All We Want is the Earth: Land, Labour and Movements Beyond Environmentalism

by Patrick Bresnihan, Naomi Millner

Sixty years ago, an upsurge of social movements protested the ecological harms of industrial capitalism. In subsequent decades, environmentalism consolidated into forms of management and business strategy that aimed to tackle ecological degradation while enabling new forms of green economic growth. However, the focus on spaces and species to be protected saw questions of human work and histories of colonialism pushed out of view. This book traces a counter-history of modern environmentalism from the 1960s to the present day. It focuses on claims concerning land, labour and social reproduction arising at important moments in the history of environmentalism made by feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, workers’ and agrarian movements. Many of these movements did not consider themselves ‘environmental,’ and yet they offer vital ways forward in the face of escalating ecological damage and social injustice.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

194 pages, Paperback

Published August 22, 2023

Reviews

[Kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a really compelling introduction to the history of 'modern environmentalism' - and how the traditional stories about its origin can be complicated by taking a more geographically and conceptually capacious view of what 'environmentalism' is. that is, rather than assuming the US-centered story from national parks to Rachel Carson, DDT, and Earth Day to the anthropocene and environmental management, Bresnihan and Millner instead add peasant rebellions against the Green Revolution from Zapatistas to La Via Campesina, Cabral's revolutionary agriculture, worker critiques of pesticides and petrochemicals, zerowork/wages against housework campaigns, etc. The authors also compile the aesthetics of these various forms of power and counterpower in interludes that show us advertisements, images of protest, and literary work. for these reasons, it would make a good introductory undergrad textbook, and i think i'm going to add one of these chapters to my syllabus. that said, intellectually, i was surprised that the book ended up veering towards the 'pluriverse' argument, in some ways undermining its stronger claims towards eco-socialism (as the title seemed to gesture towards). in my mind, the pluriverse is just the universalism of particularities or differences; it is not an exit from modern environmentalism but its liberal apotheosis (see further my crit of William Connelly). even though i feel compelled to register this critique, the argument doesn't undermine the book's more lucid, especially historical-empirical moments.