DeColonize EcoModernism!

In the 21st century, the old colonial attitude of terra nullius, meaning a vacant place free for the taking, still lurks behind the global economic expropriation of peoples’ lands and bodies. Today, that theft is rationalised internationally by ecomodernist policy. This book engages with the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist mindset of the contemporary Androcene and its threats to Life-on-Earth, including global warming and nuclear risks, mining and the gene trade, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital coloniality. Ariel Salleh spells out the social and ecological contradictions set in motion by neocolonialism. Inspired by decolonial thinkers from Arturo Escobar to Tyson Yunkaporta, and critics of technology like Vandana Shiva and Shoshana Zuboff, she argues that dispossession of First Nation peoples’ livelihoods is not healed by consumerism in the name of ‘development’. Breaking with ecomodernist policy such as ‘the tech fix’ of mainstream environmentalists, Salleh contests the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist imperium and its advocacy of Green New Deals, Earth Governance, Sustainable Development Goals, and Smart Futures. Worldwide many decolonial activists see through the zero-sum imagination and its Earth Summits. Youth too, is defying the capitalist ruling class extinction trajectory, and some even challenge the fashionable post-human ideology circulating in high-tech quarters. Beyond ‘exchange value’, these Others of the Androcene are calling for self-governing bioregional futures, respectful of indigenous skills; they want local food sovereign economies, which meet people’s needs while protecting nature’s ‘metabolic value’. Tracing the biopolitical violence of digitalization and genetic engineering, this book follows two decades of creative defiance by global peoples’ movements against the contradictions of ecomodernist development and its ongoing imposition by nation states and international agencies.

Table of Contents:
Preface to the Trilogy Acknowledgements 1. Resisting Extinction: Youth join the dots 2. Global Synergies: Livelihoods or Lifestyles? 3. Terra Nullius: Consuming Lands and Bodies 4. Nuclear Risks: Voices for Life on Earth 5. Earth System Governance: Uncertainty Principle Revisited 6. The Gene Trade: Organized Irresponsibility 7. Buen Vivir: Ecomodernist or Andean? 8. Climate Science and Water: Coming to Our Senses 9. A Just Transition?: Women Are the Key 10. Food Sovereignty: Meeting Real Needs 11. Another Future Is Possible!: Holding Ground 12. Green New Deals: For Globalization Lite 13. The 2030 Agenda: Sustainable Development Goals 14. The Smart ReSet: A Biopolitical Turn 15. Digital Coloniality: Everyday Contradictions 16. Land Is Law/Lore: Another Ontology Notes Index

About the Author :
Ariel Salleh is Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa; former Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany and Research Associate in Political Economy, University of Sydney, Australia. She is author and editor of many books including Ecofeminism as Politics (ZED, 2017).

Review :
In a time of multiple systemic crises, DeColonize EcoModernism! unpacks the extraction, exploitation, and consumption that fuel capital accumulation at great cost to the living Earth and its peoples. Ariel Salleh’s book will enrich intergenerational learning and guide the transversal movement politics so urgently needed as representative democracies flounder. Pushing the boundaries of political ecology, DeColonize EcoModernism! is refreshingly transdisciplinary, often astonishing in its scope across subjects, theories, sectors, and the reweaving of academic critique on an activist loom.