The Political Ecology of Human Supremacy

Sustainability, 2020

In this article, we study politics as domination. From our point of view, domination, especially in the Anthropocene, has had two vital components-power and supremacy. In order to dominate, one has to have power over others. In addition, the politics of domination, such as colonial oppression of Latin America, has required reasoning, justification, and legitimation, often connected to superiority (because of religion, society, or civilization) from the oppressor's end. Past and present political ideologies and programs, such as colonialism, imperialism, but also welfare state capitalism, neoliberalism and increasingly popular Green New Deal are examples of what we call "anthropolitics," an anthropocentric approach to politics based on domination, power, and supremacist exploitation. In contrast to the prevailing anthropolitics, this article discusses post-Anthropocene politics, characterized by localization and decentralization, as well as a steep reduction of matter-e...

Undoing Human Supremacy: Anarchist Political Ecology and the End of Anthroparchy, 2021

Few political ecologists have taken anarchism seriously, while many anarchists have ignored the question of the animal other, treating anthroparchy, or the supremacy of the human species, as somehow different than other forms of hierarchy. Yet the relationship between the state, capitalism, and the subjugation of non-human animals should be clear in light of Ag-gag laws and the targeting of animal liberation activists as 'terrorists'. Building on the idea of an integral anarchism, which considers speciesism as forming the same violent genus as racism, classism, sexism, childism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia, I argue that these ostensibly separate pieces are in fact interlocking systems of domination. Such an intersectional view leads us towards one inevitable ethical conclusion in the pursuit of an anarchist political ecology: veganism. Consequently I question the indifference that anarchists, political ecologists, and critical geographers alike have assigned to the unintelligible violence that is meted out against non-human animals, primarily through euphemizing their dismembered, decapitated, and disemboweled bodies as 'meat'. I argue that the liberation ecology proposed by Peet and Watts (1996) appears facile in the face of pervasive anthroparchy, which although every bit as vile as gender domination and white supremacy, barely registers within the current literature. Given the extraordinary depletion of water resources, widespread deforestation, intensified climate change, pervasive pollution, and mass murder that all flow from contemporary animal agriculture, our current food practices represent nothing short of ecocide. As an antidote to this shameful apathy and horrendous violence, I propose 'Total Liberation Ecology'.

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2021

Over the last several decades, scholars and practitioners have progressively acknowledged that we cannot consider cities as the place where nature stops anymore, resulting in urban environments being increasingly appreciated and theorized as hybrids between nature and culture, entities made of socio-ecological processes in constant transformation. Spanning the fields of political ecology, environmental studies, and sociology, this new direction in urban theory emerged in concert with global concern for sustainability and environmental justice. This volume explores the notion that connecting with nature holds the key to a more progressive and liberatory politics.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Anarchist Studies, 2018

In previous work, we have argued that there are considerable areas of overlap between anarchism and complexity thinking, in particular because both explore the possibilities for the development of order without a specific source of authority. In more recent interventions we have developed a posthuman world view as a political project based on a foundation in complexity thinking. Hierarchical and exclusive forms of social organisation are usually understood by anarchists to be forms of domination. It is unsurprising then, that the history of anarchist thought and practical political engagement demonstrates a concern with an eclectic range of dominations. In this paper, we argue that in questioning our treatment of the environment, or ‘nature’ and in problematising some of our relations with non-human beings and things, some anarchism usefully informs the politics of posthumanism. We trace the past and contemporary linkages between anarchism and posthumanist thinking, drawing on liter...

2020

Discussing the fluid boundaries between humanity and nature in light of destructive human interactions with the biosphere raises controversial issues. There is now growing consensus among many scholars that a dualistic understanding of humanity and nature as separate and monolithic entities is insufficient to describe the richness of relations ‘beyond the human’ and the embeddedness of humans in the interdependent web of life (Kohn 2013). Furthermore, assuming that there is no mode of social relationality that is entirely free from power differentials, it seems no longer viable to speak of a single humanity or nature in the context of the current ecological crisis. Instead, it seems more sensible to conceive of abstract concepts such as humanity or nature in terms of multiple ‘biosocial becomings’ (Ingold and Palsson 2013).[1]

Rowman & Littlefield, 2021

The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's …, 2005