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This Land Is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth
From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us--and how it could unite us
Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth--a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy, one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.
From the coalfields of Appalachia and the tobacco fields of the Carolinas to the public lands of the West, Purdy shows how the land has always united and divided Americans, holding us in common projects and fates but also separating us into insiders and outsiders, owners and dependents, workers and bosses. Expropriated from Native Americans and transformed by slave labor, the same land that represents a history of racism and exploitation could, in the face of environmental catastrophe, bind us together in relationships of reciprocity and mutual responsibility.
This may seem idealistic in our polarized time, but we are at a historical fork in the road, and if we do not make efforts now to move toward a commonwealth, Purdy warns, environmental and political pressures will create harsher and crueler conflicts--between citizens, between countries, and between humans and the rest of the world.
Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth--a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy, one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other.
From the coalfields of Appalachia and the tobacco fields of the Carolinas to the public lands of the West, Purdy shows how the land has always united and divided Americans, holding us in common projects and fates but also separating us into insiders and outsiders, owners and dependents, workers and bosses. Expropriated from Native Americans and transformed by slave labor, the same land that represents a history of racism and exploitation could, in the face of environmental catastrophe, bind us together in relationships of reciprocity and mutual responsibility.
This may seem idealistic in our polarized time, but we are at a historical fork in the road, and if we do not make efforts now to move toward a commonwealth, Purdy warns, environmental and political pressures will create harsher and crueler conflicts--between citizens, between countries, and between humans and the rest of the world.
191 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 17, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
October 15, 2019
What made the experience of reading Purdy's essay is acceding to his thought patterns, which are fluid, which give one new perspectives in motion. Sometimes, however, it felt like he was going too far afield, or dwelling too long on one thing that didn’t seem essential to his argument, which interrupted its flow. But his concept of commonwealth and some of his “new commonwealth” ideas are valuable. A 3.5.
September 20, 2019
I appreciate the arguments. I agree with many of the proposals. I wasn't always sure, however, who the audience is supposed to be.
January 16, 2020
I only found the final two chapters The Long Environmental Justice Movement and The Value of Life valuable, but those two are very good and are building toward crucial ideas.
May 26, 2020
very good primer on environmental thought and law (land use, theory, politics? not really sure what umbrella this falls under!) like other users pointed out, the last two chapters are the best. the chapter on the long environmental justice movement, and reframing the movement in American history was super insightful and taught me a lot of shit i didn't know or learn. i thought Purdy's dissection of where modern environmentalism went wrong (its reliance on technicality, on rich funders and philanthropy, and science) was fantastic and very smart and i like how he tracked the labor movement's history, and it's parallelism and intersection with environmentalism, as well. examples like this are helpful to illustrate what is possible when it comes to environmental policy, if only because it already (almost) happened. purdy's not saying anything new here, and his message almost just seems like a diluted Naomi Klein argument, but his examples are precise and their contextualization, historically, grounds some of his more ethereal arguments. I'm inspired!
August 26, 2020
A thought provoking and beautifully written book, "This Land is Our Land" is worth the price just for its chapter on environmental justice. A huge topic today after the George Floyd protests, Purdy claims that connecting environmental protection to racial and social equity is nothing new, but in fact has a century-long pedigree, going back to early founders of the environmental movement.
Another worthwhile point that Purdy makes is that to solve global problems today like climate change, we should not waste our effort dreaming of a global solution through a global state, a long-held dream of the left. That's unlikely to come about anytime soon. Instead, we should work through the largest units of political power that are effective in the world today, nations, in our efforts to build a global commonwealth of peoples who can work together while remaining separate to respond to our common challenges.
Another worthwhile point that Purdy makes is that to solve global problems today like climate change, we should not waste our effort dreaming of a global solution through a global state, a long-held dream of the left. That's unlikely to come about anytime soon. Instead, we should work through the largest units of political power that are effective in the world today, nations, in our efforts to build a global commonwealth of peoples who can work together while remaining separate to respond to our common challenges.
August 9, 2022
Another book on environmentalism, social justice and activism that doesn't really cover new ground. It talks in broad strokes without a road map of how to reach the New Commonweath.
