Social and Political Ecology

This paper identifies two distinct types of organisational arrangements, which need to be recognised to achieve effective policies and programmes for community engagement. The differences arise from the nature of relationships in the institutional and organisational world, which are primarily vertical hierarchical, as distinct from the informal community world where the relationships are primarily horizontal peer. Lack of attention to these distinctions adversely affects the interaction of the public agencies and the community, and the community’s organisational governance and working arrangements. Using a complexity perspective, the ‘social eco-system dance’ model identifies some issues and new ways of thinking about them and of handling some of the practical challenges. This is leading to a set of managerial and organisational tools to develop new ways of working for policy making, managing, operating and participating in the community engagement process across all the sectors involved.

This is a final draft of the article published in Environmental Ethics 11 (Fall 1989): 243-258. This assessment of  the Promethean dimension of Marx's thought is accurate, but though it mentions Marx's more dialectical side and its potential implications, this aspect is seriously neglected in the article . A more balanced assessment is presented in "Marx's Natures," a draft version of which can be found on this site. This article should be read in connection with the latter one.

Yanıltıcı bir zenginlik standartına dayanarak hükme varılırsa, Yeşil bir gelecek şimdikinden “daha yoksul” gözükebilir. Fakat gerçekte, daha yüksek bir yaşam standartımız olacaktır; Daha nitelikli beslenme, daha sağlıklı bedenler, ödüllendirilen iş, iyi yol arkadaşlığı, daha temiz hava, daha fazla kendine yetebilme, köstek değil, destek olan toplumlar ve içinde yaşanılacak daha güvenli bir dünya. Böylece zenginlik ile refah arasındaki fark belirginleşecektir.

Yukarıdaki tespiti özgüvenle yapan Andrew Dobson, ekolojiyi, çevrecilikten itinayla ayırarak Ekolojizm'i bir ideoloji olarak ilan ediyor. Dobson, doksanlarda başlayan teorik çalışmalarını, kitabın dördüncü baskısında oldukça olgun bir düzeye taşıyor. Yetinmeyip, reel siyasette Yeşiller’in başkan adayı oluyor ve 2005 senesinde egemen iki partili ülkesinin tarihinde görülmemiş bir başarı yakalıyor. Dolayısıyla teorisini pratikle birleştirmeyi başarıyor.

Bir kitap haz verir mi? Satırları arasında yuvarlanırken önünüze yepyeni bir dünya ve yeni bir insan modeli sunabilir mi?  Umut ve güven sağlam bir altyapıyla dantel gibi örülür mü? Ekolojinin en çetrefilli sorunları, sürpriz dolu akıl yürütmelerle böylesine kolay aşılıp anlatılabilir mi? Karmaşık, içinden çıkılması zor, savunanların bile ter dökerek andığı kavramlar ancak bir dâhinin elinden çıkmışçasına sorun olmaktan çıkabilir mi?

Dobson, tüm dünyada baskı üstüne baskı basan, yayıncısını, eleştirmenini ve yazarını şaşırtan bir ilgiyle karşılanan, pek çok üniversitede ders kitabı ilan edilen kitabında özgün ve yeni kavramlarla adeta düşünsel bir şölen sunuyor.

Europe, an effective confederal municipalist Green movement in the u.s. could demonstrate an alternative way forward. Social Ecology is a comprehensive holistic conception of the self, society, and naturei. It is, indeed, the first ecological pHlosophy to present a developed approach to all the central issues of theory and practice. It sets out from the basic ecological principle of organic uni$ in dfuersity, affirming that the good of the whole can be realized only through the rich individuality and complec< interrelationship of the parts, and it applies this fundamental insight to all realms of erperience. ln affirming such a holistic approach, Social Ecology rejects the dualism that has plagued Western civilization since its beginning;s: a dualism that sets spirit against mattet soul against body, humanity against nature, subjectivity against ofiectivity, and reason against feelings; a dualism that is intimately related to the social divisions that are so certral to the history of civilizationruler versus ded, rich versus poo4 urban versus rural, "civilized" versui "savagef'male versus femalq in short, the dominant versus the dominated. ln opposition to this dualism, Social Ecology proposes a principle of ecological wlnleness, which Bookchin defines as 'a dynamic unity of diversity" in which "balance and harmony are achieved by wer-changing differentiation." As a result, "stability is a function not of simplicity and Iahn

You would not find the boundaries of oikos, even by travelling along every path, so deep a logos does it have. 1 It has now been almost three decades since Bill Devall and George Sessions published Deep Ecology. 2 A decade before, Arne Naess had invented the term as a useful category for classifying the outlook of "a vast number of people in all countries" 3 who have a far-reaching ecological worldview. However, it was Devall and Sessions' book that did the most to transform deep ecology into a distinctive intellectual and activist movement with the aspiration of organizing these masses of ecologically conscious thinkers and activists and having a significant impact on society. At about the same time, The Trumpeter emerged as an important voice for deep ecology in the intellectual world, and Earth First!, which had been founded a few years before, quickly adopted the perspective of deep ecology and began to spread its influence in the environmental movement.

