Contemporary Environmental Politics - From Margins to Mainstream (Hardcover)

The book aims to give, via a collection of representative papers from the journal Environmental Politics, an overview of both the evolution and the diverse themes found in contemporary green political thought, especially as found in the industrialized nations. Accordingly, it charts the key research papers from the leading European journal of environmental politics since the early 1990s, a period in which environmental politics developed from a marginal status in society and the academy through to its current place as a mainstream intellectual consideration; in doing so the book will both trace a development of ideas and give an overview of the diverse vital considerations in the field today. Subdivided into sections on political theory, social movements, political economy and policy questions, and assisted by a contextualizing introduction, the collection deals with a set of themes that include the following:
- The character of green political theory and its relationships with other political traditions and theories,
- the origins and dynamics of contemporary environmental politics in collective responses to particular issues,
- the differences, similarities and practical tensions between the environmental politics of the North and that of the South,
- the relationship of environmental politics to market economics and ecological modernization
- the environmental aspects of distributive justice concerns at the local, national and global institutional levels
- the roles, value and valuing of nature in green theory and institutional practice.
As a compilation, the book operates in a unique way. It serves on one side as a compilation volume of key papers thatprovides a snapshot of a whole variety of issues in the field, and is thus suitable for teaching purposes, especially at postgraduate level. In addition, each section is chronologically arranged, and so an evolution of related ideas is manifest in the selection, thus making the book an ideal "one stop" purchase for those seeking to understand the development of the field of environmental politics since the start of the 1990s, especially as it has been practiced in developed nations outside the American continent.