April 26, 2020
This Land Is Our Land is a taut series of essays that attempts to re-frame our conceptions of climate change and environmental justice. As someone who has read a few books on the topic now, the information presented here usually just reiterates things I learned from Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate or various Bill McKibben essays, especially since this book is so short compared to some other comprehensive takes on the topic. But perhaps a fairer and more recent comparison would be Klein's On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal, a book which I did not actually review since it probably didn't add much to any environmentalists' understanding of the topic. And in considering these short 2019 entries into the environmental justice literature side-by-side, I have to say Purdy offers something more, however abstract and lofty his prose may be to some people.
As I alluded to, this book is not likely to provide a wealth of knowledge to any reader hoping to learn about specific issues facing our planet, our economies, and our lifestyles. Its intention is to change the terms and scope in which we think about environmentalism through sober yet subtly inspiring essays, painting the topic in a different light for those readers leaving the comfort zone of middle class liberal environmentalism and exploring environmental justice for perhaps the first time. What is a commonwealth? What kind of meaning do we ascribe to the land and what kind of meaning do we naturally derive from it? What are the sources of power in society and how are they be wielded to effect change—for better or worse? What kind of values does our economy impose on our (malleable) human nature? How are these codified in legal and social institutions? While a reader would benefit (and here I felt very lucky) from having read some Hobbes, Rawls, Marx, and Piketty, hell, even Thoreau and Shakespeare, these touch-points are not essential in understanding this book since Purdy situates them in discussions and topics which he has already fleshed out; the references are pertinent enough to not feel tacked on and brief enough to accentuate Purdy's own arguments and not serve as a crutch.
At first glance, this seems to be another series of vignettes, much like Klein's On Fire. Fortunately (for me at least), Purdy homes in on some concrete topics in the second half of the book that made this a worthwhile read. But first, his discussions are admittedly a bit divorced from the material things I find most important in environmental justice issues and it is all rather utopian and noble sounding as he attempts to set the record on terms like 'homeland' and 'commonwealth' in the preface. Like Klein's essays, Purdy takes the reader on a brief tour of jeopardized or already ruined terrains, such as Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Appalachian coal mines in West Virginia respectively. These detours allow him to explore issues such as representative politics, industrial regulations, climate denialism, and 'war' mentality (think: war on coal), but to me they just felt too superficial and brief to warrant inclusion.
Following these early letdowns was a surprisingly good segue leading up to the important chapters. The chapter "Losing A Country" at first comes across as a stereotypical post-November 2016 liberal sulk story (okay, I was distraught too), though it turns into something useful in showing us how to re-think of the environment and what we need to do going forward. For the short length of this book, Purdy spends quite a bit of time discussing Thoreau's conception of nature and his disillusionment with his country. Eventually he came to see nature—through his walks, rudimentary farming, and meditations—not as a place we can escape to but something more tarnished and tragic, something with an indelible element of human impact. In other words, nature is not something we go to on vacation or weekends to get away; it is something we are always in and always impacting. Yet the ray of light in this sad and destructive relationship is our ability to rectify, to heal, and to make amends in hopes of a better future not just for the planet, but by extension, ourselves.
With the semantics and metaphysics settled, Purdy moves on to more pressing matters in Chapters 4 and 5, both of which I found significant and worth recommending to new environmentalists. Here we have an explanation of environmental racism and a broad definition of infrastructure—not just roads, pipelines, and ports but also housing, food, healthcare, legal, and economic systems. In conspicuously non-Marxist terms, Purdy explains the failures of our institutions, our need for endless economic growth and consumptive lifestyles. Klein is a bit more assertive about her anticapitalist message, which is vital in combating climate change, but Purdy explains it just forcefully enough to not seem like a fraudulent messenger of environmental justice issues. He clearly states that the economic system must change and in earlier essays also advocated broad-based worker unions and strike tactics. Additionally, Purdy is acutely critical of elitist environmentalism dominated by wealthy white lawyers, ecologists, and professional, many times corporate, activists. Given that he is a legal scholar I understand why he isn't always brash in his criticisms, but these criticisms are present and not simply phoned in either.
