Overview

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism. Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics. Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.

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9781138629189

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Reviews

What can be done? This book is a must-read for activists, scholars and scholar-activists who struggle for a better and more equal world. - Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw have teamed up with colleagues to - once again - push the boundaries of Urban Political Ecology (UPE). They are launching a scathing attack on readings of the Anthropocene that see this new geological era as the ultimate justification for an elitist, techno-managerial politics of unsustainability. This volume is an intellectual firework bringing together radical thinkers who are determined to re-energize the egalitarian emancipatory project. - Professor Ingolfur Bluhdorn, Head of the Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Department of Socio-Economics, Vienna University of Economic and Business, Austria The rise of sustainability science, the traction of ideas about the Anthropocene and the intellectual and practice-based emphasis on complex systems dynamics should not, as Ernstson and Swyngedouw so powerfully remind us in this hard-hitting book, detract from the basic point that the environment is deeply political and as such any intellectual contribution to understanding environmental concerns needs too to be inherently political. - Professor Sue Parnell, University of Bristol and African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa

What can be done? This book is a must-read for activists, scholars and scholar-activists who struggle for a better and more equal world. - Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw have teamed up with colleagues to - once again - push the boundaries of Urban Political Ecology (UPE). They are launching a scathing attack on readings of the Anthropocene that see this new geological era as the ultimate justification for an elitist, techno-managerial politics of unsustainability. This volume is an intellectual firework bringing together radical thinkers who are determined to re-energize the egalitarian emancipatory project. - Professor Ingolfur Bluhdorn, Head of the Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Department of Socio-Economics, Vienna University of Economic and Business, Austria The rise of sustainability science, the traction of ideas about the Anthropocene and the intellectual and practice-based emphasis on complex systems dynamics should not, as Ernstson and Swyngedouw so powerfully remind us in this hard-hitting book, detract from the basic point that the environment is deeply political and as such any intellectual contribution to understanding environmental concerns needs too to be inherently political. - Professor Sue Parnell, University of Bristol and African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa

What can be done? This book is a must-read for activists, scholars and scholar-activists who struggle for a better and more equal world. - Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Author Information

Henrik Ernstson is Lecturer in Human Geography at The University of Manchester, UK. Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at The University of Manchester, UK.

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