Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene

Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism.


Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics.


Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.

Introduction 1. Politicizing the Environment in the Urban Century Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw Section I: The Political 2. O Tempora! O Mores! Interrupting the Anthropo-obScene Erik Swyngedouw and Henrik Ernstson 3. Value, Nature and The Vortex of Accumulation Richard Walker and Jason W. Moore 4."Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta!" Postcolonial Remains and the Politics of the Anthropo-ob(S)cene Andrés Fabián Henao Castro and Henrik Ernstson Section II: The Situated 5. Political Ecologies of Dispossession and Anticorruption: A Radical Politics for the Anthropocene? Malini Ranganathan and Sapana Doshi 6. Uneven Racial Development and the Abolition Ecology of the City Nik Heynen 7. Suffocating Cities: Climate Change as Social-ecological Violence Jonathan Silver 8. Multi-vocal Urban Political Ecology: In Search of New Sensibilities Garth Myers 9. Paved Paradise: The Suburb as Chief Artefact of the Anthropocene and Terrain of New Political Performativities Roger Keil 10. Of Ghosts, Waste and the Anthropocene Marco Armiero Section III: The Performative 11. Exhibiting Division, Seizing the State: The Natural History Museum Jodi Dean 12. All that Was Directly Lived Andy Merrifield 13. Reclaiming a Scholarship of Presence: Building Alternative Socio-environmental Imaginaries Maria Kaika Conclusion 14. Bringing Back the Political: Egalitarian Acting, Performative Theory Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw