This book engages with the politics of social and
environmental justice, and seeks new ways to think about
the future of urbanization in the twenty-first century.
It establishes foundational concepts for understanding
how space, time, place and nature - the material frames
of daily life - are constituted and represented through
social practices, not as separate elements but in
relation to each other. It describes how geographical
differences are produced, and shows how they then become
fundamental to the exploration of political, economic
and ecological alternatives to contemporary life. The
book is divided into four parts. Part I describes the
problematic nature of action and analysis at different
scales of time and space, and introduces the reader to
the modes of dialectical thinking and discourse which
are used throughout the remainder of the work. Part II
examines how ''nature'' and ''environment'' have been
understood and valued in relation to processes of social
change and seeks, from this basis, to make sense of
contemporary environmental issues.Part III, is a
wide-ranging discussion of history, geography and
culture, explores the meaning of the social
''production'' of space and time, and clarifies problems
related to ''otherness'' and ''difference''. The final
part of the book deploys the foundational arguments the
author has established to consider contemporary problems
of social justice that have resulted from recent changes
in geographical divisions of labor, in the environment,
and in the pace and quality of urbanization. Justice,
Nature and the Geography of Difference speaks to a wide
readership of students of social, cultural and spatial
theory and of the dynamics of contemporary life. It is a
convincing demonstration that it is both possible and
necessary to value difference and to seek a just social
order. |
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