ABSTRACT
Throughout virtually all of the articles, we find the recognition that with the advent of the Anthropocene the separation of nature and society, and the human and nonhuman, is no longer tenable, if it ever was. This recognition does not mean that humans fully control earth processes, although for some so-called eco-pragmatists such control is deemed both possible and desirable (i.e., Brand 2010). Nor should we too quickly assume symmetry between human actions and earth processes, because despite the immense impact of human activity, we remain subject to, rather than the authors of, many large-scale events (Clark 2010). Challenging nature-society dualisms, though, means that environmentalism today faces the challenge of reimagining environmental politics after nature, a position that has gained traction among mainstream environmental nongovernmental organizations like the Breakthrough Institute and the Nature Conservancy, as well as environmental geographers and historians (i.e., Cronon 1995; Braun 2002). Whereas Collard, Dempsey, and Sundberg trace the convergence of postnatural environmentalism and neoliberal environmental governance, Mansfield and colleagues derive a somewhat different lesson from the same developments; namely, that today, environmentalism focused on external nature must be seen as only one of many competing environmentalisms organized around different socioecological projects. For Mansfield and her coauthors, socioecological futures will be shaped through struggles not over what is natural but over what natures are to be produced, by whom, and for whose benefit. For their part, Wainwright and Mann suggest the need to return to notions of natural history that include humanity, such as found in the writings of Karl Marx, as part of the dual task of challenging existing and emerging forms of planetary management and engendering a climate politics today that can create a just and livable planet in the future.
