Postmodernism and the environmental crisis

Résumé : Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis is the only book to combine cultural theory and environmental philosophy. In it, Arran Gare analyses the conjunction between the environmental crisis, the globalisation of capitalism and the disintegration of the culture of modernity. It explains the paradox of growing concern for the environment and the paltry achievements of environmental movements. Through a critique of the philosophies underlying approaches to the environmental crisis, Arran Gare puts forward his own, controversial theory of a new postmodern world view. This would be the foundation for the environmental movement to succeed. At the heart of the problem, Gare argues, is the failure of mainstream, marxist and postmodernist approaches alike, to theorize the links between the ecological crisis, the globalizarion of capitalism and the fragmantation and disintegration of modernist culture. A successful ecological politics needs to forge à new worldview out of the postmodernist critique of western civilization and à global ecological perspective. Postmodernism and the environmental crisis shows that this can be done and, in doing so, lay the foundations for en effective environmental movement.