Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture

Environmental Cultures

by Anthony Lioi

Drawing on a wide range of examples from literature, comics, film, television and digital media, Nerd Ecology is the first substantial ecocritical study of nerd culture's engagement with environmental issues. Exploring such works as Star Trek , Tolkien's Lord of the Rings , The Matrix, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly , the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, The Hunger Games, and superhero comics such as Green Lantern and X-Men , Anthony Lioi maps out the development of nerd culture and its intersections with the most fundamental ecocritical themes. In this way Lioi finds in the narratives of unpopular culture - narratives in which marginalised individuals and communities unite to save the planet - the building blocks of a new environmental politics in tune with the concerns of contemporary ecocritical theory and practice.

240 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2016

Reviews

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nerd Ecology was a great book about defining what makes a nerd and the effect of nerds on the world. Lioi started with a brief but thorough history of the evolution of the word nerd. He has provided the most in-depth research on this topic that I have been able to find. What was really interesting was his idea that nerds and nerdism are a stable way to combat existential threats, such as global warming. His thoughts included: star trek; a model for dealing with other cultures, Nerdist thinking as a method of innovation, and the unpopular culture created by nerds creates an environment where fighting for ecological change is encouraged. The book was a little overly wordy, I think a lot of times he tried to communicate a simple idea using bigger words than he needed to. Although I do recognize that makes it nerdier, so it's forgivable.

[Audrius S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The term "nerd", or "nerdism" is not completely familiar to me as a European, even though I would have been certainly labelled as one as a kid had I grown up in the US. Therefore, I was a bit skeptical about the title and I was not convinced nerdism correlates with the planetary defense or the concerns about environmental issues (the knowledge certainly does though).

Despite that, the book contained loads of useful references to the studies by Otto, McGonigal, B. Lincoln, Baudrillard, Wood, and even the Antics. Furthermore, the analysis sounded scholarly even though I have not seen most of the movies that were discussed in detail, and even if some reasoning seemed dubious or not convincing enough. This is the way popular culture should be analysed. The question remains - can the nerd culture help fight the environmental issues we face and make the world a better place, where solidarity will flourish?