ABSTRACT
The Political Ecology of Austerity explores the environmental dimension of austerity that has thus far escaped academic, policy, and media attention.
Offering a better comprehension of the full socio-environmental impact of austerity measures, the book highlights the importance of considering environmental issues when designing responses to economic crisis in the future. Mobilising detailed case studies from across the world, the volume documents the ways in which austerity impacts global and local ecologies, shapes environmental conflicts and gives rise to new forms and practices of social moblisation and resistance. Bringing together theoretical debates and rigorous case studies, the book proposes ‘the political ecology of austerity’ as an appropriate method of analysis that can inform our understanding of the shift in environmental protection policies and the intensification of growth practices (green or otherwise) that followed the 2008 global economic crisis. The Political Ecology of Austerity discloses austerity to be a globalised set of tools not only for budgetary discipline, but also for socio-environmental discipline that justifies the continuation of capital accumulation at the expense of further global environmental degradation.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of social and political sciences, environmental studies, urban studies, and political ecology.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |11 pages
Introduction
part I|39 pages
Re-engineering socio-environmental relations under austerity
chapter 2|19 pages
On a thought and a prayer
part II|59 pages
Re-enacting socio-environmental exclusion under austerity
chapter 3|18 pages
The coloniality of austerity
chapter 4|19 pages
When disaster meets austerity
chapter 5|20 pages
Politics of austerity and ‘otherness’ as public health determinants
part III|62 pages
Re-awakening socio-environmental movements against austerity
chapter 6|20 pages
The politicised ecologies of austerity
chapter 7|21 pages
Resisting austerity in the era of COVID-19
chapter 8|19 pages
Political ecologies of value
part IV|40 pages
Re-asserting the commons as a socio-environmental alternative against austerity