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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Sociology

2020

Clark University

Political economy of health

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

From The Virocene To The Lovecene Epoch: Multispecies Justice As Critical Praxis For Virocene Disruptions And Vulnerabilities, Jude Fernando Jan 2020

From The Virocene To The Lovecene Epoch: Multispecies Justice As Critical Praxis For Virocene Disruptions And Vulnerabilities, Jude Fernando

Sustainability and Social Justice

In the Virocene epoch, global pandemics such as COVID-19 disrupt the world order organized by capitalism and racial privilege, making clear the unsustainability of ‘normal’ ways of organizing both society and nature. Despite its failure to address these disruptions, the existing capitalist-racist system attempts to reproduce itself, posing greater risks of disease, inequalities, and injustice to the most vulnerable human and nonhuman populations. The Virocene epoch makes these workings visible, and challenges both hegemonic and counterhegemonic ways of organizing human-nature relations. Political ecology requires new emancipatory theoretical-political strategies firmly grounded in a theory of justice that embodies social and ecological …


The Virocene Epoch: The Vulnerability Nexus Of Viruses, Capitalism And Racism, Jude Fernando Jan 2020

The Virocene Epoch: The Vulnerability Nexus Of Viruses, Capitalism And Racism, Jude Fernando

Sustainability and Social Justice

COVID-19 has ushered in a new planetary epoch—the Virocene. In doing so, it has laid bare the limits of humanity’s power over nature, exposing the vulnerability of ‘normal’ ways of living and their moral and pragmatic bankruptcy in coping with those vulnerabilities. ‘Normal’ is powerless against the virus and has not worked for a majority of the world’s human and non-human population. Whatever new normal humanity fashions depends on the socio-ecological change set in motion by mutations between human and non-human species. The outcomes of society’s responses to the pandemic depend on how human agency, as an embodiment of social, …