Janet Biehl

The biography of Murray Bookchin, one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the twentieth century, written by Bookchin's personal collaborator and copyeditor.

The Life of Murray Bookchin

Ecology or Catastrophe

Peter Staudenmaier

Lessons from the German Experience

Ecofascism

Murray Bookchin

Libertarian Municipalism

The Politics of Social Ecology

A Graphic Journey to the Multiethnic Democracy in Northeast Syria

Their Blood Got Mixed

Biehl examines the contradictions of ecofeminism and argues that social ecology, and alternate framework, offers a more liberating program for men and women, as well as for our beleaguered biosphere.

Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics

Finding Our Way is a well-written, clear introduction to a range of ecofeminist thought. In four essays, Biehl explores ecofeminism's intellectual affinities with social ecology and other schools of thought; critiques the increasing role of Goddess mythology within today's movement; spiritedly defends reason and naturalism against what she sees as a "counter-Enlightenment" mentality within feminist and academic circles; and mines the Western democratic tradition for its relevant political insights for feminists today.

Finding Our Way

In the summer of 2012 the Kurdish people of northern Syria set out to create a multiethnic society in the Middle East. Persecuted for much of the 20th century, they dared to try to overcome social fragmentation by affirming social solidarity among all the region’s ethnic and religious peoples. As Syria plunged into civil war, the Kurds and their Arab and Assyrian allies established a self-governing polity that was not only multiethnic but democratic. And women were not only permitted but encouraged to participate in all social roles alongside men, including political and military roles. To implement these goals, Rojava wanted to live in peace with its neighbors. Instead, it soon faced invasion by ISIS, a force that was in every way its opposite. ISIS attacked its neighbors in Iraq and Syria, imposing theocratic, tyrannical, femicidal rule on them. Those who might have resisted fled in terror. But when ISIS attacked the mostly Kurdish city of Kobane and overran much of it, the YPG and YPJ, or people's militias, declined to flee. Instead they resisted, and several countries, seeing their valiant resistance, formed an international coalition to assist them militarily. While the YPG and YPJ fought on the ground, the coalition coordinated airstrikes with them. They liberated village after village and in March 2019 captured ISIS’s last territory in Syria. Around that time, two UK-based filmmakers invited the author to spend a month in Rojava making a film. She accepted, and arrived to explore the society and interview people. During that month, she explored how the revolution had progressed and especially the effects of the war on the society. She found that the war had reinforced social solidarity and welded together the multiethnic, gender-liberated society. As one man in Kobane told her, “Our blood got mixed.”

Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS

Murray Bookchin was not only one of the most significant and influential environmental philosophers of the twentieth century--he was also one of the most prescient. From industrial agriculture to nuclear radiation, Bookchin has been at the forefront of every major ecological issue since the very beginning, often proposing a solution before most people even recognized there was a problem. Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin is the first biography of this groundbreaking environmental and political thinker. Author Janet Biehl worked as his collaborator and copyeditor for 19 years, editing his every word. Thanks to her extensive personal history with Bookchin as well as her access to his papers and archival research, Ecology or Catastrophe offers unique insight into his personal and professional life. Founder of the social ecology movement, Bookchin first started raising environmental issues in 1952. He foresaw global warming in the 1960s and even then argued that we should look into renewable energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels. Wary of pesticides and other chemicals used in industrial agriculture, he was also an early advocate of small-scale organic farming, which has developed into the present locavore movement and the revival of organic markets. Even Occupy can trace the origins of its leaderless structure and general assemblies to the nonhierarchical organizational form Bookchin developed as a libertarian socialist. Bookchin believed that social and ecological issues were deeply intertwined. Convinced that capitalism pushes businesses to maximize profits and ignore humanist concerns, he argued that eco-crises could be resolved by a new social arrangement. His solution was Communalism, a new form of libertarian socialism that he developed. An optimist and utopian, Bookchin believed in the potentiality for human beings to use reason to solve all social and ecological problems.

Are ecological ideas always progressive? What is the historical relationship between ecology and the far-right? This book traces the surprising background of far-right environmentalism, and offers an essential discussion on the contemporary significance and dangerous implications of the ecofascist legacy-in Germany and elsewhere.

Janet Biehl

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