Climate change and the crisis of capitalism: A chance to reclaim self, society and nature

Are established economic, social and political practices capable of dealing with the combinedcrises of climate change and the global economic system? Will falling back on thewisdoms that contributed to the crisis help us to find ways forward or simply reconfigurerisk in another guise? This volume argues that the combination of global environmentalchange and global economic restructuring require a rethinking of the priorities, processesand underlying values that shape contemporary development aspirations and policy.This volume brings together leading scholars to address these questions from severaldisciplinary perspectives: environmental sociology, human geography, internationaldevelopment, systems thinking, political sciences, philosophy, economics and policy/management science. The book is divided into four parts that examine contemporarydevelopment discourses and practices. It bridges geographical and disciplinary divides,and includes chapters on innovative governance that confront unsustainable economicand environmental relations in both developing and developed contexts. It emphasises theways in which dominant development paths have necessarily forced a separation of individualsfrom nature, but also from society and even from ‘self ’. These three levels of alienationeach form a thread that runs through the book. There are different levels andopportunities for a transition towards resilience, raising questions surrounding identity,governance and ecological management. This places resilience at the heart of the contemporarycrisis of capitalism, and speaks to the relationship between the increasinglyglobal forms of economic development and the difficulties in framing solutions to theenvironmental problems that carbon-baseddevelopment brings in its wake. Existingsocial science can help in not only identifying the challenges but also potential pathwaysfor making change locally and in wider political, economic and cultural systems, but itmust do so by identifying transitions out of carbon dependency and the kinds of politicalchallenges they imply for reflexive individuals and alternative community approaches tohuman security and well-being.Climate Change and the Crisis of Capitalism contains contributions from leading scholarsto produce a rich and cohesive set of arguments, from a range of theoretical and empiricalviewpoints. It analyses the problem of resilience under existing circumstances, but alsogoes beyond this to seek ways in which resilience can provide a better pathway and templatefor a more sustainable future. This volume will be of interest to both undergraduateand postgraduate students studying Human Geography, Environmental Policy and Politics.