Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology
ISBN: 9780816680115
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Minnesota Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Urban ecology (Sociology); Political ecology; Environmentalism;

Everyday Environmentalism develops a conversation between marxist theories of everyday life and recent work in urban political ecology, arguing for a philosophy of praxis in relation to the politics of urban environments. Grounding its theoretical debate in empirical studies of struggles to obtain water in the informal settlements of Durban, South Africa, as well as in the creative acts of insurgent art activists in London, Alex Loftus builds on the work of key marxist thinkers to redefine OC environmental politics.OCO. A marxist philosophy of praxisOCothat world-changing ideas emerge from the acts of everyday peopleOCoundergirds the book. Our daily reality, writes Loftus, is woven out of the entanglements of social and natural relations, and as such a kind of environmental politics is automatically incorporated into our lives. Nevertheless, one effect of the public recognition of global environmental change, asserts Loftus, has been a resurgence of dualistic understandings of the world: for example, that nature is inflicting revenge on arrogant human societies. This ambitious work reformulatesOCowith the assistance of such philosophers as Lukics, Gramsci, Lefebvre, and othersOCoa politics of the environment in which everyday subjectivity is at the heart of a revolutionary politics.


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