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9781645021841

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Drawing on decades of experience in climate journalism and activism, Dougald Hine's At Work in the Ruins is one of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. Of particular importance is Hine's deeply respectful yet unsparing analysis of the strengths and limitations of science in reckoning with these crises. At Work in the Ruins is essential reading for these turbulent times. -Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement In this age of confusion and corruption, Dougald Hine has always had a great gift for asking the right questions. Here he makes a stab at some answers, too - and, more bravely, identifies the places where 'answers' are not available and that the real work is rebooting our entire way of seeing. There are far too many books about climate change around, but this book is about something more unsettling: what our response to climate change reveals about us - and what we can't do about it, as well as what we can. You are certain to come away rethinking some of your own assumptions. -Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist Dougald Hine's book At Work in the Ruins is a deep reflection on the foundations of the destructive path humanity has been pushed on, driven by colonialism, modernity and fossil fuel addiction, by its love for centralization, control, consumerism, certainty. By stopping to talk about climate change and the other problems we face, Dougald invites us to make deeper shifts by making a turn in our hearts and minds, seeking smaller paths, paths to be discovered and walked along by individuals and communities, paths of diversity and decentralization. And trust uncertainty. -Vandana Shiva, author of Terra Viva I'll get right to it: every time the world ends, it leaves a mark. Yes. Implicitly, the apocalypse is not new. There have been many before. But this mark I speak of...it is like a signature. A prophetic molecule of sorts. A sense of discomfort with the rush of the familiar. A taste for questions too slippery for the public imagination. A slant of the eye. An initiation that queers the flesh. Like fungal spores inseminating a zombie ant in the forest. A virus. Not to worry: Not everyone is so marked. But Dougald Hine clearly is. Dougald Hine is mad. And he has my full attention and trust. In this sonorous swoosh of earnest prose composed with the cadence of a fugitive journalist who has a news story that should end all other stories - as well as the unmistakable lilt of an elder who would have sat at the edge of my Nigerian village - Dougald ushers us into the Gordian knots of our strange times where 'following the science', 'solving the climate challenge' and 'saving the world' no longer hold much cartographical promise. Ironically, talking this way about a phenomenon that calls into question humanity's claims to sovereignty is how the modern machine keeps reproducing the fires we want to extinguish. Pushing past popular tropes, Dougald helps us see that how we talk about and address this end-of-world crisis is the crisis. Something else is needed. Mutiny of some kind. An apostasy. Definitely more than a manifesto, a new solution or a new campaign. Let Dougald Hine's masterful storytelling marks you; let his song of loss and longing, his call to fugitivity, dispossess you of your steady gait and poise. Perhaps then we, collectively infected, might together witness the incomprehensible. -Bayo Akomolafe, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences I'll get right to it: every time the world ends, it leaves a mark. Yes. Implicitly, the apocalypse is not new. There have been many before. But this mark I speak of...it is like a signature. A prophetic molecule of sorts. A sense of discomfort with the rush of the familiar. A taste for questions too slippery for the public imagination. A slant of the eye. An initiation that queers the flesh. Like fungal spores inseminating a zombie ant in the forest. A virus. Not to worry: Not everyone is so marked. But Dougald Hine clearly is. Dougald Hine is mad. And he has my full attention and trust. In this sonorous swoosh of earnest prose composed with the cadence of a fugitive journalist who has a news story that should end all other stories - as well as the unmistakable lilt of an elder who would have sat at the edge of my Nigerian village - Dougald ushers us into the Gordian knots of our strange times where 'following the science', 'solving the climate challenge' and 'saving the world' no longer hold much cartographical promise. Ironically, talking this way about a phenomenon that calls into question humanity's claims to sovereignty is how the modern machine keeps reproducing the fires we want to extinguish. Pushing past popular tropes, Dougald helps us see that how we talk about and address this end-of-world crisis is the crisis. Something else is needed. Mutiny of some kind. An apostasy. Definitely more than a manifesto, a new solution or a new campaign. Let Dougald Hine's masterful storytelling marks you; let his song of loss and longing, his call to fugitivity, dispossess you of your steady gait and