Six new books for greens and lefts: Gender equality and sustainable development; Diet of austerity; Disaster profiteers; Climate change and poverty; Ecological economics for Anthropocene; The 1% and the rest of us
Ecosocialist Bookshelf is a semi-regular feature. We can’t review every book we receive, but we will list and link to any that seem relevant to Climate & Capitalism’s mission, along with an excerpt from the publisher’s description. Titles listed here may be reviewed in future.
Melissa Leach, editor
GENDER EQUALITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Routledge, 2015
Calls for policies, investments and initiatives in sustainable development that recognize women’s knowledge, agency and decision-making as fundamental. Perspectives from new feminist political ecology and economy are integrated, alongside issues of rights, relations and power. The book untangles the complex interactions between different dimensions of gender relations and of sustainability, and explores how policy and activism can build synergies between them.
Elaine Graham-Leigh
A DIET OF AUSTERITY
Class, food and climate change
Zero Books, 2015
Received wisdom is increasingly that we all have to eat less to save the planet, but received wisdom is wrong. A Diet of Austerity argues that, just as the poor are blamed for the economic crisis, Malthusian conceptions about food and ecology are being used to hold the working class responsible for climate change and global hunger. Challenging existing dogmas about overconsumption and personal responsibility, it shows that what we need to stop climate change is system change.
John C. Mutter
THE DISASTER PROFITEERS
How natural disasters make the rich richer and the poor even poorer
St. Martin’s Press, 2015
It’s what happens after the disasters that really matters – when the media has lost interest and the last volunteer has handed out a final blanket, and people are left to repair their lives. When no one is looking, disasters become a means by which the elite prosper at the expense of the poor. As the specter of increasingly frequent and destructive natural disasters looms in our future, this book will ignite an essential conversation about what we can do now to create a safer, more just world for us all.
Tony Fitzpatrick
CLIMATE CHANGE AND POVERTY
A new agenda for developed nations
Policy Press, 2014
A timely new perspective on the ‘ecosocial’ understanding of the causes and symptoms of, and solutions to, poverty and applies this to recent developments across a number of areas, including fuel poverty, food poverty, housing, transport and air pollution. Unlike any other publication, the book therefore establishes a new agenda for both environmental and social policies which has cross-national relevance.
Peter G. Brown and Peter Timmerman, editors
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE
An emerging paradigm
Columbia University Press, 2015
Eleven essays explain what a taking-it-slow or no-growth approach to economics looks like and explore how to generate the cultural and political will to implement this agenda. This collection represents one of the most sophisticated and realistic strategies for neutralizing the threat of our current economic order, envisioning an Earth-embedded society committed to the commonwealth of life and the security and true prosperity of human society.
Tim Di Muzio
THE 1% AND THE REST OF US
A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership
Zed Books, 2015
Tim Di Muzio explores what it means to be part of a socio-economic order presided over by the super-rich and their political servants. Incorporating provocative and original arguments about philanthropy, social wealth and the political role of the super-rich, he reveals how the 1% are creating a world unto themselves in which the accumulation of ever more money is really a symbolic drive to control society and the natural environment.