As with anyone tackling this topic, Purdy has no easy solutions, though I do find his more compelling than most. He spends much less time discussing a Green New Deal than Klein, but he seems to have in mind something like that, which would include a jobs program, massive infrastructure upgrades, healthcare benefits, housing programs, etc. Ideally for him (and for this reader) it would correct the racism and sexism and environmental degradation of its namesake. Given Purdy's background, I was intrigued to read about some legal barriers or opportunities with regards to environmental policy. One suggestion is stricter enforcement of the various legislation from the 1970s (which signified environmentalism's real introduction to federal government despite earlier projects like parks), and while this is not a very good solution on its own, it would serve as one piece of the quilt. I was hoping for but not expecting (due to the conciseness of this book) some discussion of international law and trade policy, but Klein's This Changes Everything will have to suffice for my knowledge on that topic. But Purdy does touch on internationalism, which for me was one of the most uplifting parts of the book. While we do need international collaboration (still daunting of course) to effectively combat climate change, there is no requirement to have an international government (and one that can actually enforce things) to see meaningful changes. For instance, China and the U.S. could massively curtail emissions and have a measurable impact immediately, perhaps also using their superpower influence to bring other countries into the fold. I do think this discussion, like all of the others, was too brief, although it did add something that some other books on the topic, in their overwhelming pessimism, seem to lack.
But alas, it all looks so bleak—even while reading and discussing this thoughtful little book.
As I alluded to, this book is not likely to provide a wealth of knowledge to any reader hoping to learn about specific issues facing our planet, our economies, and our lifestyles. Its intention is to change the terms and scope in which we think about environmentalism through sober yet subtly inspiring essays, painting the topic in a different light for those readers leaving the comfort zone of middle class liberal environmentalism and exploring environmental justice for perhaps the first time. What is a commonwealth? What kind of meaning do we ascribe to the land and what kind of meaning do we naturally derive from it? What are the sources of power in society and how are they be wielded to effect change—for better or worse? What kind of values does our economy impose on our (malleable) human nature? How are these codified in legal and social institutions? While a reader would benefit (and here I felt very lucky) from having read some Hobbes, Rawls, Marx, and Piketty, hell, even Thoreau and Shakespeare, these touch-points are not essential in understanding this book since Purdy situates them in discussions and topics which he has already fleshed out; the references are pertinent enough to not feel tacked on and brief enough to accentuate Purdy's own arguments and not serve as a crutch.
At first glance, this seems to be another series of vignettes, much like Klein's On Fire. Fortunately (for me at least), Purdy homes in on some concrete topics in the second half of the book that made this a worthwhile read. But first, his discussions are admittedly a bit divorced from the material things I find most important in environmental justice issues and it is all rather utopian and noble sounding as he attempts to set the record on terms like 'homeland' and 'commonwealth' in the preface. Like Klein's essays, Purdy takes the reader on a brief tour of jeopardized or already ruined terrains, such as Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Appalachian coal mines in West Virginia respectively. These detours allow him to explore issues such as representative politics, industrial regulations, climate denialism, and 'war' mentality (think: war on coal), but to me they just felt too superficial and brief to warrant inclusion.
Following these early letdowns was a surprisingly good segue leading up to the important chapters. The chapter "Losing A Country" at first comes across as a stereotypical post-November 2016 liberal sulk story (okay, I was distraught too), though it turns into something useful in showing us how to re-think of the environment and what we need to do going forward. For the short length of this book, Purdy spends quite a bit of time discussing Thoreau's conception of nature and his disillusionment with his country. Eventually he came to see nature—through his walks, rudimentary farming, and meditations—not as a place we can escape to but something more tarnished and tragic, something with an indelible element of human impact. In other words, nature is not something we go to on vacation or weekends to get away; it is something we are always in and always impacting. Yet the ray of light in this sad and destructive relationship is our ability to rectify, to heal, and to make amends in hopes of a better future not just for the planet, but by extension, ourselves.
With the semantics and metaphysics settled, Purdy moves on to more pressing matters in Chapters 4 and 5, both of which I found significant and worth recommending to new environmentalists. Here we have an explanation of environmental racism and a broad definition of infrastructure—not just roads, pipelines, and ports but also housing, food, healthcare, legal, and economic systems. In conspicuously non-Marxist terms, Purdy explains the failures of our institutions, our need for endless economic growth and consumptive lifestyles. Klein is a bit more assertive about her anticapitalist message, which is vital in combating climate change, but Purdy explains it just forcefully enough to not seem like a fraudulent messenger of environmental justice issues. He clearly states that the economic system must change and in earlier essays also advocated broad-based worker unions and strike tactics. Additionally, Purdy is acutely critical of elitist environmentalism dominated by wealthy white lawyers, ecologists, and professional, many times corporate, activists. Given that he is a legal scholar I understand why he isn't always brash in his criticisms, but these criticisms are present and not simply phoned in either.
