the volume's editor, Mark Foster Gage, that the aesthetic is “about the experience of a common world.” The essays following discuss such topics as the perception of reality; abstraction in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics as the “first philosophy”; Afrofuturism; Xenofeminism; philosophical realism; the productive force of alienation; and the unbearable lightness of current creative discourse. Contributors Mark Foster Gage, Jacques Rancière, Elaine Scarry, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Ferda Kolatan, Adam Fure, Michael Young, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Roger Rothman, Diann Bauer, Matt Shaw, Albena Yaneva, Brett Mommersteeg, Lydia Kallipoliti, Ariane Lourie Harrison, Rhett Russo, Peggy Deamer, Caroline Picard Matt Shaw, Managing Editor. (shrink)

"Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) est l’un des principaux représentants de la première génération de l’École de Francfort. Il est reconnu comme l’un des plus grands philosophes du XXe siècle. En France, en particulier, son œuvre fait actuellement l’objet d’un regain d’intérêt indéniable. L’ouvrage Theodor W. Adorno. La domination de la nature propose à la fois une introduction à sa pensée et une actualisation de celle-ci au prisme des débats contemporains en écologie politique. Le thème de la domination de la nature (...) permet de tracer une transversale dans l’ensemble de la philosophie adornienne, des textes de jeunesse aux écrits de la maturité, tout en l’ouvrant aux enjeux de la crise écologique. La thèse principale du livre est que le motif de la domination de la nature permet de penser dans un cadre commun l’exploitation du travail, le patriarcat, le racisme, le spécisme et les diverses formes de destruction environnementale. La philosophie d’Adorno peut alors être lue comme une critique systématique des sociétés capitalistes. Elle nous aide à réinventer pour notre époque un sujet politique qui articule ensemble luttes sociales et luttes écologiques. Là où les modèles théoriques des deuxième et troisième générations de l’École de Francfort (la théorie de l’agir communicationnelle de Habermas et la théorie de la reconnaissance de Honneth) restent anthropocentrés et peu ouverts à la question écologique, le modèle adornien de critique sociale manifeste ainsi toute son actualité."--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

This book develops an account of freedom of expression rooted in a broader understanding of human flourishing. It is intended to highlight reasons for not only political institutions but also noncoercive social institutions—employers, churches, clubs—to value and safeguard expressive freedom. It emphasizes a set of overlapping and mutually reinforcing considerations supportive of this kind of freedom, including property rights, class-analytic and public-choice-theoretic understandings of state and institutional decision-making, the limits on the capacity of expressive activity to injure or (...) cause injury, the independent importance of autonomy, and the various ways in which expressive freedom can foster insight, discovery, and various other aspects of flourishing. It stresses the importance of a social ecosystem as the necessary precondition for many of the benefits yielded by freedom of expression. (shrink)

In this paper I consider various shifts in my research and understanding stimulated by seeking how to combat social ecological crises connected to modern economies. The discussion and critical reflections are structured around five papers that were submitted to Environmental Values in an open call to address my work. A common aspect is the move away from neoclassical environmental economics, and its reductionist monetary valuation, to a more realist theory and multiple methods. This relates to my work on environmental ethics, (...) plural values, stated preference validity and deliberative monetary valuation. Expanding beyond the narrow confines of mainstream orthodoxy has involved exploring a range of other disciplines (e.g. applied philosophy, social psychology, human geography, political science, social anthropology, history of thought and philosophy of science) and learning from this literature to rethink economics and develop social ecological economics. A broad range of subjects are covered here, including: personal responsibility, social practice, psychology of the individual, participatory processes, value (intrinsic, instrumental and relational), Nature–society relationships and interdependencies, critical realism and the conduct of unifying interdisciplinary science. I end with a series of comments concerning the failings of orthodox economics and the conduct of scientific research for social ecological transformation. (shrink)

Will the ecological crises of our time be resolved using the same form of thought that has brought them about? Are technological prowess and political power the proper tools to address them? Is there not a deeper connection between our ecological crises and our human, social, political, economic, and ethical crises? This book argues that the popular approaches to ecological, bioethical, and other human crises are not working because they fail to examine the problem in its (...) full depth. This depth escapes us because we have abandoned true metaphysical reflection on the whole and substituted it unknowingly for a series of inadequate alternatives. Both the technocratic paradigm that views all of nature mechanistically and its antagonists--the eco-philosophies that argue for the realities of intrinsic value, relationality, and beauty--carry partial truths but are insufficient. This book presents a more radical alternative, rooted in the classical tradition yet fresh and vibrant. The metaphysics of gift, based in the giftedness of existence shared by all, offers a deeper and more satisfying vision of all things that can transform our relationship with nature and touches every aspect of human life: social, political, economic, technical, and ethical"-- Back cover. (shrink)

Ecology and constructivism are motivated by broadly shared political aspirations and subscribe to similar critiques of technocratism, patriarchy. and "instrumental rational ity." But they diverge considerably in respect to the discourses they offer on "nature." By staging an encounter between ecological argument and feminist comtructivist theory, this article seeks to illuminate, and to indicate the means of resolving, the ontological tensions between these respective critiques of modernity. It recognizes that the constructivist emphasis on the "discursivity" of nature offers (...) an important corrective to the more simplistic, and potentially reactionary, aspects of ecological rhetoric but defends a realist perspective as essential to the coherence of any gender theory and politics. (shrink)

Everyone agrees that the world is accelerating. With advances in communication, transportation and information processing technologies, it is clear that the pace of events in global politics is speeding up at an alarming rate. The implications of this new speed however, continue to be a significant source of debate. Will acceleration lead to a more interconnected, productive, peaceful, and humane world; or a nightmarish descent into ecological devastation, economic exploitation and increasingly violent warfare? The Politics of Speed attempts to map (...) the contours of the new global space of speed, and investigates key issue areas âe" including democratic governance, warfare, capitalism, globalization and transnational activism âe" to uncover the ways in which acceleration is shaping the world. The book uses contemporary political theory (especially the works of Deleuze and Guattari) to develop an ontological account of speed, showing how its effects are frequently far more complex and surprising than we might expect. The result is an attempt to craft a way of engaging with global acceleration that might help avoid the dangers of speed, while embracing the possibilities it provides us with to produce a safer, more egalitarian, democratic and pluralistic world. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

In the Anthropocene, the fact that human activity is enmeshed with the existence and actions of every kind of other being is inescapable. As a result, the planetary ecological crisis has brought forth an urgent need to rethink understandings of human action. One response holds that the transformations necessary to tackle today’s crises will emerge from the distinctive capacity of human beings to transcend their environment. Another school of thought calls for seeing action as composite, produced by (...) distributed networks of human and nonhuman agents. Yet the first of these is open to charges of human exceptionalism, while the second, according to its critics, lacks effective political traction. Martin Crowley argues that a new conception of political agency is necessary to break this impasse. Engaging with thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, and Catherine Malabou, Crowley proposes an original account of agency as both distributed and decisive. Challenging the prevailing view of agency as exclusively human, he explores how a politics that incorporates nonhuman agency can intervene in the real world, examining timely issues such as climate-related migration and digital-algorithmic politics. A major intervention into ongoing debates in posthumanism, political ecology, and political theory, Accidental Agents reshapes our understanding of political agency in and for a more-than-human world. (shrink)

Environmental problems do have a universal dimension: they concern entire humanity as well as each human being individually, therefore, a new ecology needs to be developed in which man will play a principal role being a focal point of the study, its creator and executor of its assumptions, the discipline thus understood is one of the aspects of general ecology for it studies relationships between man as a species and its environment, the author believes that, regardless of (...) the standpoint that representatives of various sciences may take, the future of our species depends on the interdisciplinary approach toward the questions that are subject to human ecology studies. (shrink)

