Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
3.1
1.7
Journals
Societies
Special Issues
Social Justice at the End of Our World
share announcement

Social Justice at the End of Our World

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2018) | Viewed by 27055

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Chloë Taylor

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Women's and Gender Studies, University of Alberta, 116 St & 85 Ave, Edmonton, AB T6G 2C9, Canada
Interests: feminist philosophy; gender studies; sexuality studies; critical prison studies; animal ethics; environmental ethics; food politics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As we are all by now aware, we live in a time of anthropogenic climate change, rising sea levels, acidified oceans, catastrophic weather events, and an ever increasing poverty of life on Earth. Anthropogenic planetary change is the most pressing social and political concern of our time, with scientists describing a sixth Great Extinction that may well include our own species. Although by all appearances most humans—including most social justice scholars—are continuing with business as usual, we are also hurtling towards extinction and taking much planetary life with us, and this puts all of our political causes into question. We are not living at “the end of the world,” despite the popularity of this phrase in Social Science and Humanities literature on the Anthropocene; we are, however, living at the end of our world. This issue of Societies will provide a forum for discussions of what social justice theory and activism should look like in this end time.
 
Contributors to this issue are invited to explore questions such as: How do we engage in political struggles today, when our species may no longer have a long-term future? What do social justice perspectives contribute to an analysis of the causes and appropriate responses to what is being called the Anthropocene? How have the appropriation and exploitation of natural resources that have driven anthropogenic transformation of the planet been embedded in patriarchal, colonial and speciesist power? What becomes of many feminist and other social justice causes in the shadow of climate change, or when we think in terms of geopolitics and geohistorical time? Has the pressing social justice issue of our time become ensuring that adaptation, survival, and extinction occur as justly and painlessly as possible, and how may we pursue these objectives? Should survival be our political goal, or should the value of our species’ survival be put into question—and what other political goals might supercede that of human survival? Can there be any kind of justice for the countless nonhuman species that settler colonial humans and humans in the over-developed world are driving to extinction? Can we theorize social justice beyond the human? How do we continue to attend to immediate injustices in our communities, even while thinking in terms of geological time and planetary-scale catastrophes? How do we imagine Anthropocene ethics, Anthropocene politics, and Anthropocene feminism? How should we live and die in the Anthropocene?
 
Dr. Chloë Taylor

Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Anthropocene
  • climate change
  • mass extinction
  • environmental ethics
  • animal ethics
  • social justice studies
  • feminist theory

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Jump to: Other

13 pages, 891 KiB  
Article
The Sedanthropocene: Nomadism, Ecology, Hypernormalization: Toward Reimagining the Holocene
by David Selsky
Societies 2019, 9(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc9010021 - 14 Mar 2019
Viewed by 3513
Abstract
The various (s)cenes of Anthropocene discourse are attempts to conceptualize the problem of anthropogenic global warming and to better understand the problem with a view to possible solutions. This paper explores, in a series of theoretic vignettes, ways that these attempts are too [...] Read more.
The various (s)cenes of Anthropocene discourse are attempts to conceptualize the problem of anthropogenic global warming and to better understand the problem with a view to possible solutions. This paper explores, in a series of theoretic vignettes, ways that these attempts are too myopic and narrow, and tend to ignore the possibility that the most fundamental levels of social organization might be the very conditions under which other ‘cenes’ can function at all. Specifically, Jason Moore’s Capitalocene describes and explains many symptoms of a world enraptured by capital. However, the beginning of the Holocene marks an historical stage wherein humans changed their thoughts and behaviours in such a way as to make something like capitalism possible at all. The dualism that Moore cites as fundamental to the Capitalocene did not begin with Descartes, it began with anatomically modern humans circa 10,000 years ago. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice at the End of Our World)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure A1

Other

Jump to: Research

11 pages, 559 KiB  
Concept Paper
The Intertwined Relationship between Power and Patriarchy: Examples from Resource Extractive Industries
by Nadine Naguib Suliman
Societies 2019, 9(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc9010014 - 9 Feb 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 13589
Abstract
This study examines the relationships between extractive industries, power and patriarchy, raising attention to the negative social and environmental impacts these relationships have had on communities globally. Wealth accumulation, gender and environment inequality have occurred for decades or more as a result of [...] Read more.
This study examines the relationships between extractive industries, power and patriarchy, raising attention to the negative social and environmental impacts these relationships have had on communities globally. Wealth accumulation, gender and environment inequality have occurred for decades or more as a result of patriarchal structures, controlled by the few in power. The multiple indirect ways these concepts have evolved to function in modern day societies further complicates attempts to resolve them and transform the social and natural world towards a more sustainable model. Partly relying on queer ecology, this paper opens space for uncovering some hidden mechanisms of asserting power and patriarchal methods of domination in resource-extractive industries and impacted populations. I hypothesize that patriarchy and gender inequality have a substantial impact on power relations and control of resources, in particular within the energy industry. Based on examples from the literature used to illustrate these processes, patriarchy-imposed gender relations are embedded in communities with large resource extraction industries and have a substantial impact on power relations, especially relative to wealth accumulation. The paper ends with a call for researchers to consider these issues more deeply and conceptually in the development of case studies and empirical analysis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice at the End of Our World)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 291 KiB  
Essay
Managing the Planet: The Anthropocene, Good Stewardship, and the Empty Promise of a Solution to Ecological Crisis
by Charles Stubblefield
Societies 2018, 8(2), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc8020038 - 5 Jun 2018
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 9197
Abstract
The Anthropocene has emerged as the dominant conceptualization of the current geological epoch and, more significantly, of Humanity’s relation to nature. By its proponents the Anthropocene is espoused as a “solution formulation”, an analytical tool that clarifies Humanity’s multifarious impacts on nature and [...] Read more.
The Anthropocene has emerged as the dominant conceptualization of the current geological epoch and, more significantly, of Humanity’s relation to nature. By its proponents the Anthropocene is espoused as a “solution formulation”, an analytical tool that clarifies Humanity’s multifarious impacts on nature and nature’s subsequent crises, and further as a conceptual apparatus from which to launch mitigation and adaption strategies, promising deliverance from or at least engagement with ecological crises. However, the Anthropocene is not a neutral concept, merely illuminating transition within ecological conditions and connections between human activities and nature; rather, it is a particular prism from which to understand humanity’s relation to nature. And, as the Anthropocene becomes ascendant both analytically and politically, it becomes vital to question its imaginary, how it constructs nature and Humanity, how it influences and constrains responses to ecological crises, and what the long-term implications of operating within this imaginary are. I argue that the Anthropocene as a political/analytical prism rests upon flawed conceptions of nature, history, and humanity, rending it an impotent construct from which to respond to ecological crises; offering only partial and presumptive “solutions” in the form of intensified governmental regulation and the application of manifold technological “fixes” through the geoengineering of Earth’s systems in an attempt to address isolated aspects of ecological destruction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice at the End of Our World)
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop