Global Environmental Politics: Power, Perspectives, and Practice

Lipschutz (politics, U. of California at Santa Cruz) explores the workings of environmental politics using the analytical tools of historical materialism, power, and ontology. The institutions that influence environmental change and degradation are understood as social products of human history conditioned, power is understood in the Foucauldian sense, and ontology is used to explore the basic philosophical stances of those who argue for this or than way of addressing environmental problems. He uses these concepts to pick apart the relationship between political power and the environment from the local to the global levels and argues that future pro-environmental regimes may have to rely as much on social or corporate power as interstate power. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)