Les trois essais présentés dans cette brochure ont été traduits de l'américain par M.V. Ramariavelo ; traduction revue et corrigée par Ronald Creagh. Nous tenons à les remercier ainsi qu'André Bernard pour l'aide qu'ils nous ont apportée. (première édition : 1993) Merci à Maureen P. pour ses corrections et son aide. Atelier de création libertaire BP 1186, F-69202 Lyon cedex 01 Tél/fax : 04.78.29.28.26 site Internet : http://www.atelierdecreationlibertaire.com

The discussion of issues in political ecology has expanded greatly in recent times, above all as the result of growing concern about far-reaching ecological problems that seem to require an effective political response in the near future. These problems include global warming, ozone depletion, species extinction, desertification, loss of topsoil, depletion of global fisheries, disposal of nuclear waste, global population growth, environmentally-related illness, acid rain, and decline in air and water quality. Concern about disruptions caused by global climate change and the massive global loss of biodiversity has been a major impetus to debates in political ecology.

Does capitalism today face the "end of cheap nature"? If so, what could this mean, and what are the implications for the future? We are indeed witnessing the end of cheap nature in a historically specific sense. Rather than view the end of cheap nature as the reassertion of external "limits to growth, " I argue that capitalism has today exhausted the historical relation that produced cheap nature. The end of cheap nature is best comprehended as the exhaustion of the value-relations that have periodically restored the "Four Cheaps": labor-power, food, energy, and raw materials. Crucially, these value-relations are co-produced by and through humans with the rest of nature. The decisive issue therefore turns on the relations that enfold and unfold successive configurations of human and extra-human nature, symbolically enabled and materially enacted, over the longue durée of the modern world-system. Significantly, the appropriation of unpaid work-including "free gifts" of nature-and the exploitation wage-labor form a dialectical unity. The limits to growth faced by capital today are real enough, and are "limits" co-produced through capitalism as world-ecology, joining the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the co-production of nature as an organic whole. The worldecological limit of capital is capital itself.

In the spring of 1987, Donald Davis, an environmental sociologist at the University of Tennessee arranged a talk there by Murray Bookchin. At the time, I was working very closely with Bookchin, and I went there to meet with him and Davis, who had been a student and staff member at the Institute for Social Ecology. During the visit, Bookchin showed me the proofs for an article entitled "Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach," a large part of which was an attack on deep ecology, systems theory, Asian thought, and the radical environmental organization Earth First! I was disturbed by what I read. I found it to be seriously lacking in careful analysis or nuance, and often to be unfair to the objects of attack. I suggested that he rewrite it, making sure that he did not over-generalize or misrepresent any positions. He replied, rather unconvincingly, that it was too late to make any changes, and he did not respond in any way to the content of my suggestions. 1 What I did not know at the time was that he had recently written a much more extreme attack on deep ecology, in which he had parodied, and, indeed, The Trumpeter

A B S T R A C T Academics across disciplines are increasingly employing political ecology lenses to unpack conflicts related to resource extraction. Yet, an area that remains under-researched and under-theorised is how environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are embedded in politics and imagined as sites of power relations. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Zimbabwe engaging small-scale gold miners, EIA consultants and government officials, this article examines the changing social significance of EIAs during and after a nationwide police operation that was framed by authorities as targeting non-compliance with environmental policy, illegal mining and illicit trading. Among other articulations of dissent, small-scale miners associations protested that EIA enforcement rhetoric served unjustly as a rationale for halting livelihoods and extracting rent from miners in times of economic difficulty. The article challenges EIA narratives that focus narrowly on risk management or governance failure, exploring technocratic obfuscations and how enforcement rhetoric was perceived in relation to criminalisation and coercion, expert environmental consultancy cultures and adapted legacies of colonial practice in contemporary dynamics of rule. Heavy-handed policing under the banner of enforcing order impinged on livelihoods and had counterproductive effects in addressing environmental problems, while complying with expensive EIA report-producing requirements was far beyond the means of most small-scale miners. The article rethinks how technical EIA rhetoric becomes entangled in spaces of contentious politics, the perils of looking only at particular scales of relations to the exclusion of others, and what it means to re-engage Donald Moore's notion of " shifting alignments and contingent constellations of power. " Suggesting future directions in political ecology theorising in relation to extractive sectors, it calls for careful attention to the situated politics of EIAs – situated in time and space, amid varying relations of power – and how multiple hegemonic practices are con-ceptualised and challenged.

