Welcome to the online relaunch of Harbinger: A Journal of Social of Ecology. A harbinger is a messenger, or a sign indicating that a major event or change is coming. Surveying the world today, it is hard not to see such signs everywhere. Popular unrest is fueling explosive protests against the status quo in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Catalonia, Chile, France, Bolivia, Iraq, and Iran, to say nothing of ongoing mobilizations in other locations. Although triggered by disparate local causes, the current wave of global discontent has often converged on the shared targets of undemocratic state rule and widening economic inequality. These developments have unfolded parallel to a resurgence of interest in the political ideas of social ecology, municipalism, democratic confederalism, and Communalism. Together, these traditions offer the critical yet often missing reconstructive vision that are often left nascent in movements of negation. Clearly, we find ourselves in a moment when the “old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.” As resistance to capitalism, ecocide, representative democracy, and social domination continues to deepen and grow, we need forums where we can develop and sharpen our analysis, vision, and political strategy for achieving a truly free and ecological society.
Harbinger seeks to fill this role, providing a space to engage in sustained analysis and exploration of practical and theoretical questions relevant to social ecology. This has been the function of Harbinger since its first print publication in the early 1980s, through its last reincarnations in the early 2000s, up to the present online relaunch. We are proud to continue this legacy of collective reflection on the struggle for a free and ecological society, and we hope you will join us in this endeavor. We initially aim to publish twice a year, with the second issue appearing in May 2020 on the theme of social ecology and race/racism.
Our inaugural online issue features eight exciting original contributions. Ben Debney explores commonalities and differences between social ecology and eco-Marxism, comparing Bookchin’s social ecology, Jason Moore’s world ecology, and Silvia Federici’s autonomous feminist Marxism in Social Ecology in the Capitalocene. Forms of Freedom: Dual Power in Fiji by Glenn Hall examines the possibilities as well as limits of indigenous forms of direct democracy in Melanesia. Laurie M. Johnson asks what social ecology might learn from Carl Jung that his admirer Jordan Peterson is ideological incapable of in Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, and the Challenge for Social Ecology. Mason Herson-Hord’s Wither the State? interrogates the presumed conflict regarding the role of the state in the Marxist and left-libertarian traditions, arguing that Communalist theory and politics offers a path out of the historical deadlock. Amanda Priebe makes the case for an emancipatory artistic practice that is collective and non-recuperable in We Will Not Perfume your Sewers: A Call to Artists. Exploring commonalities between the two movements, Lateef McLeod’s Social Ecology and Disability Justice argues both are central to creating a society free from domination. Adam Krause reflects on plant communication in When Plants Sing: Plant Bioacoustics and the Problem of Anthropomorphism, including recordings of sound experiments with corn seedlings. Dayton Martindale argues The Social Ecological Case for Animal Liberation and considers what an “interspecies Communalism” might look like.
We hope you enjoy the first issue, and look forward to the conversations, new ideas, and debates that follow. Onward!
Contents
Mason Herson-Hord. Wither the State
Glenn Hall. Forms of Freedom: Dual Power in Fiji
Laurie M. Johnson. Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, and the Challenge for Social Ecology
Lateef McLeod. Social Ecology and Disability Justice: Making A New Society
Amanda Priebe. We Will Not Perfume your Sewers: A Call to Artists
Ben Debney. Social Ecology in the Capitalocene
Adam Krause. When Plants Sing: Plant Bioacoustics and the Problem of Anthropomorphism