Post-Growth Living - For an Alternative Hedonism

The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on?

In Alternative Prosperity, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.

About the author

Kate Soper teaches philosophy and cultural theory at the University of North London. Her previous works include On Human Needs, What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human and, with Verso, Troubled Pleasures.

Report

This is an excellent book. It addresses what, in both conceptual and political terms, is arguably the most important source of tension and confusion in current arguments about the environment, namely the concept of nature; and it does so in a way that is both sensitive to, and critical of, the two antithetical ways of understanding this that dominate existing discussions. Russell Keat, University of Edinburgh [praise for What is Nature]

Product details

• Authors: Kate Soper, Soper Kate
• Publisher: Verso
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.09.2020
• EAN: 9781788738873
• ISBN: 978-1-78873-887-3
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Politics; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political theories and the history of ideas; Politikwissenschaft, Social Theory, Climate Change, POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory, Philosophy, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Commentary & Opinion, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Humanism, Political activism, Political activism / Political engagement