ABSTRACT

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism.

Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics.

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.

part |1 pages

Introduction

part I|1 pages

The political

chapter 2|23 pages

O Tempora! O Mores!

Interrupting the Anthropo-obScene

chapter 4|20 pages

“Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”

Postcolonial remains and the politics of the Anthropo-ob(S)cene

part II|1 pages

The situated

chapter 5|20 pages

Political ecologies of dispossession and anticorruption

A radical politics for the Anthropocene?

chapter 7|19 pages

Suffocating cities

Climate change as social-ecological violence

chapter 8|17 pages

Multi-vocal urban political ecology

In search of new sensibilities

chapter 9|19 pages

Paved paradise

The suburb as chief artefact of the Anthropocene and terrain of new political performativities

part III|1 pages

The performative

chapter 11|18 pages

Exhibiting division, seizing the state

The Natural History Museum

chapter 12|16 pages

All that was directly lived

chapter 13|15 pages

Reclaiming a scholarship of presence

Building alternative socio-environmental imaginaries

part |1 pages

Conclusion

chapter 14|13 pages

Bringing back the political

Egalitarian acting, performative theory