L'attuale epoca di crisi ecologica ci pone di fronte a seri interrogativi sul nostro modo di rapportarci all'ambiente. È ancora attuale, e filosoficamente percorribile, il modello tradizionale che considera essere umano e natura in opposizione? Qual è la posizione della specie umana all'interno del mondo naturale? Qual è il ruolo dell'ambiente nella definizione dell'identità del soggetto umano? Chi detiene lo statuto morale atto ad orientare le scelte etico-pratiche: gli esseri umani, o anche gli esseri nonumani, quali animali, piante, natura, ambiente? Come sviluppare un modo ecocompatibile di essere e pensare? Dalla risposta a queste questioni dipendono non solo la visione del mondo per gli anni a venire, ma anche la concezione di sè che gli esseri umani hanno in rapporto al tutto e, ancor più, le pratiche umane di relazione ad un ambiente rispetto a cui il legame di interdipendenza non è più negabile. Il presente volume percorre il ricco terreno del pensare ambientalista, che si è dato forma teorica e pratica in movimenti quali, tra gli altri, l'ecologia profonda, l'ecologia sociale, l'ecofemminismo, il bioregionalismo, nel suo confronto con questi interrogativi e nella sua elaborazione di varie proposte di soluzione.

This six-week qualitative action research self-study investigated how critically reflecting upon personal heritage while engaging with decolonial, antiracist perspectives would affect perception and attitudes towards Montessori materials, pedagogical philosophy and methodology. With critical pedagogy as a theoretical framework, the researcher surveyed decolonial scholarship for recommendations. She followed a program revealed by the literature. She took two tests at the beginning and end of the study to establish a baseline of bias. For the first two weeks of the study, she engaged with Indigenous peoples' cultural production. She studied ancestral trauma for the following two weeks. To provoke equal understanding and connectedness to her own ancestry, she also engaged with media concerning her own lineage for two weeks. In accordance with critical pedagogy, these engagements were followed by critical reflections, leading to a more aware state that actively resists colonial (and other) oppressions. During the last two weeks of the study she also read about the struggles of and connected with people in the Palestinian territories towards an engaged praxis of solidarity. While the metrics of spiritual preparedness and critical consciousness remained evasive, the researcher observed deepening understanding throughout the study coding and analyzing journal reflections for themes. Recommendations following the study include: a dialogue-centered approach to Montessori teacher trainings, supplementation that includes decolonial knowledges, critical pedagogy, anti-racism, and trauma informed care. Research is needed to ascertain the effects of decolonial preparation upon guides and environments towards critical consciousness development in Montessori children. Indigenous erasure in classic Montessori materials need be addressed.

: 57-65.] This biography by Marie Fleming is highly recommended as a comprehensive, readable survey of the life and ideas of Reclus. The book is a revised and improved edition of Fleming's earlier The Anarchist Way to Socialism: Elisée Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism, which was already the best source of information on Reclus in English. While the only other extensive study in English, Dunbar's Elisée Reclus: Historian of Nature is useful for those interested in Reclus as a geographer, Fleming's work is far superior as a presentation of Reclus as a complex human being and a fascinating historical figure. She gives the events of his life a rich context in nineteenth-century European history, in the radical milieu of that period, and, most particularly, in the events and ideas of the anarchist movement of the epoch. Where the work is weakest is in the area of theory. Fleming hardly mentions Reclus' most important work of social theory, L'Homme et la Terre, an impressive six-volume study, and she makes only a few brief references to other theoretical discussions.

She has obtained her B.Sc. Agriculture degree and completed her M.Sc. In Agricultural Extension from the same University. Both UGC NET with JRF and ICAR NET have been qualified by her. So far, she has authored 5 books and 18 of her papers (2 international publications) have successfully published in peer reviewed journals and some are in progress. She has taken part actively in a number of national and international seminars and conferences. She was honoured with best paper awards twice.

