A compelling proposal for new international law and institutions to address the planetary crisis that improves biodiversity protection, supports Indigenous peoples, and prevents catastrophic climate change.
A compelling proposal for new international law and institutions to address the planetary crisis that improves biodiversity protection, supports Indigenous peoples, and prevents catastrophic climate change.
In The Ecology Politic, Anthony Burke and Stefanie Fishel contend that the roots of our planetary crisis lie in the modern state- in its destructive entanglement with capitalism and its colonial legacies of extraction and oppression. This, in turn, has shaped global governance and international law, as they continue to fail to curb global heating, deforestation, and extinction. In a far-reaching critique of the foundational political theory of the modern state-the Body-Politic-the authors insist that nothing less than a radically different model of the polity-an Ecology Politic-is needed if we are to escape this impasse.
Burke and Fishel argue that the international rule of law enacts a sovereign ban of nature that appropriates nonhuman lives for profit and use while denying them political and legal standing. We fail because we rely on the very institutions, worldviews, and systems that generated the crisis to solve it. The authors reconsider political power, agency, scale, and democracy in the Anthropocene and assert a biospheric ethic that values the entangled planetary structure of matter, energy, and life. Further, they argue for more-than-human beings to be represented in an ecological democracy that flows across borders. In short, they imagine a polity whose fundamental purpose is to protect planetary ecosystems and nurture interlocking systems of social and ecological justice.
By:
Anthony Burke,
Stefanie Fishel
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262552554
ISBN 10: 0262552558
Pages: 310
Publication Date: 10 June 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Introduction 1 The Sovereign Ban of Nature Politics, Law, and Ecology after the Holocene THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 2 The Human Body Politic State, Territory, and Nonhuman 3 Power After Power Ecology, Thing-Systems, and Responsibility 4 Another Political Animal Nonhuman Presence and Ecological Democracy POWER, ECOLOGY, AND LAW 5 Blue Screen Biosphere The Absent Presence of Biodiversity in International Law 6 Posthuman Political Scale Governing Climate Between Biome and Planet 7 Towards a Multispecies Contract Human and Ecological Justice CONCLUSION 8 The Ecology Politic A Polity for the Earth
Anthony Burke is Professor of Environmental Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Australia. His books include Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence, Uranium, and Institutionalizing Multispecies Justice. Stefanie Fishel is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She is the author of The Microbial State, Environmentalism after Humanism, and Poe and the Microbiome.
