Thinking like a Mall

Thinking like a Mall
Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2016-09-02
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0262529718

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A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”

Transforming Politics with Merleau-Ponty

Transforming Politics with Merleau-Ponty
Author: Jérôme Melançon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1538153092

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The contributors to this book offer productive new readings of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy and of other facets of his thought. They each deploy his theories to adopt a critical stance on urgent political issues and contemporary situations within society. Each essay focuses on a different aspect of political transformation, be it at the personal, social, national, or international level. The book as a whole maps out possibilities for thinking phenomenologically about politics without a sole focus on the state, turning instead toward contemporary human experience and existence.

Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg

Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg
Author: Darrell P. Arnold
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2017-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319578979

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This volume explores Andrew Feenberg’s work in critical theory. Feenberg is considered one of the key ‘second generation’ critical theorists, with a keen interest in philosophy of technology. He has made a vital contribution to critical theory in ways that remain of interest given the pressing technological issues of our time. The authors of this book highlight not only the ways that Feenberg has begun to make good on what is often characterized as “the broken promise of critical theory” to address issues of technology, but also the continued importance of critical theory more generally, and of Feenberg’s contributions to understanding this tradition.

Handbook of the Anthropocene

Handbook of the Anthropocene
Author: Nathanaël Wallenhorst
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1595
Release: 2023-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3031259106

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This Handbook is a collection of contributions of more than 300 researchers who have worked to grasp the Anthropocene, this new geological epoch characterised by a modification of the conditions of habitability of the Earth for all living things, in its biogeophysical and socio-political reality. These researchers also sought to define a historical and prospective anthropology that integrates social, economic, cultural and political issues as well as, of course, environmental ones. What are the anthropological changes needed to ensure that our human adventure will be able to continue in the Anthropocene? And what are the educational and political issues involved? Anthropocene is fast becoming a widely-used term, but thus far, there been no reference work explaining the thoughts of the greatest experts of the present day on this subject (at the intersection of biogeophysical and socio-political knowledge). A scientific and political concept (but which is also the conceptual vehicle for conveying the scientific community's sense of concern), this complex term is explained by international experts as they reflect on scientific arguments taking place in earth system science, the social sciences and the humanities. What these researchers from different disciplines have in common is a healthy concern for the future and how to prepare for it in the Anthropocene and also the identification of possible anthropological changes. This Handbook encourages readers to immerse themselves in reflections on the human adventure through descriptions of our differing heritages and the future that is in the process of being written.

Eco-Emancipation

Eco-Emancipation
Author: Sharon R. Krause
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691242267

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The case for an eco-emancipatory politics to release the Earth from human domination and free us all from lives that are both exploitative and exploited Human domination of nature shapes every aspect of our lives today, even as it remains virtually invisible to us. Because human beings are a part of nature, the human domination of nature circles back to confine and exploit people as well—and not only the poor and marginalized but also the privileged and affluent, even in the world’s most prosperous societies. Although modern democracy establishes constraints intended to protect people from domination as the arbitrary exercise of power, it offers few such protections for nonhuman parts of nature. The result is that, wherever we fall in human hierarchies, we inevitably find ourselves both complicit in and entrapped by a system that makes sustainable living all but impossible. It confines and exploits not only nature but people too, albeit in different ways. In Eco-Emancipation, Sharon Krause argues that we can find our way to a better, freer life by constraining the use of human power in relation to nature and promoting nature’s well-being alongside our own, thereby releasing the Earth from human domination and freeing us from a way of life that is both exploitative and exploited, complicit and entrapped. Eco-emancipation calls for new, more-than-human political communities that incorporate nonhuman parts of nature through institutions of representation and regimes of rights, combining these new institutional arrangements with political activism, a public ethos of respect for nature, and a culture of eco-responsibility.

Environmental Aesthetics

Environmental Aesthetics
Author: Martin Drenthen
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2014-02-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0823254518

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Environmental aesthetics crosses several commonly recognized divides: between analytic and continental philosophy, Eastern and Western traditions, universalizing and historicizing approaches, and theoretical and practical concerns. This volume sets out to show how these,perspectives can be brought into conversation with one another. The first part surveys the development of the field and discusses some important future directions. The second part explains how widening the scope of environmental aesthetics demands a continual rethinking of the relationship between aesthetics and other fields. How does environmental aesthetics relate to ethics? Does aesthetic appreciation of the environment entail an attitude of respect? What is the relationship between the theory and practice? The third part is devoted to the relationship between the aesthetics of nature and the aesthetics of art. Can art help “save the Earth”? The final part illustrates the emergence of practical applications from theoretical studies by focusing on concrete case studies.

The Environmental Uncanny

The Environmental Uncanny
Author: Brian A. Irwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2024-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350417394

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The Environmental Uncanny argues that the increasing destitution of our world is the result of a certain forgetfulness: we have forgotten that the basis of our knowledge is not calculative reason, but our participation in the natural world. The modern built environment is exemplary of this forgetfulness, and induces an uncanniness that can help us to understand the nature of our environmental crisis. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on the global environmental crisis. Ranging from traditional phenomenology, including substantial discussion of both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, to philosophy of biology, to architectural and urban design theory, to landscape photography, it makes illuminating connections to paint a multifaceted picture. Tracing the root causes of dwindling biodiversity, deforestation and suburban sprawl, we can find how might we mark the path back toward a mode of rich inhabitation in a contemporary age. In charting out how it is that we are losing our world, Irwin offers a thought as to how we might regain it.

The Challenge of Progress

The Challenge of Progress
Author: Harry F. Dahms
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2019-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787149803

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Globalization has accelerated the process of social, political, cultural, and especially economic transformations since the 1990s. Examining the choices of modern society, Dahms and contributors ask: what are the social costs of “progress”?

Call of the Mall

Call of the Mall
Author: Paco Underhill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2005-01-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780743235921

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Profiling malls as intersections of American consumer marketing, the media, and street culture, an examination of malls as reflections of commercial and social culture considers what malls mean to ordinary people.

Pseudo-Public Spaces in Chinese Shopping Malls

Pseudo-Public Spaces in Chinese Shopping Malls
Author: Yiming Wang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2019-06-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0429515979

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Shopping malls in China create a new pseudo-public urban space which is under the control of private or quasi-public power structure. As they are open for public use, mediated by the co-mingling of private property rights and public meanings of urban space, the rise, publicness and consequences of the boom in the construction of shopping malls raises major questions in spatial political economy and magnifies existing theoretical debates between the natural and conventional schools of property rights. In examining these issues this book develops a theoretical framework starting with a critique of the socio-spatial debate between two influential bodies of work represented by the work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. Drawing on the framework, the book examines why pseudo-public spaces have been growing so rapidly in China since the 1980s; assesses to what degree pseudo-public spaces are public, and how they affect the publicness of Chinese cities; and explores the consequences of their rise. Findings of this book provide insights that can help to better understand Chinese urbanism and also have the potential to inform urban policy in China. This book will be of interest to academics and researchers in both Chinese studies and urban studies.