As with anyone tackling this topic, Purdy has no easy solutions, though I do find his more compelling than most. He spends much less time discussing a Green New Deal than Klein, but he seems to have in mind something like that, which would include a jobs program, massive infrastructure upgrades, healthcare benefits, housing programs, etc. Ideally for him (and for this reader) it would correct the racism and sexism and environmental degradation of its namesake. Given Purdy's background, I was intrigued to read about some legal barriers or opportunities with regards to environmental policy. One suggestion is stricter enforcement of the various legislation from the 1970s (which signified environmentalism's real introduction to federal government despite earlier projects like parks), and while this is not a very good solution on its own, it would serve as one piece of the quilt. I was hoping for but not expecting (due to the conciseness of this book) some discussion of international law and trade policy, but Klein's This Changes Everything will have to suffice for my knowledge on that topic. But Purdy does touch on internationalism, which for me was one of the most uplifting parts of the book. While we do need international collaboration (still daunting of course) to effectively combat climate change, there is no requirement to have an international government (and one that can actually enforce things) to see meaningful changes. For instance, China and the U.S. could massively curtail emissions and have a measurable impact immediately, perhaps also using their superpower influence to bring other countries into the fold. I do think this discussion, like all of the others, was too brief, although it did add something that some other books on the topic, in their overwhelming pessimism, seem to lack.
But alas, it all looks so bleak—even while reading and discussing this thoughtful little book.
November 27, 2020
I read this book of essays ~2 months and finished it on Thursday evening of election week, when it was becoming clearer that Biden would win the election. This book is best described as a set of meditative, philosophical and personal essays, that grapple with how to build a shared vision for our commonwealth, knowing that our collective survival and well-being rests on how well we can take care of the land that sustains us. Certainly a question to ponder after a divisive election season, and troubling though still hopeful election results. The book is meager on specific policy solutions, though it alludes to the need for a something of the likes of a Green New Deal. It plays more in the space of making an argument of why we need a unifying shared message. Purdy's essays build on his arguments in After Nature, that demand us to have a different imagination for our relationship to nature, to reshape our political imagination and will for an Anthropocene politics that supports common good.
Notable essays in the collection:
* Reckonings- on Appalachian country and mountaintop removal; the differing degrees of scale of environmental harm at local and global scales
* The World We Have Built - a reflection of the physical and legal/political infrastructure that supports human life; and a reminder that it is within our choosing to shape what this "built" world looks like
* The Long Environmental Justice Movement - A brief survey of the history of the environmental movement and its (frequent lack of) of overlapping shared interests with people of color and working class people.
November 1, 2020
While it paints a fantastic vision of a way we could all live together in mutual respect, it's thin on the details of how we do that.
Yes, externalities are poorly valued in standard American capitalism. Are you suggesting that we price them properly, or that we stop pricing anything at all?
If the latter, how do we organize our society? While it's easy to acknowledge that the current system has serious shortcomings, any proposal to junk it completely better have a pretty specific plan on what to replace it with. For all it's faults, capitalism rests on the premise that people will tend to be selfish. I wish that premise were false, but we all know it isn't. Upon what premise of human behavior does the commonwealth rest?
Still, there is a lot to like here. The elegiac style can be quite engaging. And if it were possible, the utopian vision presented would be wonderful.
Yes, externalities are poorly valued in standard American capitalism. Are you suggesting that we price them properly, or that we stop pricing anything at all?
If the latter, how do we organize our society? While it's easy to acknowledge that the current system has serious shortcomings, any proposal to junk it completely better have a pretty specific plan on what to replace it with. For all it's faults, capitalism rests on the premise that people will tend to be selfish. I wish that premise were false, but we all know it isn't. Upon what premise of human behavior does the commonwealth rest?
Still, there is a lot to like here. The elegiac style can be quite engaging. And if it were possible, the utopian vision presented would be wonderful.
July 19, 2020
Purdy is one of the more eloquent champions of the idea of a commonwealth, which is a very different proposition than a straightforwardly liberal, conservative, or socialist vision of society. It is invigorating, passionately argued, and moving. However, the essays are just unstructured enough to be gorgeously readable but not quite memorably set out, meaning that the aversion to pedantic dogmatism (great!) veers toward a style of passionate but ultimately loosely targeted prose. Still, highly interesting especially for environmentalists with a class-analysis bent, or Americanists.