Figurativity has attracted scholars' attention for thousands of years and yet there are still open questions concerning its nature. Figurativity and Human Ecology endorses a view of figurativity as ubiquitous in human reasoning and language, and as a key example of how a human organism and its perceived or imagined environment co-function as a system. The volume sees figurativity not only as embedded in an environment but also as a way of acting within that environment. It (...) places figurativity within an ecological context, and approaches it as a phenomenon which cuts across bodily, psychological, linguistic, social, cultural and natural environments. Figurativity and Human Ecology will appeal to those interested in the analysis of the all-encompassing creativity of the human mind and in the methodological difficulties associated with the study of cognition. (shrink)

Understanding how recorded and amplified stage musics contribute towards producing the Anthropocene necessitates attending to complex transnational flows of material, capital and labor, and how they coalesce into technological objects. This is complicated by the wide array of sites, practices and knowledges involved during various stages of the production process, from initial resource extraction, to smelting, component manufacturing, technology assembly, and distribution. To develop a suitable technological ethics, and to understand what happens to environments and to human, animal and (...) plant lifeworlds, requires one to resist abstraction and undertake a global accounting of resource ecologies with recourse to planetary-scale political economy. Towards this goal, I provide a partial account of an early 2000s mic preamp, a mundane but nonetheless fetishised recording studio technological object. I focus on two metals, tin and tantalum, that are primarily extracted for electronics manufacturing, and two building blocks of electronics, solder and capacitors, which are essential for making contemporary electronics. (shrink)

Perhaps the most animated debate in green political thought-the subdiscipline of political theory devoted to the relations between humanity, politics and environment-addresses the question of the compatibility of ecologism and liberal democracy, more particularly the liberal aspects of the latter. The present article affirms and further elaborates earlier suggestions that existing approaches to this matter are either flawed or, when defensible, prone to produce trivial conclusions. Incompatibility of the two theories is always to be expected, in one form (...) or another. It is argued that a characterization of political theories as families growing and changing over time, a notion partly derived from Wittgenstein’s family concept, allows us to understand ecologism and liberalism as evolving theories, and to anticipate the development of both-which may lead to far more surprising conclusions. (shrink)

Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference offers a powerful intervention to the field of climate justice scholarship by addressing a neglected aspect of the field of climate justice, namely systemic racisms. Building on the work of Black feminist theorists, the work develops an ecointersectional approach designed to reveal the depth and complexities of racial climates overlooked even in the environmental justice literature. The book’s conception of ecological indifference underscores the disposition of seeing the environment as a resource for human consumption and (...) enjoyment, a resource that is usable, fungible, disposable, and without intrinsic worth or standing. The many examples in the book offer new insights demonstrating that systemic racisms emerge out of and give rise to environmental degradation; that is, they are often mutually constitutive. The ecointersectional analyses provided throughout the book reveal that ecological indifference and climate injustice are two sides of the same coin. Three distinctive but interrelated domains in which the intersections between systemic racisms and ecological indifference are manifest are identified: (1) differential distribution of harms/benefits due to systemic racisms, (2) racist institutions and practices fueling or causing environmental degradation, and (3) the basic social structures that generate environmental degradation being the same ones that generate systemic oppression of certain groups of people. One of the aims of Racial Climates, Ecological Indifference is to underscore that any effort to protect the environment must also be a fight against systemic racisms and other forms of systemic inequity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 74-92 [Access article in PDF] John Dewey's Aesthetic Ecology of Public Intelligence and the Grounding of Civic Environmentalism Herbert Reid and Betsy Taylor "[The problem is] that of recovering the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living." John Dewey, Art as Experience "This is not a protest. Repeat. This is not a protest. This is some kind of artistic expression. (...) Over." --A call that went out on Metro Toronto police radios on May 16, 1998, the date of the first Global Street Party. Quoted from Naomi Klein, No LogoThis paper argues for the importance of John Dewey's aesthetic philosophy to recent efforts to cultivate civic environmentalism while critiquing narrowly conservationist environmentalisms. We call for a strong version of civic environmentalism oriented towards holistic integration of ecological [End Page 74] concerns into all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural life. Such a civic environmentalism argues that it is not enough to strive to preserve enclaved 'wilderness' or 'biodiversity' (as important as that is). It argues also for fundamental changes in the political and economic status quo, because ecological havoc is understood to be integrally linked with the structural forces that are increasing inequality and weakening democratic publics. Strengthening of the civic commons is integral to protection of the environmental commons. If the environmental commons are the substantive goods in common which are the sustaining grounds of life, the civic commons are the institutions, collective memories, social networks, and skills that enable and inspire individuals to engage with each other in stewarding the common good. Such collective labor for the larger good requires some form of collective imagination which enables awareness of self and other (human or non-human) as inherently valuable. But beyond this, it requires perceptual and social infrastructures that nurture the ability to see self and other as emergent from and dependent on the supra-individual matrix that supports both life and individual. Central to such civic labor, is a non-dualistic understanding of individual/matrix. Such a non-dualistic understanding of self/other-in-matrix is central to political and ecological imaginations that are decentered from ethnic, species, class, gender, or other forms of domination and solipsism.John Dewey's work as a whole is a powerful call for such a non-dualistic understanding of individual-in-matrix, and few have better understood its connections to democracy. But, it is in his philosophy of art that Dewey describes most specifically the central importance of the aesthetic dimension of public culture to overcoming crippling dualisms of Western modernity that vitiate participatory engagement- individual/world, nature/culture, ends/means, leisure/work, art/science, aesthetic/ordinary. His writings on art have not been much utilized in the philosophical work for civic environmentalism. This paper argues for their relevance to its key goal of overcoming the segmentation of life ushered in by modernity and buttressed by these dualisms.We first give an overview of recent theories of civic environmentalism and the crises it engages of inequality, injustice, technocracy, corporatization, and the pervasive assault on place and thinning of public participation. Second, we look at the implications of Dewey'saesthetic ecology for an "environmentalism of daily life" that challenges the false dualisms of neo-liberalism and of technocratic professionalism that undermine place-based [End Page 75] forms of life and knowledge. Third, we draw on Dewey's aesthetic philosophy to suggest ways to rebuild democratic public space at the nexus of body, place, and commons. Finally, we briefly outline key philosophical questions that have emerged in our ethnographic and political study of Appalachian grassroots activisms, and that embody this sort of placed, democratic mobilization to protect the civic and environmental commons. American Environmentalism: Crisis and Challenge Toward the end of the last decade, veteran New York Times journalist and now independent writer Philip Shabecoff set out to engage "a broad spectrum of thoughtful and informed people within and without the environmental movement." His Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century offers a very... (shrink)

community reflecting on itself, uncovering its history, exploring its present predicament, and contemplating its future. [2] One aspect of this awakening is a process of philosophical reflection. As a philosophical approach, a social ecology investigates the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political dimensions of the relationship between the social and the ecological, and seeks the practical wisdom that results from such reflection. It seeks to give us, as beings situated in the course of real human and natural history, (...) guidance in facing specific challenges and opportunities. In doing so, it develops an analysis that is both holistic and dialectical, and a social practice that might best be described as an eco-communitarianism. (shrink)

The values framework of a society is best reflected in contemporary literature. This essay is an attempt to identify the values that influenced the socio-political behaviour of the people of times of Kālidāsa. How relevant are those values now? Nature plays an important role in Kālidāsa's plays. Part I of this essay deals with this aspect of his plays. This value is certainly coterminous with the growing consciousness about protection of ecology in modern times. Part II of the (...) essay deals with another important aspect of Indian philosophy—with out sorrow, without pain, pleasure cannot be achieved. Part III of the essay discusses general social values which emerge from the plays. Part IV describes the political and administrative values that guided the actions of the kings and rulers. (shrink)

