Harbinger: a Journal of Social Ecology

Vol. 4, Issue #3 Summer 2024

Editorial: Heresies and Sacred Cows

Prosperity, Urbanity, and Ecological Consciousness

Heretical Resonances: Historicizing Social Ecology in the Neoliberal Epoch

Social Ecology After the Collapse of Western Hegemony

From Ambivalence to Profanity: Resisting the Dogmatic Ideal of Community

Agency in Eugenics Thinking

Second Nature Beyond the Human

Always Swimming Upstream: My Social Ecology Journey

In Conversation on Dialectical Naturalism

Editorial: Heresies and Sacred Cows

This issue of Harbinger is dedicated to exploring what might be called social ecology “heresies” – new perspectives that critique, challenge, or rethink its prevailing “orthodoxies” and take aim at some of our political community’s sacred cows.

Prosperity, Urbanity, and Ecological Consciousness

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest—ranging from southern Canada to northern California—have long had…

Heretical Resonances: Historicizing Social Ecology in the Neoliberal Epoch

Murray Bookchin was keenly aware of the unique constraints, as well as possibilities, imposed by…

Social Ecology After the Collapse of Western Hegemony

The 1960s saw the development of the struggles of various social groups as well as…

From Ambivalence to Profanity: Resisting the Dogmatic Ideal of Community

Calls for radical community-based action in response to the climate crisis seem to grow louder…

Agency in Eugenics Thinking

Armed with its twisted philosophy of history and mystical sensibility, the very idea of eugenics…

Second Nature Beyond the Human

This essay is the first of a planned three-part series delving into the science of…

Always Swimming Upstream: My Social Ecology Journey

When my teacher Pamela Boyce Simms gave a presentation at the 2017 ISE Summer Gathering…

In Conversation on Dialectical Naturalism

Murray Bookchin’s ideas on dialectical naturalism have sparked significant debate among ecophilosophers, even within social…

Issue #2

Social Ecology, Racism, Colonialism, and Identity: Assessing the Work of Murray Bookchin

“A central task for social ecological theory is to incorporate what is useful in the historical and theoretical scholarship that Bookchin…neglected, without also smuggling in the problematic political assumptions that he correctly warned of.”

Editorial: Social Ecology and the New Abolitionism

“Our contention in assembling this issue is both that the ideas of social ecology have important—even necessary—insights for militant movements against racism and that social ecology as a body of revolutionary thought stands to develop itself much further through a deeper engagement with the ideas animating anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles.”

Individualized Medicine as Racial Eugenics: A Critical Appraisal

“This racialized and hierarchical neo-eugenics program is also a danger to the future of our species: if allowed to proceed, its underlying circular and biased reasoning will actively deplete human genetic diversity and risk bringing us to extinction.”

Go to Issue #2

Issue #1

Forms of Freedom: Dual Power in Fiji

Dual power movements can learn from the iTakukei people’s indigenous forms of direct democracy in post-colonial Fiji.

When Plants Sing: Plant Bioacoustics and the Problem of Anthropomorphism

Our understanding of the growing field of plant bioacoustics is limited by our penchant for anthropomorhism: projecting the categories and problems of human society onto the natural world.

Go to Issue #1

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Harbinger: A Journal of Social Ecology seeks to publish rigorous inquiry guided by emancipatory political goals. As social ecology is a broad and interdisciplinary field, we’re open to a variety of formats and topics, including but not limited to theoretical and philosophical texts, strategic reflections on current organizing projects, artistic contributions, book/film/tv/performance reviews, and essays interrogating a wide spectrum of relevant topics.