We are living through a world-rattling ecological inflection point, with an unprecedented consensus that capitalism is leading humanity into a social and ecological catastrophe and that everything needs to change, and fast. Thankfully, radical environmental movements have forced the question of "system change" to the centre of the political agenda to make way for a just and livable world.
Insurgent Ecologies takes readers on an inspiring journey across key sites of ecological crisis and contestation, showing how revolutionary politics can emerge from the convergences between place-based, often disconnected struggles. These engaging essays speak to longstanding debates in political ecology around how to advance transformations in, against and beyond capitalism. The collection starts from the belief that the environmental struggles taking place across the Global South and North are a necessary component of such transformations. The book presents unique stories of the visions and strategies of struggles organized around sovereignty, land, climate, feminisms and labour, written by scholar-activists rooted in territories around the globe, offering locally grounded yet global perspectives. Each story reflects on how to build solidarity and comradeship across diverse struggles and how new political subjects and transformative collective projects for social-ecological justice are created.
Industry Reviews
"This powerful collection begins from the premise that insurgency is always a provocation, a forceful intervention that doesn't constitute a singular new order from whole cloth, but rather moves to radically destabilize authorized forms of knowledge, power, and organizations based on a plurality of environmental struggles. In cases that take us from eucalyptus plantations in Spain to energy infrastructures in Palestine, from the organizing of La Via Campesina's transnational feminist politics to just transitions movements in South Africa, readers get more than disconnected storylines of resistance - they get a lucid study of how place-based, seemingly disconnected environmental struggles can cohere into a radical, unified, revolutionary politics. It's an indispensable handbook for scholars and movements seeking to go beyond a narrow antineoliberal critique toward one that embraces radical anticolonial thought, that avoids the exclusivity of excess jargon, and that locates liberation in the struggle that Samir Amin called "convergence in diversity." - Maywa Montenegro, assistant professor, University of California and author of Abolitionist Agroecology, Food Sovereignty and Pandemic Prevention; "This book points to broader questions of strategy and transformation through which it engages critically with the field of political ecology from a novel lens, i.e., that of political strategy and the possibility of engendering revolutionary transformations." - Bengi Akbulut, professor, department of geography, co-director of the Social Justice Centre, Concordia University; "Linking planetary ecological devastation and the climate crisis to inequality and precariousness, this excellent collection could not be more timely. In the radical political ecology tradition, it argues for systemic change in order to advance environmental and climate justice - in, against and beyond capitalism." - Julian Agyeman, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning, Tufts University; "It's not only climate that's warming up, so is ecopolitics! The interplay of movements for liberating land, livelihood, labour, and sexuality creates a new kind of materialist lens for our 21st century politics. This book is a joy to encounter - pluriversal in both content and process." - Ariel Salleh, author of EcoSufficiency and Global Justiceand Ecofeminism as Politics; "With a trenchant critique of the dominant systems that enslave, immiserate, and destroy people and nature, this volume's contributors map out a way forward with nothing short of radical change in every realm of social and political life. As a wide-ranging and globe-spanning yet highly synthetic set of chapters, this volume is a must-read for political ecologists everywhere." - Amy Trauger, professor of Geography, University of Georgia; "The Undisciplined Environments Collective offers a timely addition to the classics of radical political ecology. Going beyond stale critique or mere documentation of resistance practices, the book dares to put 'the radical' back to the core of political ecology, by centering on questions of strategic, systemic and revolutionary change, and asking what forms of universality and camaraderie can come out of the now fragmented and localized struggles against capitalist accumulation. A must read!" - Maria Kaika, director of the Centre for Urban studies at the University of Amsterdam, and editor of Turning Up the Heat: Urban Political Ecology for a Climate Emergency; "Insurgent Ecologies is a critical collection paying urgent homage the brave frontline of the many whilst reminding the struggle everywhere that confrontation, resistance and contestation is the work in times of continued elite capture, coloniality and dispossession." - Elise Klein (OAM), associate professor, Australian National University; "In times of renewed and massive enclosures, including that of political imagination, Insurgent Ecologies irrupts as a necessary read. A powerful collection on subaltern ecological politics across different geographies, this book will surely remain an important reference for intellectual and political work against and beyond capitalism." - Diana Ojeda, professor of Geography and director of the Commons Program at the Ostrom Workshop, Indiana University; "This book is an invaluable tool for looking beyond capitalism and its 'fixes', and forging the unity of struggles that is needed to move past it" - Stefania Barca, University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Workers of the Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change; "There has never been a more critical moment for imagining and bringing into existence a broad spectrum of post-capitalist realities. Insurgent Ecologies offers rigorous analysis and inspiring guidance on counterhegemonic thought and direct action for the realization of that radical vision of system change." - David Naguib Pellow, University of California Santa Barbara, author of What is Critical Environmental Justice?
