Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations

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.

The Undisciplined Environments is a collective of political ecology researchers founded in 2014 and organized around a blog platform by the same name. It seeks to animate a space to share, debate and critically reflect on research, methodologies, activist experiences, events, publications, art and other issues related to political ecology. The collective’s main purpose is to contribute to socio-ecological struggles, primarily by rendering rigorous and critically engaged research available to non-academic audiences, including socio-environmental movements. This work seeks to inspire and contribute to radical thought and practice, toward more egalitarian and ecologically sound futures, and to encourage the growth of political ecology networks at a transnational level.

Visit www.undisciplinedenvironments.org for more details
Ulrich Brand is a German political scientist. He is a professor of International Politics at the University of Vienna.