Birth of a New Earth: The Radical Politics of Environmentalism

Adrian Parr

Published by Columbia University Press 2017

Birth of a New Earth

The Radical Politics of Environmentalism

Adrian Parr

https://doi.org/10.7312/parr18008

Overview
Contents

About this book

Adrian Parr identifies the emancipatory potential of environmental politics both inside and outside existing structures and within opposing paradigms. Ultimately, environmental politics is the refusal to surrender life to the violence of global capitalism and militarism. This defiance can serve as the source for the birth of a new earth.

Author / Editor information

Adrian Parr is chair and director of the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati and UNESCO Co-Chair of Water Access and Sustainability. Her books include Hijacking Sustainability (2009) and The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics (Columbia, 2013). She is also the producer and codirector (with Sean Hughes) of the award-winning documentary The Intimate Realities of Water (2016).

Reviews

Santiago Zabala, author of Why Only Art Can Save Us:
Adrian Parr’s marvelous book Birth of a New Earth does not simply argue that capitalism, neoliberalism, and militarism are incompatible with environmental concerns but also provides concrete examples of how to overcome this incompatibility, which is the cause of our greatest natural, political, and social emergencies. Parr calls upon activists and intellectuals to forcefully resist false policies that claim to foster global sustainability in favor of radical interventions that, one local step at a time, will truly save the world.

Gustavo Esteva Figueroa, author of The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto:
"Environmentalism" will not survive this book. It will be frustrating and disappointing for many readers to discover that their good deeds to save the planet can be useless and even counterproductive; they may be nourishing the machine producing environmental degradation: global capitalism, corporate governance, and militarism. But they will also discover in this book stimulating windows to emancipatory imagining and transformative politics that really care for Mother Earth.

Ananya Roy, author of Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development:
This is a prescient book, one that not only provides a rigorous and critical analysis of emergent environmentalisms but also charts how imaginations of a "new earth" can be forged at the limits of liberal democracy. In this sense, the book is as much about the political as it is about the environmental. It is a must-read for our times.

Henry Giroux, author of America at War with Itself:
Birth of a New Earth is one of those rare and brilliant books that critiques the ongoing destruction of the environment in a writing style that is lyrical, compassionate, and as accessible as it is informative. Parr masterfully weaves together a language of critique and possibility and in doing so makes a convincing case for environmental and economic justice on a global scale and offers a powerful argument for rethinking the meaning and practice of politics.

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet:
As Adrian Parr suggests in timely fashion, imagination may be the best weapon we have in the fight against environmental destruction, as useful as a new engine or a bigger windmill.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
1 Varying Shades of Green Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Green Governmentality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
3 Green Scare Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
4 Fascist Earth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
5 Commonism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
6 Welcome to the Dark Side of Dignity and Development Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
7 Urban Clear-Cutting Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
8 Protest Without People Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
9 So to Speak Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: July 9, 2018
ISBN: 9780231542456