Facing the Planetary

Facing the Planetary PDF

Author: William E. Connolly

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2017-01-20

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0822373254

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Facing the Planetary William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway.

Facing the Planetary

Facing the Planetary PDF

Author: William E. Connolly

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

Published: 2017-02-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780822363415

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Facing the Planetary William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway.

Climate Leviathan

Climate Leviathan PDF

Author: Joel Wainwright

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2018-02-13

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1786634317

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

**Winner of the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize** -- How climate change will affect our political theory - for better and worse Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. There is now simply no way to prevent the planet breaching the threshold of two degrees Celsius set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What are the likely political and economic outcomes of this? Where is the overheating world heading? To further the struggle for climate justice, we need to have some idea how the existing global order is likely to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about the intensifying challenges to the global order. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform the world's political economy and the fundamental political arrangements most people take for granted. The result will be a capitalist planetary sovereignty, a terrifying eventuality that makes the construction of viable, radical alternatives truly imperative.

Planetary Health

Planetary Health PDF

Author: Samuel Myers

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2020-08-13

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 1610919661

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.

Facing the Anthropocene

Facing the Anthropocene PDF

Author: Ian Angus

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2016-07

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1583676090

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. Cogent and compellingly written, Facing the Anthropocene offers a unique synthesis of natural and social science that illustrates how capitalism's inexorable drive for growth, powered by the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, has driven our world to the brink of disaster. Survival in the Anthropocene, Angus argues, requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with a new, ecosocialist civilization.

Facing Gaia

Facing Gaia PDF

Author: Bruno Latour

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0745684351

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.

What is Media Archaeology?

What is Media Archaeology? PDF

Author: Jussi Parikka

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0745661394

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past. Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities. What is Media Archaeology? advances an innovative theoretical position while also presenting an engaging and accessible overview for students of media, film and cultural studies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the interdisciplinary ties between art, technology and media.

The Climate of History in a Planetary Age

The Climate of History in a Planetary Age PDF

Author: Dipesh Chakrabarty

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-03-22

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 022673305X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider—from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals. Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.

Our Dying Planet

Our Dying Planet PDF

Author: Peter Sale

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-08-02

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0520267567

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Weaving into the narrative his own firsthand field experiences around the world, the author, an ecologist brings ecology alive while giving a solid understanding of the science at work behind today's pressing environmental issues. He delves into topics including deforestation, biodiversity loss, over fishing, population growth, use of fossil fuel and climate change while discussing the real consequences of out growing ecological footprint. Coral reefs are on track to become the first ecosystem actually eliminated from the planet. So says the author in this crash course on the state of the planet. He draws from his own extensive work on coral reefs, and from recent research by other ecologists, to explore the many ways we are changing the Earth and to explain why it matters. Most important, this book emphasizes that a gloom-and-doom scenario is not inevitable, and as the author explores alternative paths, he considers the ways in which science can help us realize a better future.

Planetary Longings

Planetary Longings PDF

Author: Mary Louise Pratt

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2022-03-07

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1478022906

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Planetary Longings eminent cultural theorist Mary Louise Pratt posits that the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first mark a turning point in the human and planetary condition. Examining the forces of modernity, neoliberalism, coloniality, and indigeneity in their pre- and postmillennial forms, Pratt reflects on the crisis of futurity that accompanies the millennial turn in relation to environmental disaster and to the new forms of thinking it has catalyzed. She turns to 1990s Latin American vernacular culture, literary fiction, and social movements, which simultaneously registered neoliberalism’s devastating effects and pursued alternate ways of knowing and living. Tracing the workings of colonialism alongside the history of anticolonial struggles and Indigenous mobilizations in the Americas, Pratt analyzes indigeneity both as a key index of coloniality, neoliberal extraction, and ecological destruction, and as a source for alternative modes of thought and being. Ultimately, Pratt demonstrates that the changes on either side of the millennium have catalyzed new forms of world-making and knowledge-making in the face of an unknowable and catastrophic future.