Le capitalisme menace la vie sur terre. Aucune issue technique à ce constat. Les usages destructeurs des ressources naturelles sont inscrits au plus profond des structures sociales : école, travail, propriété, marché, etc. Ils forgent des conditions de classe écologiquement inégales et antagoniques. Ce livre montre qu'une écologie politique véritablement transformatrice doit avoir pour horizon la refonte des cadres fondamentaux de la vie sociale qu'exige l'invention d'une société respectueuse des limites planétaires."--Page 4 of cover.

This volume weaves together a variety of perspectives aimed at confronting a spectrum of ethico-political global challenges arising in the Anthropocene which affect the future of life on planet earth. In this book, the authors offer a multi-faceted approach to address the consequences of its imaginary and projective directions. The chapters span the disciplines of political economy, cybernetics, environmentalism, bio-science, psychoanalysis, bioacoustics, documentary film, installation art, geoperformativity, and glitch aesthetics. The first section attempts to flesh out new aspects (...) of current debates. Questions over the Capitaloscene are explored via conflations of class and climate, revisiting the eco-Marxist analysis of capitalism, and the financial system that thrives on debt. The second section explores the imaginary narratives that raise questions regarding non-human involvement. The third section addresses ’geoartisty,’ the counter artistic responses to the speculariztion of climate disasters, questioning eco-documentaries, and what a post-anthropocentric art might look like. The last section addresses the pedagogical response to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Introducción: Se presenta un análisis cualitativo del acompañamiento psicosocial a jóvenes en condiciones de vulnerabilidad desde la ecología humana durante 12 meses entre 2010 a 2011; utilizando técnicas pedagógicas evaluativas participativas. Éstas, son una alternativa para crear espacios reflexivos con el propósito de potenciar la resiliencia en las relaciones comunicativas y formar en el respeto. Objetivo: Generar bienestar, prevenir la farmacodependencia y contribuir a la promoción de la salud. Material y Métodos: Se revisaron los antecedentes temáticos, fueron seleccionados 100 estudiantes (...) entre 11 y 19 años de dos instituciones educativas públicas en condiciones vulnerables;se desarrollaron cuatro talleres reflexivos y cuatro prácticas lúdicas y se realizaron tres grupos focales con estudiantes, profesores y padres de familia. Resultados y Discusión: El contexto social de la población intervenida, revela problemas de abuso sexual, violencia intrafamiliar y eventos violentos en el vecindario por grupos armados ilegales, entre otros, que constituyen factores de riesgo importantes para la farmacodependencia. Conclusión: Se infiere que lo psicosocial incide en la farmacodependencia, afectando la convivencia de la población estudiada por múltiples causas del orden psicoafectivo, sociocultural, económico y político que van desde el consumo cultural hasta la seguridad alimentaria. Introduction: A qualitative analysis of the psycho-social support to young people in situations of vulnerability from human ecology is presented for 12 months between 2010 to 2011; using participatory evaluative pedagogical techniques. These are an alternative to create reflective spaces with the purpose of enhancing resilience in communicative relationships and working in respect. Objective: to generate well-being, prevent drug abuse and contribute to the health promotion. Material aids and methods: the thematic background was reviewed, 100 students between 11 and 19 years of two public schools in vulnerable conditionswere selected; four reflective workshops and four playful practices were developed and three focus groups with students, teachers and parentswere conducted. Results and discussion: the social context of the manipulated population reveals sexual abuse problems, domestic violence and violent events in the neighborhood by illegal armed groups, among others, which constitutemajor risk factors for drug abuse. Conclusion: It can be inferred that the psychosocial factors impact on drug dependence, affecting the coexistence of the population studied by multiple causes of the psychological, socio-cultural, economic and political order, ranging from cultural consumption to food security. (shrink)