Concepts for a Democratic and Ecological Society

Concepts for a Democratic and Ecological Society
Author: Yavor Tarinski
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Total Pages: 101
Release: 2022-05-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1789049237

Yavor Tarinski examines the fundamental conflict between democratic aspirations and the imposed norms of capitalism, the potential for directly democratic and ecologically designed cities, the imperative to renew the commons, and the prospects for a genuine solidarity economy to overturn the ravages of capitalist economic growth. It critiques bureaucratic, technocratic and conspiracist tendencies both in mainstream discourse and on the Left, and offers a compelling and uplifting vision of a thoroughly transformed social order.

Toward an Ecological Society

Toward an Ecological Society
Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2024-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1849354456

Visionary essays from a founder of the modern ecology movement. In this collection of essays, Murray Bookchin's vision for an ecological society remains central as he addresses questions of urbanism and city planning, technology, self-management, energy, utopianism, and more. Throughout, he opposes efforts to reduce ecology to a toothless “environmentalism,” a task as vital today as when these essays were first published. Written between 1969 and 1979, the essays in this collection represent a fascinating and fertile period in Bookchin’s life. Coming out of the unfulfilled promise of the sixties and trying to develop a revolutionary critique of social life that avoided the pitfalls of Marxism, he was entering his creative intellectual peak. He was laying the foundations of a truly social ecology: a society based on decentralization, interdependence, democratic self-management, mutual aid, and solidarity. Presented with clarity and fervor, these key works contain the kernels of concerns that would occupy him until his death in 2006. This edition also includes a new foreword by Dan Chodorkoff, someone who was with Bookchin at the founding of his Institute for Social Ecology and who understand his work better than anyone.

Politics of Nature

Politics of Nature
Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674039963

A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

Design for Ecological Democracy

Design for Ecological Democracy
Author: Randolph T. Hester, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2010-09-24
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262515008

Shows how to combine the forces of ecological science and participatory democracy to design urban landscapes that enable us to act as communities, are resilient rather than imperiled, and touch our hearts. Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in the process of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities, destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design for Ecological Democracy, Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines new principles for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and our natural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples—drawn from forty years of design and planning practice—showing how we can design cities that are ecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure. Hester argues that it is only by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in design will take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining our interconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on three fundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, and impelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclaves and to function as informed democracies. A simple bench at a centrally located post office, for example, provides an opportunity for connection and shared experience. Cities must be ecologically resilient rather than ecologically imperiled, adaptable to the surrounding ecology rather than dependent on technological fixes. Resilient form turns increased urban density, for example, into an advantage. And cities should impel us by joy rather than compel us by fear; good cities enrich us rather than limit us. Design for Ecological Democracy is essential reading for designers, planners, environmentalists, community activists, and anyone else who wants to improve a local community.

Creating an Ecological Society

Creating an Ecological Society
Author: Fred Magdoff
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2017-05-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1583676309

Aiming squarely at replacing capitalism with an ecologically sound and socially just society, Magdoff and Williams provide accounts of how a new world can be created from the ashes of the old. They show that it is possible to envision and create a society that is genuinely democratic, equitable, and ecologically sustainable. And possible--not one moment too soon--for society to change fundamentally and be brought into harmony with nature. --From publisher description.

The Ecology of Freedom

The Ecology of Freedom
Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: Black Rose Books Limited
Total Pages: 385
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780921689720

Using a synthesis of ecology, anthropology, philosophy and political theory, this book traces our society's conflicting legacies of freedom and domination, from the first emergence of human culture to today's global capitalism. The theme of Murray Bookchin's grand historical narrative is straightforward: environmental, economic and political devastation are born at the moment that human societies begin to organize themselves hierarchically. And, despite the nuance and detail of his arguments, the lesson to be learned is just as basic: our nightmare will continue until hierarchy is dissolved and human beings develop more sane, sustainable and egalitarian social structures.

The Philosophy of Social Ecology

The Philosophy of Social Ecology
Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1849354413

What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

Rescuing Democracy

Rescuing Democracy
Author: Paul E. Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This book proposes a new institution -- the 'People's Forum' -- to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost. The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it. An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass.

Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge

Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge
Author: Andrew Dobson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2006-08-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139457853

In recent years the engagement between the environmental 'agenda' and mainstream political theory has become increasingly widespread and profound. Each has affected the other in palpable and important ways, and it makes increasing sense for political theorists in each camp to engage with one another. This book, first published in 2006, draws together the threads of this interconnecting enquiry in order to assess its status and meaning. Andrew Dobson and Robyn Eckersley have gathered together a team of renowned scholars to think through the challenge that political ecology presents to political theory. Looking at fourteen familiar political ideologies and concepts such as liberalism, conservatism, justice and democracy, the contributors question how they are reshaped, distorted or transformed from an environmental perspective. Lively, accessible and authoritative, this book will appeal to scholars and students alike.