An argument that the idea of sacrifice, with all its political baggage, opens new paths to environmental sustainability.

The aim of this book is to review central concepts in the study of environmental politics and to open up new questions, problems, and research agendas in the field. The volume does so by drawing on a wide range of approaches from critical theory to poststructuralism, and spanning disciplines including international relations, geography, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and political science. The 28 chapters cover a range of global and local studies, illustrations and cases. These range from the Cochabamba conference in Bolivia to climate camps in the UK; UN summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg to climate migrants from Pacific islands; forests in Indonesia to Dutch energy governance reform; indigenous communities in Namibia to oil extraction in the Niger Delta; survivalist militias in the USA to Maasai tribesmen in Kenya. Rather than following a regional or issue-based (e.g. water, forests, pollution, etc) structure, the volume is organised in terms of key concepts in the field, including those which have been central to the social sciences for a long time (such as citizenship, commodification, consumption, feminism, justice, movements, science, security, the state, summits, and technology); those which have been at the heart of environmental politics for many years (including biodiversity, climate change, conservation, eco-centrism, limits, localism, resources, sacrifice, and sustainability); and many which have been introduced to these literatures and debates more recently (biopolitics, governance, governmentality, hybridity, posthumanism, risk, and vulnerability). Features and benefits of the book: Explains the most important concepts and theories in environmental politics. Reviews the core ideas behind crucial debates in environmental politics. Highlights the key thinkers – both classic and contemporary – for studying environmental politics. Provides original perspectives on the critical potential of the concepts for future research agendas as well as for the practice of environmental politics. Each chapter is written by leading international authors in their field. This exciting new volume will be essential textbook reading for all students of environmental politics, as well as provocatively presenting the field in a different light for more established researchers.

The stories of residents of low-income communities across the country who took action when pollution from heavy industry contaminated their towns. Across the United States, thousands of people, most of them in low-income or minority communities, live next to heavily polluting industrial sites. Many of them reach a point at which they say “Enough is enough.” After living for years with poisoned air and water, contaminated soil, and pollution-related health problems, they start to take action—organizing, speaking up, documenting the effects of pollution on their neighborhoods. In Sacrifice Zones, Steve Lerner tells the stories of twelve communities, from Brooklyn to Pensacola, that rose up to fight the industries and military bases causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. He calls these low-income neighborhoods “sacrifice zones.” And he argues that residents of these sacrifice zones, tainted with chemical pollutants, need additional regulatory protections. Sacrifice Zones goes beyond the disheartening statistics and gives us the voices of the residents themselves, offering compelling portraits of accidental activists who have become grassroots leaders in the struggle for environmental justice and details the successful tactics they have used on the fenceline with heavy industry.

Concern over environmental problems is prompting us to reexamine established thinking about society and politics. The challenge is to find a way for the public's concern for the environment to become more integral to social, economic, and political decision making. Two interpretations have dominated Western portrayals of the nature-politics relationship, what John Meyer calls the dualist and the derivative. The dualist account holds that politics—and human culture in general—is completely separate from nature. The derivative account views Western political thought as derived from conceptions of nature, whether Aristotelian teleology, the clocklike mechanism of early modern science, or Darwinian selection. Meyer examines the nature-politics relationship in the writings of two of its most pivotal theorists, Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes, and of contemporary environmentalist thinkers. He concludes that we must overcome the limitations of both the dualist and the derivative interpretations if we are to understand the relationship between nature and politics. Human thought and action, says Meyer, should be considered neither superior nor subservient to the nonhuman natural world, but interdependent with it. In the final chapter, he shows how struggles over toxic waste dumps in poor neighborhoods, land use in the American West, and rainforest protection in the Amazon illustrate this relationship and point toward an environmental politics that recognizes the experience of place as central.

Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.

"Meyer pioneers a uniquely political approach to environmental social criticism that follows from a startling central propostion: that it is not outright oppression and denialism that are the most significant impediments but what he aptly terms the 'resonance dilemma.' This is the failure of climate and environmental challenges - however important we may grant that they are - to strike us as integral everyday concerns. This lively, eloquent, accessible volume models the very style of social criticism that it calls for in response to this dilemma: a 'resonant' environmental criticism that works on (rather than against) everyday practices." Lisa Disch, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, author of Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy.

"Designed for undergraduate courses in "climate change" politics within environmental studies, politics, and international relations curricula, for which there presently is no basic textbook. The text will integrate science and policy within each chapter by considering technical issues but also their political implications. Moving beyond the "Does climate change exist?" question this text seeks to present the questions students need to address in an interdisciplinary approach seldom used in textbooks. Specialized texts are currently available to explain the scientific scope of the problem, the natural resource economics and the international diplomacy or public administration dimensions. But none explains all of these. This text will address these broad approaches, as well as considering the broad philosophical and ethical debates behind the specific issues raised. The premise of the book is that while the science of the problem is well understood, with several chapters devoted to solutions, climate change is also increasingly a political problem. The text will address "the collective action problem" early in the text, discuss the strength of the scientific evidence, the failure to come to terms with related social and political problems, and discuss the scope of the problem and will address why so little has been done. The text will also consider the clash between theories of collective action and interest group theories, and the increasingly prevalent view of climate change as a security threat affecting some groups and countries more than others. The second part of the book discusses that there is no single magical solution, but there are many partial measure solutions which are already underway. We also discuss forms of solving the associated political problems but note that different solutions produce different "winners" and "losers." Changes to how we produce and consume energy will be driven by market forces and by steady efforts to inform the public. The best indications are that "sacrifice-based" solutions do still exist but that we all need to be informed and make choices that will lead us in that direction"--