February 1, 2023
A deep dive into the history of land use and environmental policy in the US, how this history effects us now, and a bit of analysis of where to go from here. Not the most novel ideas for me at least (we can’t continue to prioritize growth…), but puts some data to these ideas. Purdy has an interesting goal of creating a commonwealth, or a reimagined economy and community focused on support and mutual success. Reads like a thesis in a good way.
July 12, 2023
A bit of a strange synthesis of journalistic narrative, literary reflection, and historiography. The first half of the book felt like Purdy was sometimes pontificating for the sake of it—a sort of academic theory-speak that says very little in very fancy language. But the last half saved the book, especially the magisterial chapter “The Long Environmental Justice Movement,” which was worth the price of admission.
August 17, 2022
This is a short, tough book. Aside from considering every tank of gas as part of the problem, which I'd somehow managed to avoid, I found it mostly awful, bad news and dreadful history. It's a dark tunnel, with that bit about the oncoming train as the only light in it. Some of the older history was interesting, like the then-junior Senator from West Virginia firing a gun through a copy of some EPA legislation in a political advertisement.
January 11, 2024
“Politics is how a moral lie becomes a physical truth” - I like the phrasing of many of the ideas Purdy writes about and the juxtaposition of how we got here and where we need to be. Second half of this book of essays is much stronger than the first
December 27, 2019
a meditation for (largely) better or worse
March 17, 2020
thoughtful. dense.
April 27, 2020
Powerful meditation on democracy, environmentalism, and how we all choose to live together. A lot of stuff in here I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to.
May 26, 2022
Eclectic and poetic
June 28, 2022
Beautifully written. Focuses on the why we need a commonwealth and what values will be necessary less than it focused on the specific pathways, but it serves its purpose.
January 26, 2025
Broad, interesting arguments. Read more like a lecture vs collection of essays.
September 12, 2019
A treatise on what the promise of a commonwealth could be - if only we had the political will.
August 12, 2020
This book is more personal than I expected, and it seems to me Purdy is trying to work out a positive approach to the struggle without feeling much to be hopeful about. But I appreciate this. At its heart, the book is about how the decisions we make now, especially those that have anything to do with energy, climate, agricultural, and the environment is a decision about who gets to live in the 21st century. It is an urgent and scary question and if we dodge it we are acknowledging we are ceding this decision to others.
I also appreciate his statement that while everything we do to live our lives exacts its price on the environment, we do not, in his words, "choose the terrible ecological terms in which these choices have their costs."
Update: I wrote the original review in March, but as I am reading on related topics this book continues to echo. In an interview about the book, Purdy stated, "for every human being, on average, there’s 4,000 tons of built environment supporting us. About a third of that is intensively farmed soil, so cut that out if you want, and you still get about 2,700 tons per person of roads, buildings, cars, cables, etc." This is in illustration of how removed we are from the natural world. Everyone cares about nature, but few of us are in a vantage point where we can see how devastating our current climate degradation really is.
I also appreciate his statement that while everything we do to live our lives exacts its price on the environment, we do not, in his words, "choose the terrible ecological terms in which these choices have their costs."
Update: I wrote the original review in March, but as I am reading on related topics this book continues to echo. In an interview about the book, Purdy stated, "for every human being, on average, there’s 4,000 tons of built environment supporting us. About a third of that is intensively farmed soil, so cut that out if you want, and you still get about 2,700 tons per person of roads, buildings, cars, cables, etc." This is in illustration of how removed we are from the natural world. Everyone cares about nature, but few of us are in a vantage point where we can see how devastating our current climate degradation really is.
December 31, 2019
The Left needs people like Purdy. He produces beautiful and compelling writing that lays out the logical and moral arguments for a reconstruction of social, communal, and ecological life from the bottom all the way up. On the other hand, does anyone on the Left really need to read a book that, in 2019, pretty much only musters "commonwealth or barbarism"? as expected, it's Dissent-brand 'left-liberalism', albeit in its finest form. Buy it for your parents!
January 14, 2023
I was truly excited to read this book, and felt *sure* that I would make it assigned reading for my university students. The prose is clear, the sentiments are commendable, but the writing is cluttered. I found Purdy's narration to be disorganized and cliche-ed. What does he add to the conversation about land and community? Precious little; or perhaps precious little thoughts.
November 5, 2019
Brief, urgent.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews