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Nature Environmental Conservation & Protection

Bioregionalism and Civil Society

Democratic Challenges to Corporate Globalism

by (author) Mike Carr

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jul 2005
Category
Environmental Conservation & Protection
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774809450
    Publish Date
    Jul 2005
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774809443
    Publish Date
    Oct 2004
    List Price
    $95.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774851145
    Publish Date
    Oct 2007
    List Price
    $34.95

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Description

Bioregionalism and Civil Society addresses the urgent need for sustainability in industrialized societies. The book explores the bioregional movement in the US, Canada, and Mexico, examining its vision, values, strategies, and tools for building sustainable societies. Bioregionalism is a philosophy with values and practices that attempt to meld issues of social and economic justice and sustainability with cultural, ecological, and spiritual concerns. Further, bioregional efforts at democratic social and cultural change take place primarily in the sphere of civil society.

Practically, Carr argues for bioregionalism as a place-specific, community movement that can stand in diverse opposition to the homogenizing trends of corporate globalization. Theoretically, the author seeks lessons for civil society-based social theory and strategy. Conventional civil society theory from Europe proposes a dual strategy of developing strong horizontal communicative action among civic associations and networks as the basis for strategic vertical campaigns to democratize both state and market sectors. However, this theory offers no ecological or cultural critique of consumerism. By contrast, Carr integrates both social and natural ecologies in a civil society theory that incorporates lessons about consumption and cultural transformation from bioregional practice.

Carr’s argument that bioregional values and community-building tools support a diverse, democratic, socially just civil society that respects and cares for the natural world makes a significant contribution to the field of green political science, social change theory, and environmental thought.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Mike Carr has been active for decades in the social justice, peace, and ecology movements, in addition to bioregionalism. For the past several years he has taught geography, urban studies, and First Nation studies at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University.