Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene

"What can be done? This book is a must-read for activists, scholars and scholar-activists who struggle for a better and more equal world." - Giorgos Kallis, ICREA professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain "Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw have teamed up with colleagues to once again push the boundaries of Urban Political Ecology (UPE). They are launching a scathing attack on readings of the Anthropocene that see this new geological era as the ultimate justification for an elitist, techno-managerial politics of unsustainability. This volume is an intellectual firework bringing together radical thinkers who are determined to re-energize the egalitarian emancipatory project." - Professor Ingolfur Blhdorn, Head of the Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Department of Socio-Economics, Vienna University of Economic and Business, Austria "The rise of sustainability science, the traction of ideas about the Anthropocene and the intellectual and practice-based emphasis on complex systems dynamics should not, as Ernstson and Swyngedouw so powerfully remind us in this hard-hitting book, detract from the basic point that the environment is deeply political and as such any intellectual contribution to understanding environmental concerns needs too to be inherently political." - Professor Sue Parnell, University of Bristol and African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Henrik Ernstson is Lecturer in Human Geography at The University of Manchester, UK. Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at The University of Manchester, UK.

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 Andrs Fabin 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