The state of academic eco-leftism
A new generation of young eco-leftist theorists all tend to be activists as well as academics. Their messaging is encouraging . . .
What to do:
Scale down, slow down, democratize, decentralize.
The objectives:
Post-capitalism, decolonization, decommodification, degrowth.
The values:
Cooperatism, egalitarianism, communitarianism, localism, indigenism.
The strategy:
Ecosocialist policies at the macro level, prefigurative praxis at the micro level, Red-Green alliances.
[The problem: They tend to have excessive idealism about the chimerical notion of “we the people” and what “we” should be able to accomplish . . . if only . . . ]
Their ranks include:
ANITRA NELSON
… is an activist scholar affiliated with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. She is author of Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy (2022) and Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018); co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020); co-editor of Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021) and Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018).
JENNY CAMERON
… is a Conjoint Associate Professor in the Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is currently Deputy Chair and Secretary of the Community Economies Institute and was a founding member of the Community Economies Research Network. As an activist and academic she has been involved in research and teaching activities that shed light on the extant economic diversity that could form the basis for building post-capitalist worlds now.
WALDEN BELLO
… is the co-founder of and current senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and is International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2003, and was named Outstanding Public Scholar of the International Studies Association in 2008.
CHRISTINE BAUHARDT
… is a political science professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin where she heads the division of Gender and Globalization. Her latest publication is the edited volume Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care (with Wendy Harcourt), published in the Routledge Studies in Ecological Economics series. Her work focuses on feminist economics, eco-feminism, queer ecologies, and environmental politics with a special interest in technical infrastructures.
SAMUEL ALEXANDER
… is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also a research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and co-director of the Simplicity Institute. Alexander’s interdisciplinary research focuses on degrowth, permaculture, voluntary simplicity, grassroots theories of transition, and the relationship between culture and political economy. His recent books (co-authored with Brendan Gleeson) include Degrowth in the Suburbs (2019) and Urban Awakenings (2020).
JASON HICKEL
… is an economic anthropologist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics. He serves on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the UN Human Development Report 2020, the advisory board of the Green New Deal for Europe, and on the Harvard-Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. His research focuses on global inequality, political economy, post-development, and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2020). In addition to his academic work, Jason writes regularly for The Guardian and Foreign Policy.
SANGEETHA CHANDRASHEKERAN
… is a geographer at the University of Melbourne. She is Deputy Director of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and senior research fellow at the Center of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course. Sangeetha’s research examines issues of equity and justice in environmental change. She has focused on the energy transition in Australia and the role of the state in marketization of the sector.
RUPERT READ
… is a reader at the University of East Anglia, specializing in philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy. He was one of five contributors, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb, to a paper titled “The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)”; this paper has been downloaded approximately a quarter of a million times. In 2004 Read was elected as one of 13 Green Party city councillors in Norwich. He was re-elected in 2007. In 2009 and 2014 he was the Eastern Region Green Party’s lead candidate for the European Parliament elections. In 2017 he was among five members of Extinction Rebellion invited to meet with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to discuss their demands; the following day the UK Parliament declared a “climate change emergency.”
BORIS FRANKEL
… is a Principal Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Sustainable Society, University of Melbourne. He is a prominent author, teacher, and media commentator. His most recent books are the trilogy Fictions of Sustainability: The Politics of Growth and Post-Capitalist Futures (2018), Capitalism Versus Democracy? Rethinking Politics in the Age of Environmental Crisis (2020), and Democracy Versus Sustainability (2021).
