Andrew Biro – författare

The possibility of bringing the insights of modern political theory to bear on the problems of human ecology has long been plagued by disagreements over the category of nature itself. But with Denaturalizing Ecological Politics, Andrew Biro has found a way of rescuing environmentalism from the ideological trap of naturalism.Biro develops an environmental political theory that takes seriously both the materiality of the ecological crises generated by industrial and post-industrial society and the anti-foundationalist critiques of 'nature' developed in postmodern social theory. He argues that the theoretical basis for ecological politics can be better advanced through the lens of alienation from nature, sidestepping some of the pitfalls of debates over conceptions of nature itself.Biro traces the development of the concept of alienation from nature through four modern political thinkers - Rousseau, Marx, Adorno, and Marcuse - each of whom are read as arguing that human beings are not biologically separate from the rest of nature, but are nevertheless historically differentiated from it through the self-conscious transformation of the natural environment. In so doing, Biro provides the starting point for a 'denaturalized' rethinking of ecological politics.

Environmental movements are the subject of increasingly rigorous political theoretical study. Can the Frankfurt School's critical frameworks be used to address ecological issues, or do environmental conflicts remain part of the "failed promise" of this group? Critical Ecologies aims to redeem the theories of major Frankfurt thinkers-Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse, among others-by applying them to contemporary environmental crises.Critical Ecologies argues that sustainability and critical social theory have many similar goals, including resistance to different forms of domination. Like the Frankfurt School itself, the essays in this volume reflect a spirit of interdisciplinarity and draw attention to intersections between environmental, socio-political, and philosophical issues. Offering textual analyses by leading scholars in both critical theory and environmental politics, Critical Ecologies underscores the continued relevance of the Frankfurt School's ideas for addressing contemporary issues.

Organizing Nature explores how the environment is organized in Canada’s resource-dependent economy. The book examines how particular ecosystem components come to be understood as natural resources and how these resources in turn are used to organize life in Canada.In tracing transitions from "ecosystem component" to "resource," this book weaves together the roles that commodification, Indigenous dispossession, and especially a false nature-society binary play in facilitating the conceptual and material construction of resources. Alice Cohen and Andrew Biro present an alternative to this false nature-society binary: one that sees Canadians and their environments in a constant process of making and remaking each other. Through a series of case studies focused on specific resources – fish, forests, carbon, water, land, and life – the book explores six channels through which this remaking occurs: governments, communities, built environments, culture and ideas, economies, and bodies and identities.Ultimately, Organizing Nature encourages readers to think critically about what is at stake when Canadians (re)produce myths about the false separation between Canadian peoples and their environments.