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

Human Ecology Commons

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

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Human Ecology

Freedom And Heteronomy In The Anthropocene, Alexander M. Stoner, Harry F. Dahms Jan 2023

Freedom And Heteronomy In The Anthropocene, Alexander M. Stoner, Harry F. Dahms

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.


Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo Oct 2022

Debris Of Progress: A Political Ethnography Of Critical Infrastructure, Ethan Tupelo

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I advance a political ethnography of critical infrastructure to better understand terminal capitalism, in which the waste products of commodification and resource depletion are destroying the ecological systems that support life. My object of study is the massive disjuncture between individual knowledge and intention, and these catastrophic collective planetary outcomes. Theoretically, I develop critical infrastructure theory to diagnose these destructive structures. By “infrastructure,” I mean systems of material and discursive flows fundamental to sedentary human organization, connecting local actions with global systems. Such infrastructure is “critical” in three senses: A) denoting the most important forms of infrastructure …


Things Are Getting Worse On Our Way To Catastrophe: Neoliberal Environmentalism, Repressive Desublimation, And The Autonomous Ecoconsumer, Alex Stoner Jan 2021

Things Are Getting Worse On Our Way To Catastrophe: Neoliberal Environmentalism, Repressive Desublimation, And The Autonomous Ecoconsumer, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

The aim of neoliberal environmentalism was to unleash the market to protect the environment; but as it turns out, things are getting worse on our way to catastrophe. Despite persistent failures, neoliberal environmentalism remains prevalent—and apparently without alternative. This paper directs focus on an often-overlooked dimension of this apparent stasis: the nexus of self and society in advanced capitalism, as shown in the linkage between neoliberal environmentalism and the autonomous ecoconsumer. Marcuse’s concept of repressive desublimation is engaged to better understand how environmentalist desire is currently being thwarted in ways that inhibit movement toward socioecological emancipation. The paper provides an …


Georg Lukács (1885-1971) And The Critique Of Reification: On The Dialectical Genesis Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos Jan 2015

Georg Lukács (1885-1971) And The Critique Of Reification: On The Dialectical Genesis Of The Great Acceleration, Alexander M. Stoner, Andony Melathopoulos

Book Sections/Chapters

This chapter situates Lukács' critique of reification (1923) in relation to the emergence of the Great Acceleration. We develop Lukács' critique through the issue of the increasing rationalization of industrial and administrative work in the early twentieth century. In do so, we show how Lukács is able to relocate the continued relevance of Marx's insights with respect to the deeper structure of capitalist society in his consideration of the differential manner in which proletariat and bourgeois class consciousness approach the problem of social contradictions. We then discuss how, for Lukács, the overcoming of reification (or the failure to do so) …