Emergent Ecologies

In an era of global warming, natural disasters, endangered species, and devastating pollution, contemporary writing on the environment largely focuses on doomsday scenarios. Eben Kirksey suggests we reject such apocalyptic thinking and instead find possibilities in the wreckage of ongoing disasters, as symbiotic associations of opportunistic plants, animals, and microbes are flourishing in unexpected places. Emergent Ecologies uses artwork and contemporary philosophy to illustrate hopeful opportunities and reframe key problems in conservation biology such as invasive species, extinction, environmental management, and reforestation. Following the flight of capital and nomadic forms of life-through fragmented landscapes of Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States-Kirksey explores how chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions have shaped present and future multispecies communities. New generations of thinkers and tinkerers are learning how to care for emergent ecological assemblages-involving frogs, fungal pathogens, ants, monkeys, people, and plants-by seeding them, nurturing them, protecting them, and ultimately letting go.

Author: Eben Kirksey
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 11/24/2015
Pages: 312
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 10.02h x 4.78w x 0.66d
ISBN13: 9780822360353
ISBN10: 0822360357
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Science | Environmental Science (see also Chemistry | Environmental)
- Nature | Animals | Wildlife

About the Author
Eben Kirksey is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He is the editor of The Multispecies Salon and the author of Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power, both also published by Duke University Press.