The Promise of Multispecies Justice

by Sophie Chao (Editor), Karin Bolender (Editor), Eben Kirksey (Editor)

Overview

What are the possibilities for multispecies justice? How do social justice struggles intersect with the lives of animals, plants, and other creatures? Leading thinkers in anthropology, geography, philosophy, speculative fiction, poetry, and contemporary art answer these questions from diverse grounded locations. In America, Indigenous peoples and prisoners are decolonizing multispecies relations in unceded territory and carceral landscapes. Small justices are emerging in Tanzanian markets, near banana plantations in the Philippines, and in abandoned buildings of Azerbaijan as people navigate relations with feral dogs, weeds, rats, and pesticides. Conflicts over rights of nature are intensifying in Colombia’s Amazon. Specters of justice are emerging in India, while children in Micronesia memorialize extinct bird species. Engaging with ideas about environmental justice, restorative justice, and other species of justice, The Promise of Multispecies Justice holds open the possibility of flourishing in multispecies worlds, present and to come.

Contributors. Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, M. L. Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Eben Kirksey, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim TallBear

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478018896
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	10/07/2022
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Sophie Chao is author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, also published by Duke UniversityPress.

Karin Bolender is an artist-researcher at the Rural Alchemy Workshop (R.A.W.) and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Environmental Futures at the University of Oregon.

Eben Kirksey is author of Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power and Emergent Ecologies, both also published by Duke UniversityPress, and The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Who Benefits from Multispecies Justice? / Eben Kirksey and Sophie Chao  1
Glossary. Species of Justice / Sophie Chao and Eben Kirksey  23
Blessing. Thanksgiving in the Plantationocene / Craig Santos Perez  29
1. Spectral Justice / Radhika Govindrajan  33
2. Rights of the Amazon in Cosmopolitical Worlds / Kristina Lyons  53
3. “We Are Not Pests” / Alyssa Paredes  77
4. Prison Gardens and Growing Abolition / Elizabeth Lara  103
5. Justice at the Ends of the Worlds / Michael Marder  125
6. from the micronesian kingfisher / Craig Santos Perez  139
7. Rodent Trapping and the Just Possible / Jia Hui Lee  157
8. Inscribing the Interspecies Gap / M. L. Clark  179
9. Nuclear Waste and Relational Accountability in Indian Country / Noriko Ishiyama and Kim Tallbear  185
10. Multispecies Mediations in a Post-Extractive Zone / Zsuzsanna Ihar  205
Closing. Th S xth M ss Ext nci n / Craig Santos Perez  227
Afterword. Fugitive Jurisdictions / Karin Bolender, Sophie Chao, and Eben Kirksey  229
Bibliography  239
Contributors  273
Index  277

What People are Saying About This

Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond - Stefan Helmreich

“Questions of the ecological and biopolitical raise questions of justice—environmental, racial, restorative, reparative, transformative, recognition-based, transitional, generative, abolitionist, participatory. The essays and interventions in this decisively frame-shifting collection engage with the entangled bank of justice relations with commitment and care, asking who benefits, who is harmed, and who counts in projects in which matters of multifariously embodied life are at stake.”

Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ - Eleana J. Kim

“I love each of this volume’s essays and the geographic and disciplinary diversity they represent. The creative work, poetry, topics, and approaches to justice included are exceptionally thought-provoking. This outstanding and delightful book is an incredibly welcome contribution to the interdisciplinary study of multispecies relations.”

Editorial Reviews

"The Promise of Multispecies Justice provides novel and thought-provoking perspectives concerning the experience of injustice and justice. It is a compulsory read for scholars in many fields, from the diverse fields of human, social, and life sciences. It is relevant and valuable for anyone interested in how to transit towards a fairer society."

Anthropology Book Forum - Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen

"The chapters of essays, poetry, art, and framing in this volume are powerful and generative, including for anyone interested in social justice, multispecies studies, and the human and non-human injustices that characterize much of the contemporary world." (translated from Spanish)

Estudios Publicos - Maron E. Greenleaf

"In blurring conventional justices—climate, environmental, social—we are guided by analytics that intersect race, gender, class, and species. The authors remind us that naming justices and injustices provides stories of both incremental hope and lasting nightmare in the reorganization of epistemological, ontological, and political promise. Each volume expands Western continental philosophy and political theory related to rights and capabilities, ever resistant to human mastery and institutional capture."

Kellen Copelandn Ethnologist

"[A] vibrant edited volume. . . . The case studies offer much for higher-level scholars in anthropology, human geography, environmental studies, human-animal studies, and applied philosophy. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."—S. M. Weiss, Choice

"The chapters of essays, poetry, art, and framing in this volume are powerful and generative, including for anyone interested in social justice, multispecies studies, and the human and non-human injustices that characterize much of the contemporary world." (translated from Spanish)—Maron E. Greenleaf, Estudios Publicos

"In blurring conventional justices—climate, environmental, social—we are guided by analytics that intersect race, gender, class, and species. The authors remind us that naming justices and injustices provides stories of both incremental hope and lasting nightmare in the reorganization of epistemological, ontological, and political promise. Each volume expands Western continental philosophy and political theory related to rights and capabilities, ever resistant to human mastery and institutional capture."—Kellen Copeland, American Ethnologist

"The Promise of Multispecies Justice provides novel and thought-provoking perspectives concerning the experience of injustice and justice. It is a compulsory read for scholars in many fields, from the diverse fields of human, social, and life sciences. It is relevant and valuable for anyone interested in how to transit towards a fairer society."—Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Anthropology Book Forum

From the Publisher

"[A] vibrant edited volume. . . . The case studies offer much for higher-level scholars in anthropology, human geography, environmental studies, human-animal studies, and applied philosophy. . . . Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."

Choice - S. M. Weiss

"In blurring conventional justices—climate, environmental, social—we are guided by analytics that intersect race, gender, class, and species. The authors remind us that naming justices and injustices provides stories of both incremental hope and lasting nightmare in the reorganization of epistemological, ontological, and political promise. Each volume expands Western continental philosophy and political theory related to rights and capabilities, ever resistant to human mastery and institutional capture."

American Ethnologist - Kellen Copeland