Vol. 4, Issue #3 Summer 2024

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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

Unsettling, Rooting, and Shifting: Growing Pains for the Bottom-up Confederal Democracy Movement in North American Racial-Settler Context

“The unsettling process entails unpacking and contextualizing the Euro-centric ideas and practices that have been presumptively universalized across non-European contexts. Unsettling can extend deeply to implicit and explicit Eurocentric presumptions about patriarchy, heterosexuality, the primacy of class analysis, the nature of the state, and more.”

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.”

From the Homestead Act to YouTube: Settler Colonial Continuities of the Homesteading Movement

“The homesteader fantasy of living outside of the capitalist system is in fact impossible; it rests on the benefits of Indigenous land dispossession, racist implementation of land policies, and ongoing state subsidies to homesteaders. This contradiction makes it a movement that depends on capitalism without challenging or even acknowledging its existence.”

Go to Issue #2

Issue #1

Editorial

Welcome to the relaunch of Harbinger: a Journal of Social Ecology.

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.

Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, and the Challenge for Social Ecology

Jordan Peterson has sparked a revival of interest in Carl Jung’s thought. Is there an anti-capitalist interpretation of this critic of secular modernity that Peterson is ideologically blind to?

Go to Issue #1

Write for us

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.