‘Amsterdam is standing on Norway’– this was a popular saying in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. There was more than one inflection to the phrase. Amsterdam was, in the first instance, built atop a subterranean forest of Norwegian origin. But southern Norway was also a vital resource zone, subordinated to Amsterdam-based capital. This paper follows the movement of strategic commodity frontiers within early modern Europe from the standpoint of capitalism as world-ecology, joining in dialectical unity the production of capital and the production of nature. Our geographical focus is trained upon the emergence of the Global North Atlantic, that zone providing the strategic raw materials and food supplies indispensable to the consolidation of capitalism – timber, naval stores, metals, cereals, fish and whales. I argue for a broader geographical perspective on these movements, one capable of revealing the dialectical interplay of frontiers on all sides of the Atlantic. From its command posts in Amsterdam, Dutch capital deployed American silver in the creation of successive frontiers within Europe, transforming Scandinavian and Baltic regions. The frontier character of these transformations was decisive, premised on drawing readily exploitable supplies of land and labour power into the orbit of capital. We see in northern Europe precisely what we see in the Americas – a pattern of commodity-centred environmental transformation, and thence relative ecological exhaustion, from which the only escape was renewed global conquest and ever-wider cycles of combined and uneven development.

This paper looks at the responses of organised labour to the "development" project exemplified by the steel plant, the big dam and the power plant. More precisely, it analyses the presence (or not) of an ecological critique in trade union/labour responses to industrial projects. The paper explores theoretical connections between class-based politics and ecological questions. It delineates some of the specific processes and conditions which can facilitate the entry of ecological issues into the imaginations of a trade union, using the experiences of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha in central India in the process. It argues that "class consciousness" is hardly a deterrent for an engagement with ecology, if one adequately understands the definitions of "class," labour and production. In India's specific context, the coming together of the concerns and imaginations of the industrial worker and the Adivasi peasant/farmer can facilitate this conversation between "red" and "green" imaginations.

Humanity is Nature becoming self-conscious." -Elisée Reclus In its deepest and most authentic sense, a social ecology is the awakening earth community reflecting on itself, uncovering its history, exploring its present predicament, and contemplating its future.

This is a revised and expanded version of a text written for a PM Press authors session on “Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change” at the Left Forum on June 3, 2017. In it, I try to summarize, briefly and inadequately, some of the lessons I’ve learned about radical change over the past fifty years.  There is a link to an earlier version.

A critique of "The Politics of Cosmology," a thousand-page manuscript by social ecologist and political theorist Murray Bookchin, based on his study of the history of philosophy and his lectures on that topic. It appears on my PM Press blog and my "It Is What It Isn't" blog from Changing Suns Press.

This paper draws from research on small-scale maize production in Mexico’s Central Highland region to discuss the geopolitical implications of everyday agricultural practices. An overwhelming majority of maize farmers in this region, as well as in the country more broadly, continue to cultivate locally-adapted maize varieties they have bred themselves – criollo maize is the vernacular term – despite decades of concerted government attempts to effect the widespread adoption of commercially-bred and licensed hybrid varieties. This state effort to restructure agricultural systems and food security according to nationalist and capitalist priorities is one tactic in a long and violent struggle for control over peasant land and labor in Mexico. By integrating feminist scholarship in geopolitics and in political ecology, I am following the lead of geographers who regard the materialities of everyday life as a foundation for political tensions and conflicts that are constantly unfolding along intersecting lines of difference. Though geopolitics has rarely turned its attention directly to theories of intimate socio-ecological relations, I argue that the field has much analytical and political leverage to gain by engaging with political ecology, and that feminist geographic imaginaries provide a crucial space in which to do so.  This approach allows for an analysis of how a dominant geopolitics of land and agriculture is being undermined through the routine production of criollo maize, revealing new potential for creating broad political alliances with social movements that are currently working toward alternative visions of agriculture and food security.

In a discussion of the "rules of Gandhian nonviolence" Arne Naess proposes a number of hypotheses and norms that are highly relevant to recent debates in ecophilosophy. For example, he suggests that the "character of the means used in a group struggle determines the character of the results," and that one should "choose that personal action or attitude which most probably reduces the tendency towards violence of all parties in a struggle." One should not, he says, "act as a mere functionary, a representative of an institution or an underling, but always as an autonomous, fully responsible person." Mistrust, he suggests, "stems from misjudgement, especially of the disposition of [one's] opponent to answer trust with trust, mistrust with mistrust." One should "fight antagonisms, not antagonists" and "formulate the essential interests which [one] and [one's] opponent share and try to cooperate upon this basis." Furthermore, one should not "humiliate or provoke [an] opponent" or "judge [an] opponent harder than [one]self."

This correspondence (Murray Bookchin to John Clark, 1973-1991) is part of a larger work in progress that will include over twenty hours of digitized audiotapes from Murray Bookchin, transcripts of both the correspondence and audiotapes, and editorial commentary. The goal of this project is to facilitate scholarly research and to correct certain misrepresentations of the historical record.

In this essay, Dorian Wallace discusses the use of music as a source of emancipatory inspiration, revolutionary practice, and transformational communal healing. He addresses the interconnections between music therapy, political music, and liberation psychology as the first step toward deeper exploration and discourse.

This text was written as a preface for the new edition of “Pour un municipalisme libertaire,” the French translation of “Theses on Libertarian Municipalism,” published by the Atelier de Création Libertaire in Lyon, and also appears on my Changing Suns Press and PM Press blogs.

COP21 was widely hailed by environmentalists, politicians, and much of the media as “a landmark” and “turning point” in the struggle against global climate change. Yet, there was no binding agreement on emissions reductions, financing of programs, or penalties for non-compliance. Instead, there was a celebration of the rapidly-growing “ambition” on the part of the parties to the agreement. One must suspect that this event was a continuation of the politics of the gesture that was exhibited in previous spectacular events such as the last year’s “People’s Climate March.” Published on the "It Is What It Isn't" Blog, Changing Suns Press, Dec. 18, 2015.

Ogni anno decine di milioni di lavoratori e di abitanti dei paesi mediterranei muoiono per cancro o malattie provocate da contaminazioni da sostanze tossiche, o per incidenti sul lavoro o a causa del proibizionismo delle migrazioni. Solo una minoranza muore di vecchiaia! Ogni tanto i media parlano di questa o quella tragedia, ma non si dice che si tratta sempre di un unico fatto politico totale, un unico crimine contro la grande maggioranza dell’umanità perché priva di tutele tanto quanto lo stesso pianeta Terra. Da anni la distrazione di massa che bombarda sempre più tutti fa credere che le uniche insicurezze e gli unici nemici siano il terrorismo, qualche volta la criminalità e persino gli immigrati che riescono a non morire scappando da guerre e devastazioni di ogni sorta provocate proprio da lobby, imprese e mafie dei paesi ricchi. Il governo della sicurezza neoliberista esclude la tutela dei lavoratori e della popolazione vittime di disastri sanitari, ambientali ed economici. Nessuna tutela effettiva è garantita agli otto milioni di persone che oscillano fra precariato, semi-nero, nero totale e neo-schiavitù in Italia. Questo libro è soprattutto uno strumento per le Resistenze a questi disastri da parte di lavoratori, degli abitanti e di quei tecnici, esperti, agenti delle agenzie di prevenzione di controllo e ricercatori che non sono assoggettati alla corsa per il profitto a tutti i costi. Le Resistenze di oggi hanno antenati le rivolte degli schiavi e di tutte le lotte dei subalterni; hanno ragioni e obiettivi analoghi a quelli che nel XIX e XX secolo hanno animato le lotte contro il colonialismo, il razzismo, i totalitarismi e le mafie: L’obiettivo è di riuscire a eliminare o riconvertire l’industria militare, il nucleare, la petrolchimica e tutte le attività che producono malattie, morte, devastazioni e guerre. contributi di Mara Bendusi, Anna D&amp;#39;Ascenzio, Kamel Dorai, Stefania Ferraro, Sümbül Kaya, Luca Manunza, Antonio Mazzeo, Laurent Mucchielli, Salvatore Palidda, Jean François Pérouse, Antonello Petrillo, Vittorio Sergi, Salvo Torre, Lucia Vastano e Zoé Vernin

The 21st century is marked by changes in matters of power balancing and system polarity, which could be explained by Geopolitical theories. In this paper, we intend to investigate how the classical Geopolitical theories – such as the Heartland/Pivot Area theory, wrote down by Halford J. Mackinder, and the Sea Power theory, wrote down by Alfred T. Mahan – could be faced and readapted amid the new settles of strategic routes and military development needs, brought by the ice-melting of the Arctic Ocean. The study cases will concentrate on Russia and China, due to their recent investments in the opening of new strategic routes for navigation and trade, including the Arctic routes, demanding inputs on technologies, transport innovation, and military emulation. Working on a qualitative method, with analysis of primary sources (such as government documents on strategies for the Arctic), and secondary sources (such as books, articles, interviews and other published materials on the topic),...

This draft for a chapter of a forthcoming book is a revised and much-expanded version of a previously unpublished text presented at a conference on “L'écologie sociale dans la cité” at the Centre Ascaso-Durruti, Montpellier, France, May 15, 1998.