ABSTRACT
Two critical accounts of the global ecological crisis of civilization have emerged recently. On the one hand, Marxian, critical political-ecology and world-systems approaches to environmental social science have engendered insightful
perspectives like world-systems ecology. We emphasize this approach’s account of the planetary “rift” of civilization, especially modern – mostly Western – capitalist civilization and its historical expansion and globalization (e.g., Foster et al. 2010; Clark and York 2005; Moore 2000; Schneider and McMichael 2010; Wittman 2009). On the other hand, indigenous efforts to revitalize, reconfigure, and recirculate ancestral traditions – as part of their longstanding struggles for emancipation from the hegemonic world-system – have coalesced into an alternative indigenous paradigm, heretofore termed “indigeneity”: a plexus of worldviews, knowledges, practices and communal lifeways that advances decolonial and non/post-anthropocentric alternatives to the ecological crisis of civilization (e.g., Stewart-Harawira 2012; Grim 2001; Cajete 2000; Wildcat 2009; Waters 2004; Cordova 2007; Waziyatawin and Yellow Bird 2012; CAOI et. al. 2011; Huanacuni-Mamani 2010; Yampara 2001; Medina 2006; Cochoy Alva and Yac Noj 2012; Reyes 2008; Lenkersdorf 2004; Figueroa-Helland 2012; Cormie in this volume). We draw on these two accounts to critique and propose alternatives to the
planetary ecological rift of civilization. We argue that the world-systems ecology critique of the “metabolic rift” driving the planetary crisis reinforces the need to revitalize indigeneity. While the former warns of the consequences of a political economy that ruptures the Earth’s metabolism, the latter fosters lifeways that see Earth as Mother and demand we (re)organize human affairs in accordance to and with reverence for Mother Earth’s living planetary metabolism. We thus contend that revalorizing indigenous knowledges, practices, movements, and modes of communal socio-ecological organization is indispensable for overcoming the crisis. Moreover, the revitalization and creative reconfiguration of indigeneity enables us to prefigure viable alternatives beyond the hegemonic civilization. First, we outline the problems constituting the planetary rift, discussing some of
the planetary boundaries civilization has crossed or risks crossing. We attribute this crisis to the rupture between, on the one hand, an anthropocentric, linear, growth-oriented modern, predominantly capitalist, industrial civilization, and on the other, the cyclical metabolism of a living planet Earth. Here we draw on Marxian, critical political-ecology and world-systems ecology critiques of the “metabolic/ecological rift.” We find this concept valuable not just because it helps diagnose the roots of the crisis, but also because conceptualizing human/ non-human nature relations as a metabolism enables us to understand Earth as a living body whose health at least partly depends on human conduct. This helps explain why indigenous perspectives see humanity as embedded in Mother Earth’s nurturing metabolism, why we are co-constitutive of her metabolism and therefore ethically co-responsible for nurturing her overall health as she has nurtured us. In this context, we propose that if we are to repair the metabolic rift we must
first decolonize our relationship to Mother Earth by revitalizing indigenous knowledges and lifeways and heeding their call to live within her metabolic
cycles and limits. After introducing the indigenous paradigm, we exemplify it through indigenous knowledges, practices, movements, and alternative modes of communal socio-ecological organization from (a) Abya Yala/Turtle Island (indigenous Americas) and (b) South Asian adivasi peoples. Building on decolonial, post-Eurocentric and post-secular critiques (Conway, this volume; Cormie, this volume) we argue indigeneity can help address the planetary rift by revitalizing cyclical cosmologies. We conclude by inviting world-systems ecology – and related perspectives – to engage indigenous knowledges, spiritualities, practices, movements, and organizations, as the proactive revitalization and creative reconfiguration of indigeneity offers a blueprint for socio-ecologically just, harmonious, and viable alternatives to the global crisis.
