The current planetary crisis of climate change or global warming elicits a variety of responses in individuals, groups, and governments, ranging from denial, disconnect, and indifference to a spirit of engagement and activism of varying kinds and degrees. These responses saturate our sense of the now. Alan Weisman’s best-selling book The World without Us suggests a thought experiment as a way of experiencing our present: “Suppose that the worst has happened. Human extinction is a fait accompli. . . . Picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. . . . Might we have left some faint, enduring mark on the universe? . . . Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?”1 I am drawn to Weisman’s experiment as it tellingly demonstrates how the current crisis can precipitate a sense of the present that disconnects the future from the past by putting such a future beyond the grasp of historical sensibility. The discipline of history exists on the assumption that our past, present, and future are connected by a certain continuity of human experience. We normally envisage the future with the help of the same faculty that allows us to picture the past. Weisman’s thought experiment illustrates the historicist paradox that inhabits contemporary moods of anxiety and concern about the finitude of humanity. To go along with Weisman’s experiment, we have to insert ourselves into

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The Climate of History: Four Theses

This chapter describes the development of actor-network theory and feminist material semiotics by exploring case studies within STS (science and technology studies). It notes that STS (and so material semiotics) develops its theoretical approaches through empirical case studies, and notes that unless this is understood it is difficult to understand the significance of 'actor network theory' or any other STS theory or approach.

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Actor-network theory and material semiotics

Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called "the economy" and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East.In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy - the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

This article assesses the contribution of discourse analysis to the study of environmental politics over the period of the past decade. Defining discourse as a particular linguistic regularity that can be found in conversations distinguishes it from ‘deliberation’ and ‘discussion’. Discourse analysis is seen as focused on situational logics studying ‘language-in-use’. Three strengths of discourse analysis are highlighted: its capacity to reveal the role of language in politics, its capacity to reveal the embeddedness of language in practices and its capacity to answer ‘how’ questions and to illuminate mechanisms. The article concludes by sketching some of the challenges lying ahead of discourse analysis. Given the changing nature of policy making, discourse analysts are supposed to have a task in identifying the new sites of politics and analysing the political dynamics therein.

A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements, challenges, perspectives

In Latin America indigenous politics has been branded as “ethnic politics.” Its activism is interpreted as a quest to make cultural rights prevail. Yet, what if “culture” is insufficient, even an inadequate notion, to think the challenge that indigenous politics represents? Drawing inspiration from recent political events in Peru—and to a lesser extent in Ecuador and Bolivia—where the indigenous–popular movement has conjured sentient entities (mountains, water, and soil—what we call “nature”) into the public political arena, the argument in this essay is threefold. First, indigeneity, as a historical formation, exceeds the notion of politics as usual, that is, an arena populated by rational human beings disputing the power to represent others vis-a-vis the state. Second, indigeneity's current political emergence—in oppositional antimining movements in Peru and Ecuador, but also in celebratory events in Bolivia—challenges the separation of nature and culture that underpins the prevalent notion of politics and its according social contract. Third, beyond “ethnic politics” current indigenous movements, propose a different political practice, plural not because of its enactment by bodies marked by gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality (as multiculturalism would have it), but because they conjure nonhumans as actors in the political arena.

Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond "Politics"

Introduction: What Is to Be Done with Political Ecology? 1. Why Political Ecology Has to Let Go of Nature First, Get Out of the Cave Ecological Crisis or Crisis of Objectivity? The End of Nature The Pitfall of "Social Representations" of Nature The Fragile Aid of Comparative Anthropology What Successor for the Bicameral Collective? 2. How to Bring the Collective Together Difficulties in Convoking the Collective First Division: Learning to Be Circumspect with Spokespersons Second Division: Associations of Humans and Nonhumans Third Division between Humans and Nonhumans: Reality and Recalcitrance A More or Less Articulated Collective The Return to Civil Peace 3. A New Separation of Powers Some Disadvantages of the Concepts of Fact and Value The Power to Take into Account and the Power to Put in Order The Collective's Two Powers of Representation Verifying That the Essential Guarantees Have Been Maintained A New Exteriority 4. Skills for the Collective The Third Nature and the Quarrel between the Two "Eco" Sciences Contribution of the Professions to the Procedures of the Houses The Work of the Houses The Common Dwelling, the Oikos 5. Exploring Common Worlds Time's Two Arrows The Learning Curve The Third Power and the Question of the State The Exercise of Diplomacy War and Peace for the Sciences Conclusion: What Is to Be Done? Political Ecology! Summary of the Argument (for Readers in a Hurry...) Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

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Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

