Concepts for a Democratic and Ecological Society PDF Download

Author: Yavor Tarinski
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1789049237
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101

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Book Description
Yavor Tarinski examines the fundamental conflict between democratic aspirations and the imposed norms of capitalism, the potential for directly democratic and ecologically designed cities, the imperative to renew the commons, and the prospects for a genuine solidarity economy to overturn the ravages of capitalist economic growth. It critiques bureaucratic, technocratic and conspiracist tendencies both in mainstream discourse and on the Left, and offers a compelling and uplifting vision of a thoroughly transformed social order.

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354456
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Visionary essays from a founder of the modern ecology movement. In this collection of essays, Murray Bookchin's vision for an ecological society remains central as he addresses questions of urbanism and city planning, technology, self-management, energy, utopianism, and more. Throughout, he opposes efforts to reduce ecology to a toothless “environmentalism,” a task as vital today as when these essays were first published. Written between 1969 and 1979, the essays in this collection represent a fascinating and fertile period in Bookchin’s life. Coming out of the unfulfilled promise of the sixties and trying to develop a revolutionary critique of social life that avoided the pitfalls of Marxism, he was entering his creative intellectual peak. He was laying the foundations of a truly social ecology: a society based on decentralization, interdependence, democratic self-management, mutual aid, and solidarity. Presented with clarity and fervor, these key works contain the kernels of concerns that would occupy him until his death in 2006. This edition also includes a new foreword by Dan Chodorkoff, someone who was with Bookchin at the founding of his Institute for Social Ecology and who understand his work better than anyone.

Author: YAVOR. TARINSKI
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781789049220
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039963
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

Author: Randolph T. Hester, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262515008
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
Shows how to combine the forces of ecological science and participatory democracy to design urban landscapes that enable us to act as communities, are resilient rather than imperiled, and touch our hearts. Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in the process of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities, destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design for Ecological Democracy, Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines new principles for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and our natural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples—drawn from forty years of design and planning practice—showing how we can design cities that are ecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure. Hester argues that it is only by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in design will take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining our interconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on three fundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, and impelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclaves and to function as informed democracies. A simple bench at a centrally located post office, for example, provides an opportunity for connection and shared experience. Cities must be ecologically resilient rather than ecologically imperiled, adaptable to the surrounding ecology rather than dependent on technological fixes. Resilient form turns increased urban density, for example, into an advantage. And cities should impel us by joy rather than compel us by fear; good cities enrich us rather than limit us. Design for Ecological Democracy is essential reading for designers, planners, environmentalists, community activists, and anyone else who wants to improve a local community.

Author: Fred Magdoff
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583676309
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Aiming squarely at replacing capitalism with an ecologically sound and socially just society, Magdoff and Williams provide accounts of how a new world can be created from the ashes of the old. They show that it is possible to envision and create a society that is genuinely democratic, equitable, and ecologically sustainable. And possible--not one moment too soon--for society to change fundamentally and be brought into harmony with nature. --From publisher description.

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849354413
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

Author: Murray Bookchin
Publisher: Black Rose Books Limited
ISBN: 9780921689720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Using a synthesis of ecology, anthropology, philosophy and political theory, this book traces our society's conflicting legacies of freedom and domination, from the first emergence of human culture to today's global capitalism. The theme of Murray Bookchin's grand historical narrative is straightforward: environmental, economic and political devastation are born at the moment that human societies begin to organize themselves hierarchically. And, despite the nuance and detail of his arguments, the lesson to be learned is just as basic: our nightmare will continue until hierarchy is dissolved and human beings develop more sane, sustainable and egalitarian social structures.

Author: Anthony Giddens
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745666604
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has been widely discussed over recent months - not only in the UK, but in the US, Continental Europe and Latin America. But what is the third way? Supporters of the notion haven't been able to agree, and critics deny the possibility altogether. Anthony Giddens shows that developing a third way is not only a possibility but a necessity in modern politics.

Author: Abdullah Öcalan
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 1629637734
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
When scientific socialism, which for many years was implemented by Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), became too narrow for his purposes, Öcalan deftly answered the call for a radical redefinition of the social sciences. Writing from his solitary cell in İmralı Prison, Öcalan offered a new and astute analysis of what is happening to the Kurdish people, the Kurdish freedom movement, and future prospects for humanity. The Sociology of Freedom is the fascinating third volume of a five-volume work titled The Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization. The general aim of the two earlier volumes was to clarify what power and capitalist modernity entailed. Here, Öcalan presents his stunningly original thesis of the democratic civilization, based on his criticism of capitalist modernity. Ambitious in scope and encyclopedic in execution, The Sociology of Freedom is a one-of-a-kind exploration that reveals the remarkable range of one of the Left’s most original thinkers with topics such as existence and freedom, nature and philosophy, anarchism and ecology. Öcalan goes back to the origins of human culture to present a penetrating reinterpretation of the basic problems facing the twenty-first century and an examination of their solutions. Öcalan convincingly argues that industrialism, capitalism, and the nation-state cannot be conquered within the narrow confines of a socialist context. Recognizing the need for more than just a critique, Öcalan has advanced what is the most radical, far-reaching definition of democracy today and argues that a democratic civilization, as an alternative system, already exists but systemic power and knowledge structures, along with a perverse sectarianism, do not allow it to be seen. The Sociology of Freedom is a truly monumental work that gives profuse evidence of Öcalan’s position as one of the most influential thinkers of our day. It deserves the careful attention of anyone seriously interested in constructive thought or the future of the Left.