General Ecology

Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political… a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required. In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought—one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate—and how—in this planet’s future.

Proponents of the philosophy called “deep ecology” view humans as one of the many integral components of the biosphere. They do not place humans above or outside the rest of nature. Rather humans are considered a natural constituent that modifies nature according to cultural and economic value systems. This book does not explain the principles of ecology in a traditional scientific manner. In contrast, the various chapter authors describe ecology from a deep ecology philosophical perspective. The first chapter begins with an essay on how societal interpretations of ecology vary between cultures and change over time as cultures develop economically and philosophically. This is followed by a diverse array of essays on the influence of computational logic, economics, politics, popular literature, prevailing social norms, religion, and technology on setting a paradigm for conceptualizing ecology. All of these perspectives are used to explain how current environmental issues, such as extinction, are valued by society. Plus, the contributors exactingly prognosticate the influence of the Anthropocene epoch on the natural processes of the Earth. The content and readability targets an audience well versed in bioethics and philosophy. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals., Because digital mediation has permeated every aspect of life, economy and culture in our techno-scientific societies, we need to learn to think differently about ourselves. In this remarkable collection Erich Horl makes a powerful case for shifting our theoretical horizons away from disciplinary distinctions between Media studies, Literary and Cultural studies towards a more integrated approach: a new general ecology replaces the obsolete distinction between natural and social environments and calls for a multi-layered relational approach to sustainable futures., A brilliant collection that interrogates and exemplifies the current turn in critical theory to ecology and the environment. Bringing together the very best thinkers, it maps the entangled relationship between the ecological and the technological. A must read., With ground-breaking contributions from a renowned cast of international scholars General Ecology issues a call to arms to anyone interested in the concept of the environment. By radicalizing several strands of research in the humanities and social sciences, including cybernetics, phenomenology, systems theory, process philosophy and discourses on the anthropocene, the essays gathered here transform our approach to the concept of ecology along three axes. In variant and often mind-expanding ways, we are urged to substitute a "general ecology of relations" for the mathematization of relation central to contemporary global capital, to invest in a third stage environmental cybernetics rooted in the "technoecology of sense," and to resist the "Anthropocene illusion" by tracking the explosion of environmental agencies in today's global "technosphere." General Ecology offers nothing less than a new ecological image of thought., An impressive group of theorists who also appear to do real work in thinking through major concepts that are often left uninterrogated in ecophilosophy.

Erich Hörl is a philosopher and cultural theorist. He is professor of Media Culture at the Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany.James Burton is a lecturer in Cultural Studies and Cultural History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of The Philosophy of Science Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2015).