poise. Perhaps then we, collectively infected, might together witness the incomprehensible. -Bayo Akomolafe, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences I love reading Hine's writing. Here is a work that began with a feeling that was sensed before it was thought. The result is a book of rare originality and depth - profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff. -Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings There is great storytelling woven within Dougald's timely and sometimes-disturbing book. Hine addresses the blessings and chaos of this moment without ever moving into relentless naysaying or vapid optimism, which makes it hugely refreshing. He seeks a third, truer position. A bigger one. At Work in the Ruins carries the weight of many years at the front line of thinking around climate emergency. This isn't a weary, trotted-out mandate; it wonderingly tugs at what we think we know and points towards what we may not. -Martin Shaw, author of Courting the Wild Twin Dougald Hine's very personable book makes a persuasive and welcome case for a new view of science. He shows clearly how movements that live by science - in its current, institutionalized meaning - will also die by science. At Work in the Ruins speaks up for practical judgment, common sense and the wisdom of heart as guides on the 'small and branching path' that Hine contrasts with the big highway of surveillance and regulation by which scientized technocracy proposes to address climate change. The Covid years have revealed a stark choice, long foreseen by the prophetic thinkers, such as Ivan Illich, by whom Hine is inspired. I hope many will heed Hine's invitation to friendship and intellectual modesty, and join him on the adventure of the small path. -David Cayley, author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey If the hourglass has come to stand for the time of endings in which we find ourselves, Dougald Hine looks beyond it to recall the myriad encounters with thinkers and knowledges which have shaped his sense-making over the past two decades, and which shed light on our predicament. When our gaze returns to the hourglass, the reader might question its shape, the width of the opening, where the sand was taken from and who gets to turn it. What actually happens once the sand has drained? Or what happens if it doesn't? What would happen if the glass cracked and the sand was allowed to spill out onto the table? Hine makes tentative maps with that spilt sand, tracing lines with his finger that are clear, compelling and cathartic; reverent to the unknown and unknowable. -Sarah Thomas, author of The Raven's Nest Here is a book that explores the public understanding of science around climate change, Covid and social movements. Asking if we demand too much of science, Hine points beyond the 'dark hubris' of despair. With eloquence and honesty, he invites us to the hope of deeper mystery that life on Earth might yet unfold. -Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Riders on the Storm We've tried browbeating people into saving the planet. It doesn't work, both because most people don't like to be told what to do and because it is pure folly to imagine that individual microchoices are sufficient to lift us out of this crisis. Why not try, instead, to invite people to think together with us in a spirit of honesty, not only about the crisis and possible ways out of it, but also about the deeper reasons why we cherish the world we have been told we must save? This is Dougald Hine's approach, and it is timely indeed - a desperately needed change of register in contemporary environmental thinking. -Justin E.H. Smith, author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is In this book, Dougald Hine invites us to repurpose the ruins of the modern structures of organisation and existence (within and around us) that have led us on the path of premature extinction. The end of the world as we know it is the end of a world that needs hospicing, and perhaps, through this hospicing, humanity can learn to be taught by the violence it has inflicted on itself and the rest of nature. It is pretentious to think we (humans) can 'birth' a new world; but since we are part of nature and not the centre of it, we can learn to trust the healing capacity of its metabolism to work through us, if we can decentre ourselves to allow it to happen. -Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, author of Hospicing Modernity It's hard to exaggerate the importance and sheer nerve of Hine's prophetic call to face the facts. This is an elegant and acute examination of our personal and societal pathology, and a stirring but never polemical insistence that we must start the treatment. What's wrong with us? Our storylessness, our pathetic clutching at polarities, and our ludicrous faith in progress rather than process. And the therapy? Stories that are worthy of us, because we're huge and enduring - unlike politics or institutions or ideas. These are apocalyptic times. Hine reminds us that apocalypse means 'unveiling' and prepares us for what we might see if we've still got eyes. -Charles Foster, author of Being a Human and Being a Beast

