13 new papers and a video abstract – "The Necessity of Dialectical Naturalism: Marcuse, Bookchin, and Dialectics in the Midst of Ecological Crises"

It’s not quite the middle of August and the September issue of Antipode is out now! Antipode 47(4) really showcases critical geography at its very best: timely topics, engaged research, engaging writing…

We open with Christian Parenti’s 2013 Antipode AAG Lecture, The Environment Making State: Territory, Nature, and Value (which is open access; there’s a video of the lecture itself here); for more on the state’s “natures”, see the next paper, Infrastructure Nation: State Space, Hegemony, and Hydraulic Regionalism in Pakistan by Majed Akhter.

We’re pleased to present here a video abstract featuring Shannon Brincat and Damian Gerber talking about their paper, The Necessity of Dialectical Naturalism: Marcuse, Bookchin, and Dialectics in the Midst of Ecological Crises. Whilst primarily a theoretical analysis focused on the work of Marcuse and Bookchin, their paper, they contend, has important implications for ecological praxis. It exposes the ontological hole at the heart of the dominant (mis)conceptualisation of society and nature that leads to an inability to grapple with the interrelated ecological crises (climatic, biospheric and oceanic) of the present. This dominant understanding does not see the relationality and inclusivity of human communities, biological life and earth-systems–what Shannon and Damian call the “human and nature affinity”–but artificially separates such parts from the whole. They outline how a dialectical approach directly located within the ecological conditions of human society can offer the social resources necessary to sublate the contradictions of alienation, domination and destruction endemic to contemporary social life and its tragic split between nature and human.

Next, what could be more timely than papers on European migration, race in the US, and ethno-national conflict in Israel/Palestine? In this issue we have: Riding Routes and Itinerant Borders: Autonomy of Migration and Border Externalization by Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias and John Pickles; Practising Development at Home: Race, Gender, and the “Development” of the American South by Mona Domosh; and Mobile Cartographies and Mobilized Ideologies: The Visual Management of Jerusalem by Dana Hercbergs and Chaim Noy.

The following five papers intersect and complement each other in interesting ways…

Working with Strangers in Saturated Space: Reclaiming and Maintaining the Urban Commons by Amanda Huron (on urban commons and limited-equity cooperatives in Washington, DC);

 The Capital of Diversity: Neoliberal Development and the Discourse of Difference in Washington, DC by Justin Maher (on gentrification in Washington, DC);

 Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons by Alvaro Sevilla-Buitrago (on the genealogy of enclosure);

Between Boundaries: From Commoning and Guerrilla Gardening to Community Land Trust Development in Liverpool by Matthew Thompson (on neighbourhood regeneration and the politics of community land trusts and guerrilla gardening); and

 A Housing Crisis, a Failed Law, and a Property Conflict: The US Urban Speculation Tax by Katie Wells (on housing justice and property rights in Washington, DC)

…while the final two take us from trans-South Atlantic policy mobilities (Astrid Wood’s The Politics of Policy Circulation: Unpacking the Relationship Between South African and South American Cities in the Adoption of Bus Rapid Transit) to Antipode Foundation-supported work on representations of trafficking and the politics of classification in Singapore (Sallie Yea’s Trafficked Enough? Missing Bodies, Migrant Labour Exploitation, and the Classification of Trafficking Victims in Singapore).

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