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This book analyses the threat posed by the continued use of fossil fuels. By utilizing Elizabeth Shove's social practices approach and Murphy's own social closure framework, the book examines the accelerating treadmill of carbon-polluting practices. It incorporates externalities theory to investigate how the full cost of fossil fuels is paid by others rather than users, and to demonstrate that the environmental commons is a medium for conveying intergenerational monopolisation and exclusion in the Anthropocene. Murphy uncovers a pattern of opposition to change when exploiting valuable but dangerous resources. He argues that a new faith in mastering nature is emerging as a belief in just-in-time technological solutions to circumvent having to change fossil-fuelled practices.
The book then moves on to assess proposed solutions, including Beck's staging of risk and his hypothesis that the anticipation of global catastrophe will incite emancipation. It proposes a novel approach to enhancing foresight and avoid incubating disaster. It will appeal to readers interested in an original social science analysis of this creeping crisis and its resolution.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part I Analysing the Problem.- Chapter 2. Cooperation between Natural Science and Social Science.- Chapter 3. Social Closure in the Anthropocene: The Environment as a Medium for Monopolisation and Exclusion.- Chapter 4. Energy: Paying its Full Cost, Belatedly or Upon Use?.- Chapter 5. Stuck in Dangerous Carbon Polluting Practices?.- Chapter 6. A Pattern When Exploiting Valuable but Dangerous Resources.- Part II: Assessing Solutions.- Chapter 7. Risk and Safety; Real and Staged.- Chapter 8. Are Safe Social Practices on the Horizon?.- Chapter 9. Faith 2.0 in the Mastery of Nature.- Chapter 10. Technological Solutions and Social-technological Solutions.- Chapter 11. Foresight or Discounting Danger?.
About the author
Raymond Murphy is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada and Past-president of the Environment and Society Research Committee, International Sociological Association. He has authored multiple books including
Social Closure (1988) and
Leadership in Disaster (2009).
