The Transformation of Environmentalism: "We Are Not Defending Nature, We Are Nature Defending Itself"
For a long time, a significant part of environmentalism was driven by the desire to protect Nature from Man and to save the Planet that is "common to all of us humans". This is changing. An increasingly significant part of the environmental movement is rejecting the modernist assumptions that dualistically separated Nature from Society, and as a result this has led to conservationist activities that protect Nature from abstract Man. The planet will survive a warming of even five or six degrees, but most of humanity and many species and ecosystems will not. Instead of protecting Nature and the Planet in the abstract, part of the environmental movement is trying, to use Bruno Latour's phrase, to land on the ground: to find out what all species, relationships and ecosystems our lives depend on and, together with them, to defend these territories from destruction. "We are not defending nature , we are nature defending itself".
The research focuses primarily on the Czech environmental movement in its different shades of green, from radical dark to moderate light green, and explores the transformations that different forms of environmentalism are (not) undergoing.
Publications
Bresnihan, P., & Millner, N. (2023). All We want is the earth: Land, labour and movements beyond environmentalism.Policy Press.
Dunlap, X. (2024) This System is Killing Us. Land Grabbing, the Green Economy and Ecological Conflict. London: Pluto Press.
Fremeaux, I. and Jordan, J. (2021) We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself. Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones.London: Pluto Press.
Gelderloos, P. (2022). The solutions are already here: tactics for ecological revolution from below. London: Pluto Press.
Hamilton, D., & Trölenberg, S. (2023). ‘We Are Nature Defending Itself’: the Forest of Dannenrod Occupation as an Example of Contested Extractivism in the Global North. In: Calvão, F., Archer, M., & Benya, A. The Afterlives of Extraction: Alternatives and Sustainable Futures. Brill.
Latour, B. (2020). Zpátky na zem. Jak se vyznat v politice Nového klimatického režimu. Praha: Neklid.
Latour, B. (2022). Kde to jsem? - Poučení z lockdownu pro pozemšťany. Praha: Neklid.
Latour, B. & Schultz, N. (2023). Memorandum o nové ekologické třídě. Praha: Neklid.
Novák, A. (2017) Tmavozelený svět. Radikálně ekologické aktivity v české republice po roce 1989. Praha: SLON.
Vidalou, J. B. (2023). We are forests: Inhabiting territories in struggle. John Wiley & Sons.
