Recovering Bookchin: Social Ecology and the Crises of Our Time: Social Ecology And The Crises Of Out Time - Softcover

Price, Andy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8293064161 ISBN 13: 9788293064169

Publisher: New Compass Press, 2012

Synopsis

Through a body of political and philosophical ideas that he called social ecology, Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) elucidated one of the first intellectual responses to the ecological crisis. According to Bookchin, the causes of our present environmental problems lay in a long history of social domination and exploitation, that only could be remedied by a new liberatory project centered around direct democratic cities, a moral economy and confederalism. However, over the last two decades of his life Bookchin's ideas slipped from focus, obscured by the emergence of a crude caricature of him as a dogmatic sectarian who intended to dominate the radical left for his own personal motivations. In Recovering Bookchin, political philosopher Andy Price recounts the debates between Bookchin and the deep ecologists, the anarchists and primitivists, identifying and critically discounting the Bookchin caricature as a body of critique leveled against Bookchin the person rather than his ideas. Price argues that by looking afresh at his work, Bookchin's contribution provides a coherent practical and theoretical response to the ecological and social crises of our time.

About this title

Product Description:

Through an extensive body of political and philosophical ideas he called social ecology, Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) elucidated one of the first intellectual responses to the ecological crisis. However, over the last two decades of his life Bookchin’s ideas slipped from focus, obscured by the emergence of a crude caricature that portrayed him as a dogmatic sectarian who intended to dominate the radical left for his own personal motivations. In this book, Andy Price revisits the Bookchin caricature and critically discounts it as the product of a largely misguided literature that focused on Bookchin the individual and not his ideas. By looking afresh at Bookchin's work, Price argues that his contribution can be seen to provide a coherent practical and theoretical response to the ecological and social crises of our time.

Review:

This is a work of "recovery" in the best sense, a lucid, sympathetic yet critical account of Bookchin, demonstrating his continuing relevance in the face of ecological catastrophe. Andy Price's insightful treatment goes beyond the polemics surrounding Bookchin to illustrate the richness and depth of his ecological philosophy, which should do much to revive interest in this bold thinker.

-- Jules Townshend, Professor Emeritus, Manchester Metropolitan University

A trenchant and much-needed reassessment of this singular and all too often misrepresented anarcho-green theorist, and of his contribution to social theory. Price indeed "recovers" Bookchin; he does so with admirable verve and analytical rigour, cutting through the myriad distortions surrounding him and providing us with a new framework for understanding social ecology today.

-- Dr Chris Ealham, author of Anarchism and the City (AK Press, 2010)

Andy Price's much needed study provides us at last with a reasoned and balanced reassessment of Murray Bookchin, a man whose ideas were hugely influential on a whole generation of scholars and ecologist or anarchist activists, and yet whose valuable contribution had become obscured by sometimes bitter controversy. Through a detailed, thoroughly researched and properly contextualised analysis of debates between Bookchin and his antagonists, Price convincingly rebuffs much of the caricatural criticisms of Bookchin, without lapsing into hagiography. An important book.

-- Dr David Berry, Reviews Editor, Anarchist Studies; Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University

About this edition

• Publisher: New Compass Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 8293064161
• ISBN 13: 9788293064169
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264