1. A hypothesis as political fiction: the explosion of inequalities and the denial of climate change are one and the same phenomenon. 2. Thanks to America's abandonment of the climate agreement, we now know clearly what war has been declared. 3. The question of migrations now concerns everyone, offering a new and very wicked universality: finding oneself deprived of ground. 4. One must take care not to confuse globalization-plus with globalization-minus. 5. How the globalist ruling classes have decided to abandon all the burdens of solidarity, little by little. 6. The abandonment of a common world leads to epistemological delirium 7. The appearance of a third pole undoes the classical organization of modernity torn between the first two poles, the Local and the Global. 8. The invention of "Trumpism" makes it possible to identify a fourth attractor, the Out-of-This-World. 9. In identifying the attractor we can call Terrestrial, we identify a new geopolitical organization. 10. Why the successes of political ecology have never been commensurate with the stakes. 11. Why political ecology has had so much trouble breaking away from the Right/Left opposition. 12. How to ensure the relay between social struggles and ecological struggles. 13. The class struggle becomes a struggle among geosocial positions. 14. The detour by way of history makes it possible to understand how a certain notion of "nature" has immobilized political positions. 15. We must succeed in breaking the spell of "nature" as it has been pinned down by the modern vision of the Left/Right opposition. 16. A world composed of objects does not have the same type of resistance as a world composed of agents. 17. The sciences of the Critical Zone do not have the same political functions as those of the other natural sciences 18. The contradiction between the system of production and the system of engendering is heating up 19. A new attempt at describing dwelling placesNFrance's ledgers of complaints as a possible model. 20. A personal defense of the Old Continent. Acknowledgements Figures Notes

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime

* Preface to the English-Language Edition * Acknowledgments * Translators' Note * Introduction 1. The Hellenistic Legacy * The Creation of New States * Syria between Parthians, Romans, and Armenians 2. The End of Seleucid Syria and the First Roman Rule (69--31 B.C.E.) * The Beginnings of Roman Intervention * Pompey and Syria * Syria at the Time of the Roman Civil War 3. From Augustus to Trajan: Creating a Province * The Provincia and Its Governors * The Defenses of Imperial Syria in the First Century * The Client States in the First Century C.E. 4. The Crises in Judaea from Herod to Bar Kokhba * Herod the Great * Herod's Heirs * The Era of Prefects and Procurators * The Revolt of 66--70 and Its Consequences * From the Fall of the Temple to Bar Kokhba 5. From Trajan to the Severi: Conquests and Reorganizations * New Provinces, New Divisions * Defense of the Country and Roman Campaigns 6. Civic Life and Urban Development during the Early Empire * The Spread of the Polis and the Creation of Colonies * The Structure and Organization of Municipal Life * City Profiles 7. Rural Life in the Early Empire * Land Tenure and Land Use * Agricultural Practices and Production * Villages and Village Communities * Nomads 8. The Urban Economy in Roman Syria * Artisans * Money and Customs Duties * Roads and Ports * Local and Foreign Trade 9. Hellenization and Indigenous Cultures * Syrian Hellenism * Indigenous Cultures 10 Pagans, Jews, and Christians in Roman Syria in the Second and Third Centuries * Gods and Pagan Sanctuaries * Rabbinical Judaism * The Beginnings of Christianization 11. A Time of Trials * Edessa, Hatra, and Dura-Europos * Palmyra * Phylarchs and Nomad Chiefs * Conclusion * Abbreviations * Notes * Works Cited * Index

The Middle East under Rome

Translators' Note Introduction: On Home Ground in a Distant Land Maps Philosophy The Philosopher Images of the World Myth and Knowledge The Question of Being Epistemology Ethics Politics The Statesman As Political Actor Inventing Politics Utopia and the Critique of Politics The Sage and Politics The Pursuit of Knowledge Schools and Sites of Learning Observation and Research Demonstration and the Idea of Science Astronomy * Cosmology * Geography * Harmonics * History * Language * Logic * Mathematics * Medicine * Physics * Poetics * Rhetoric * Technology * Theology and Divination * Theories of Religion Major Figures Anaxagoras * Antisthenes * Archimedes * Aristotle * Democritus * Epicurus * Euclid * Galen * Heraclitus * Herodotus * Hippocrates * Parmenides * Plato * Plotinus * Plutarch * Polybius * Protagoras * Ptolemy * Pyrrhon * Socrates * Thucydides * Xenophon * Zeno Currents of Thought The Academy * Aristotelianism * Cynicism * Hellenism and Christianity * Hellenism and Judaism * The Milesians * Platonism * Pythagoreanism * Skepticism * Sophists * Stoicism Chronology Contributors Illustration Sources Index

Catherine Porter

Papers

Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime

The Middle East under Rome

Greek thought : a guide to classical knowledge