À quelles conditions l'écologie, au lieu d'être un ensemble de mouvements parmi d'autres, pourrait-elle organiser la politique autour d'elle ? Peut-elle aspirer à définir l'horizon politique comme l'ont fait, à d'autres périodes, le libéralisme, puis les socialismes, le néolibéralisme et enfin, plus récemment, les partis illibéraux ou néofascistes dont l'ascendant ne cesse de croître ? Peut-elle apprendre de l'histoire sociale comment émergent les nouveaux mouvements politiques et comment ils gagnent la lutte pour les idées, bien avant de pouvoir traduire leurs avancées dans des partis et des élections ?

Under what conditions could ecology, instead of being one cluster of movements among others, organise politics around an agenda and a set of beliefs? Can ecology aspire to define the political horizon in the way that liberalism, socialism, conservatism and other political ideologies have done at various times and places? What can ecology learn from history about how new political movements emerge, and how they win the struggle for ideas long before they translate their ideas into parties and elections? In this short text, consisting of seventy-six talking points, Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz argue that if the ecological movement is to gain ideological consistency and autonomy it must offer a political narrative that recognises, embraces and effectively represents its project in terms of social conflict. Political ecology must accept that it brings along division. It must provide a convincing cartography of the conflicts it generates and, based on this, it must try to define a common horizon of collective action. In order to represent and describe these conflicts, Latour and Schultz propose to reuse the old notions of ‘class’ and ‘class struggle’, albeit infused with a new meaning in line with the ecological concerns of our New Climate Regime. Advancing the idea of a new ecological class, assembled by its collective interests in fighting the logic of production and safeguarding our planet’s conditions of habitability, they ask: how can a proud and self-aware ecological class emerge and take effective action to shape our collective future?

This handbook gathers contributors from different disciplines of the social sciences, such as organization and management studies, sociology, anthropology and political science, to constructively discuss the kinds of transformations we need to see in coming years. These transformations concern the way we work, produce and consume but also the way in which we think about work, production and consumption. In an explicit rejection of the demand that the social sciences provide quick fixes, the contributors of this handbook discuss possible solutions in a critical and comprehensive manner and with an eye to both their environmental and societal implications. The handbook is divided into four parts: Opening up futures, Techno-economic transformations at work, Sustainable environmental transformation, and Radical democratic futures. The handbook is of interest to all critical academics interested in constructive suggestions regarding necessary societal transformations.

Geoethics for the Future: Facing Global Challenges offers the latest points of view on highly topical issues in geosciences, including climate change, sustainable development, and energy transition, enabling readers to acquire multifaceted knowledge of topics of global relevance and highlighting the importance of the issues affecting geosciences in the 21st Century. The book outlines how geoethical considerations are integral in providing new insights and analyses for improving the theoretical structure of geoethics and its practical applications, with an aim to create conditions for sharing perspectives on the best ways for implementing scientific action to face global anthropogenic changes. - Covers upcoming and current key topics, and emphasizes the urgency to find reference frameworks and effective solutions to the issues associated with them. - Includes multifaceted analyses on relevant topics, by leveraging the cross-cutting contributions of experts to address urgent, global, and complex issues related to human-Earth system interaction. - Provides an indispensable basis for discussion to guide scientists in considering their own responsibilities and to highlight the societal relevance of the geosciences. - Discusses philosophical, ethical, social, political, economic, legal, and theological aspects of geoscience, technological applications, and anthropogenic impacts on physical environment through the lens of geoethics, in time of profound planetary changes. - Bridges the geosciences, social sciences, and humanities, aiming to address the socio-ecological crisis from multiple perspectives and with greater effectiveness.

This book presents interdisciplinary approaches to help buildings, electrical energy networks and their users contribute to the energy and societal transition. Smart Grids and Buildings for Energy and Societal Transition examines the technologies, uses and imaginaries involved in implementing smart buildings and smart grids. Production and consumption forecasts, modeling of stakeholder involvement and self-consumption within a renewable energy community exploiting blockchain technology are examples developed with a view to fostering the emergence of smart grids. The potential of smart buildings, taking into account user comfort while increasing energy efficiency, is identified. Full-scale demonstrators are used to test the proposed solutions, and to ensure that users take full advantage of the potential for electrical flexibility.

We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom. The concept of freedom is deceptively simple. We think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we encounter contradictions. In this new philosophical exploration, Slavoj Žižek argues that the experience of true, radical freedom is transient and fragile. Countering the idea of libertarian individualism, Žižek draws on philosophers Hegel, Kierkegaard and Heidegger, as well as the work of Kandinsky and Agatha Christie to examine the many facets of freedom and what we can learn from each of them. Today, with the latest advances in digital control, our social activity can be controlled and regulated to such a degree that the liberal notion of a free individual becomes obsolete and even meaningless. How will we be obliged to reinvent (or limit) the contours of our freedom? Tracing its connection to everything from capitalism and war to the state and environmental breakdown, Žižek takes us on an illuminating and entertaining journey that shows how a deeper understanding of freedom can offer hope in dark times.

Unique cross-cultural and multimedial approach to class identity and precarity in literature, theatre, and film Contemporary culture not merely reflects ongoing societal transformations, it shapes our understanding of rapidly evolving class realities. Literature, theatre, and film urge us to put the question of class back on the agenda, and reconceptualize it through the lens of precarity and intersectionality. Relying on examples from British, French, Spanish, German, American, Swedish and Taiwanese culture, the contributors to this book document a variety of aesthetic strategies in an interdisciplinary dialogue with sociology and political theory. Doing so, this volume demonstrates the myriad ways in which culture opens up new pathways to imagine and re-imagine class as an economic relation, an identity category, and a subjective experience. Situated firmly within current debates about the impact of social mobility, precarious work, intersectional structures of exploitation, and interspecies vulnerability, this volume offers a wide-ranging panorama of contemporary class imaginaries.