Debating Planetary Politics

Debating Planetary Politics offers a range of perspectives that together provide a comprehensive overview of the issues and ideas central to the emerging field of planetary politics, giving due attention to its history, while primarily and uniquely advancing the contemporary state of the debate.

An eco-centric planetary politics first became a prospective new turn for the world politics of humanity when scientists around 1970 discovered that the Earth system, including its biospheric ecology, exists in a biogeochemical composition which enables and furthers the conditions for life on this planet, and that our species is causing an Earth system crisis that is jeopardizing planetary habitability. This book examines how to best navigate through this Earth system crisis and expands on what planetary politics is about by including multispecies and critical perspectives that were not prominent before. It is argued that the current global governance architecture is inadequate for ending the crisis. We will need a new planetary politics. But what do we have in mind when we talk about planetary politics? This complex inter- and transdisciplinary debate does not only require a sound grasp of the relevant Earth system science, but also of the cultural, social, economic, and political worldviews and practices that have brought about the present malaise, and of how old and new alternatives might enable constructive steps forward. This book therefore has a diverse group of expert contributors. They offer a variety of complementary and competing theoretical perspectives from Political Science, Political Theory, Political Economy, International Relations, Philosophy, and Sociology, getting to the core of what thinking in terms of planetary politics signifies in different registers.

Establishing planetary politics as its own distinct field, Debating Planetary Politics is important reading for students and scholars from a range of disciplines, including Global Environmental Politics, Political Science, International Relations (IR), Political Theory/Philosophy, Development Studies, Political Economy, Earth System Science, Environmental Humanities, Global/Intellectual History, Political Geography, Political Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies (STS).