Drawing on decades of experience in climate journalism and activism, Dougald Hine's At Work in the Ruins is one of the most perceptive and thought-provoking books yet written about the multiple intersecting crises that are now upending our once-familiar world. Of particular importance is Hine's deeply respectful yet unsparing analysis of the strengths and limitations of science in reckoning with these crises. At Work in the Ruins is essential reading for these turbulent times. -Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement In this age of confusion and corruption, Dougald Hine has always had a great gift for asking the right questions. Here he makes a stab at some answers, too - and, more bravely, identifies the places where 'answers' are not available and that the real work is rebooting our entire way of seeing. There are far too many books about climate change around, but this book is about something more unsettling: what our response to climate change reveals about us - and what we can't do about it, as well as what we can. You are certain to come away rethinking some of your own assumptions. -Paul Kingsnorth, author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist Dougald Hine's book At Work in the Ruins is a deep reflection on the foundations of the destructive path humanity has been pushed on, driven by colonialism, modernity and fossil fuel addiction, by its love for centralization, control, consumerism, certainty. By stopping to talk about climate change and the other problems we face, Dougald invites us to make deeper shifts by making a turn in our hearts and minds, seeking smaller paths, paths to be discovered and walked along by individuals and communities, paths of diversity and decentralization. And trust uncertainty. -Vandana Shiva, author of Terra Viva I'll get right to it: every time the world ends, it leaves a mark. Yes. Implicitly, the apocalypse is not new. There have been many before. But this mark I speak of...it is like a signature. A prophetic molecule of sorts. A sense of discomfort with the rush of the familiar. A taste for questions too slippery for the public imagination. A slant of the eye. An initiation that queers the flesh. Like fungal spores inseminating a zombie ant in the forest. A virus. Not to worry: Not everyone is so marked. But Dougald Hine clearly is. Dougald Hine is mad. And he has my full attention and trust. In this sonorous swoosh of earnest prose composed with the cadence of a fugitive journalist who has a news story that should end all other stories - as well as the unmistakable lilt of an elder who would have sat at the edge of my Nigerian village - Dougald ushers us into the Gordian knots of our strange times where 'following the science', 'solving the climate challenge' and 'saving the world' no longer hold much cartographical promise. Ironically, talking this way about a phenomenon that calls into question humanity's claims to sovereignty is how the modern machine keeps reproducing the fires we want to extinguish. Pushing past popular tropes, Dougald helps us see that how we talk about and address this end-of-world crisis is the crisis. Something else is needed. Mutiny of some kind. An apostasy. Definitely more than a manifesto, a new solution or a new campaign. Let Dougald Hine's masterful storytelling mark you; let his song of loss and longing, his call to fugitivity, dispossess you of your steady gait and poise. Perhaps then we, collectively infected, might together witness the incomprehensible. -Bayo Akomolafe, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences I love reading Hine's writing. Here is a work that began with a feeling that was sensed before it was thought. The result is a book of rare originality and depth - profound, far-reaching, mind-altering stuff. -Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings There is great storytelling woven within Dougald's timely and sometimes-disturbing book. Hine addresses the blessings and chaos of this moment without ever moving into relentless naysaying or vapid optimism, which makes it hugely refreshing. He seeks a third, truer position. A bigger one. At Work in the Ruins carries the weight of many years at the front line of thinking around climate emergency. This isn't a weary, trotted-out mandate; it wonderingly tugs at what we think we know and points towards what we may not. -Martin Shaw, author of Courting the Wild Twin Dougald Hine's very personable book makes a persuasive and welcome case for a new view of science. He shows clearly how movements that live by science - in its current, institutionalized meaning - will also die by science. At Work in the Ruins speaks up for practical judgment, common sense and the wisdom of heart as guides on the 'small and branching path' that Hine contrasts with the big highway of surveillance and regulation by which scientized technocracy proposes to address climate change. The Covid years have revealed a stark choice, long foreseen by the prophetic thinkers, such as Ivan Illich, by whom Hine is inspired. I hope many will heed Hine's invitation to friendship and intellectual modesty, and join him on the adventure of the small path. -David Cayley, author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey If the hourglass has come to stand for the time of endings in which we find ourselves, Dougald Hine looks beyond it to recall the myriad encounters with thinkers and knowledges which have shaped his sense-making over the past two decades, and which shed light on our predicament. When our gaze returns to the hourglass, the reader might question its shape, the width of the opening, where the sand was taken from and who gets to turn it. What actually happens once the sand has drained? Or what happens if it doesn't? What would happen if the glass cracked and the sand was allowed to spill out onto the table? Hine makes tentative maps with that spilt sand, tracing lines with his finger that are clear, compelling and cathartic; reverent to the unknown and unknowable. -Sarah Thomas, author of The Raven's Nest Here is a book that explores the public understanding of science around climate change, Covid and social movements. Asking if we demand too much of science, Hine points beyond the 'dark hubris' of despair. With eloquence and honesty, he invites us to the hope of deeper mystery that life on Earth might yet unfold. -Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Riders on the Storm We've tried browbeating people into saving the planet. It doesn't work, both because most people don't like to be told what to do and because it is pure folly to imagine that individual microchoices are sufficient to lift us out of this crisis. Why not try, instead, to invite people to think together with us in a spirit of honesty, not only about the crisis and possible ways out of it, but also about the deeper reasons why we cherish the world we have been told we must save? This is Dougald Hine's approach, and it is timely indeed - a desperately needed change of register in contemporary environmental thinking. -Justin E.H. Smith, author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is In this book, Dougald Hine invites us to repurpose the ruins of the modern structures of organisation and existence (within and around us) that have led us on the path of premature extinction. The end of the world as we know it is the end of a world that needs hospicing, and perhaps, through this hospicing, humanity can learn to be taught by the violence it has inflicted on itself and the rest of nature. It is pretentious to think we (humans) can 'birth' a new world; but since we are part of nature and not the centre of it, we can learn to trust the healing capacity of its metabolism to work through us, if we can decentre ourselves to allow it to happen. -Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, author of Hospicing Modernity It's hard to exaggerate the importance and sheer nerve of Hine's prophetic call to face the facts. This is an elegant and acute examination of our personal and societal pathology, and a stirring but never polemical insistence that we must start the treatment. What's wrong with us? Our storylessness, our pathetic clutching at polarities, and our ludicrous faith in progress rather than process. And the therapy? Stories that are worthy of us, because we're huge and enduring - unlike politics or institutions or ideas. These are apocalyptic times. Hine reminds us that apocalypse means 'unveiling' and prepares us for what we might see if we've still got eyes. -Charles Foster, author of Being a Human and Being a Beast

Author Information

Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer and speaker. After an early career as a BBC journalist, he cofounded organizations including the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. He has collaborated with scientists, artists and activists, serving as a leader of artistic development at Riksteatern (Sweden’s national theatre) and as an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. At Work in the Ruins concludes the work that began with Uncivilization: The Dark Mountain Manifesto (2009), co-written with Paul Kingsnorth, and is his second title with Chelsea Green, following the anthology Walking on Lava (2017).

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