Kate Soper
Biographic Data
| ID | 188258 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate Soper |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate |
| FAMILY NAME | Soper |
| SIGNATURE | SOPER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | London Metropolitan University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Realism, humanism and alternative hedonism
Realism, humanism and alternative hedonism
Kate Soper is a prominent environmentalist and peace campaigner, as well as a pioneering philosopher of Marxism and ecology, human needs, consumerism and its alternatives. In the first half of our wide-ranging interview, she discusses her formative experiences, education, and early key works.
Against the Common Good
Couze Venn has been a key influence on commoning theory, and greatly enhanced understanding of the role of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation in the destruction of the commons. In tribute to his work, I here focus on the affluent consumerism propelled by that exploitation, reflect on its power, but also consider how emerging forms of disaffection with its negative aspects might foster support for commoning in wealthy societies. Though present…
Special section
On Breath
On Breath Kate Soper (bio) Kate Soper's video "On Breath" weaves together historical theories about breath from various perspectives: philosophical (Pseudo-Aristotle's "On Breath," Galen's "On the Uses of Breathing"), pedagogical (vocal treatises by Lili Lehmann, Manuel Garcia, and William Shakespeare), and metaphysical (Hildegard of Bingen's "Book of Divine Works"). The video can be accessed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i_Y1PePYd0 Spoken text by …
Neither the ‘Simple Backward Look’ nor the ‘Simple Progressive Thrust’
Reconceptualizing prosperity
This chapter focuses on the changing perceptions that are essential to furthering policies of sustainable welfare, a theme that it pursues within two related frames of thinking. It explores the revised ideas of progress, prosperity and development that would be involved in a transition to a degrowth economic and political order. The chapter draws attention to the health hazards associated with Western affluence itself and the negative impact in t…
The Humanism in Posthumanism
The growth in environmental concern during recent decades has prompted much discrimination around the concept of ‘nature’, and this has been reflected in the now complex and ramifying field of ecophilosophy. But in a broad brush way we can distinguish between two main tendencies: on the one hand, in the calls to re-value nature as a site of intrinsic value, to recognize our kinship and continuity with other living creatures, and to abandon anthro…
The postmedieval project
Beyond Consumerism
Unnatural Times? The Social Imaginary and the Future of Nature
Alternative Hedonism, Cultural Theory and the Role of Aesthetic Revisioning
The potential of consumption to figure as a site of political agency is now recognized by both corporate capitalism and its No Logo opposition. Many now also accept that the pursuit of consumerist lifestyles is the major contributor to ecological crisis. This article argues the importance in this context of recognizing the impact and longer term implications of some emerging forms of self-interested disaffection with consumerism on the part of af…
Markets, Deliberation and Environment. By John O'Neill
Re-thinking the `Good Life`
Citizenship and consumption have frequently been regarded as oppositional and even mutually exclusive domains of activity and theory. Recent consumption practices and discourses — although they raise many complex issues both empirically and theoretically — have begun to revise this perception. This article offers reasons for enlarging the framework of thinking about the contemporary `civic' or `republican' aspects of consumption in order to inclu…
Reflections on Affliction
The Beast in Literature
Thinking the unnatural
Theoretical engagement with the question of what is or isn't “natural” offers an interesting index of shifting political concerns over the last 30 years or so. In the 1970s – especially within the
"Rethinking the "good life
People's economic decisions are often regarded as taking place in a separate domain from their values and commitments as citizens. As citizens they are conceived as agents who care about public goo
Democracy and the War in Iraq
Waste Matters
Silent Nature
War and Terrorism
Realism, Humanism and the Politics of Nature
All of those working in the broad field of environmental studies (and I here include, among others, philosophers, geographers, political ecologists, sociologists, cultural historians and critics) are likely to agree to two points. First, the term “nature” which has been so central to our various debates, has lost its all-purpose conceptual status and can no longer be bandied around as it once was. This does not mean that we have ceased to use it.…
Humans, Animals, Machines
Looking at Landscape
Re-thinking the `Good Life`
Citizenship and consumption have frequently been regarded as oppositional and even mutually exclusive domains of activity and theory. Recent consumption practices and discourses — although they raise many complex issues both empirically and theoretically — have begun to revise this perception. This article offers reasons for enlarging the framework of thinking about the contemporary `civic' or `republican' aspects of consumption in order to inclu…
Alternative Hedonism, Cultural Theory and the Role of Aesthetic Revisioning
The potential of consumption to figure as a site of political agency is now recognized by both corporate capitalism and its No Logo opposition. Many now also accept that the pursuit of consumerist lifestyles is the major contributor to ecological crisis. This article argues the importance in this context of recognizing the impact and longer term implications of some emerging forms of self-interested disaffection with consumerism on the part of af…
"Rethinking the "good life
People's economic decisions are often regarded as taking place in a separate domain from their values and commitments as citizens. As citizens they are conceived as agents who care about public goo
On Human Needs
The Humanism in Posthumanism
The growth in environmental concern during recent decades has prompted much discrimination around the concept of ‘nature’, and this has been reflected in the now complex and ramifying field of ecophilosophy. But in a broad brush way we can distinguish between two main tendencies: on the one hand, in the calls to re-value nature as a site of intrinsic value, to recognize our kinship and continuity with other living creatures, and to abandon anthro…
The politics of nature
1999). The politics of nature: Reflections on hedonism, progress and ecology. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 47-70
Of oncomice and femalemen
(1999). Of oncomice and femalemen: Donna haraway on cyborg ontology. Women: A Cultural Review: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 167-172
Unnatural Times? The Social Imaginary and the Future of Nature
Feminism and Ecology
Ecology and constructivism are motivated by broadly shared political aspirations and subscribe to similar critiques of technocratism, patriarchy. and "instrumental rational ity." But they diverge considerably in respect to the discourses they offer on "nature." By staging an encounter between ecological argument and feminist comtructivist theory, this article seeks to illuminate, and to indicate the means of resolving, the ontological tensions be…
Beyond Consumerism
Thinking the unnatural
Theoretical engagement with the question of what is or isn't “natural” offers an interesting index of shifting political concerns over the last 30 years or so. In the 1970s – especially within the
Waste Matters
Humans, Animals, Machines
Écologie, nature et responsabilité
Of OncoMice and female/men
Representing Nature
Postmodernism and Its Discontents
Towards the end of the 1980s, the decade in which postmodernist modes of thinking asserted themselves, and in so doing laid siege to a whole range of positions in theory which had grounded a socialist politics, 'actual existing socialism' collapsed under the pressure of popular revolution in Central and Eastern Europe. The net effect of this combined intellectual and political convulsion has been severely to disturb the equanimity with which many…
Postmodernism, Subjectivity and the Question of Value
Within the circles influenced by and sympathetic to postmodernism there has of late been discussion as to how long an engagement with traditional criteria of truth and value can be deferred. It has been suggested that the eclecticism and relativist logic of postmodernism is inherently self-stultifying—or at least
The Beast in Literature
Looking at Landscape
A green mythology
Bodies That Matter
Feminism as Critique
The usual idea behind the collective anthology is that it should serve as a means for bringing together the thought of several different authors in debate upon a common theme. In practice, this rarely happens, and it is all too common for volumes of this kind to be
Putting Humpty Together Again
On Human Needs
A Difference of Needs
‘It’s terrific!’, announced the publishers prior to the appearance of Michael Ignatieff’s new book. It seemed, at the time, an unlikely epithet for a work on so sober a topic as human need, but it has proved curiously apt: highly polished, clever, readable and just a trifle precious
The Qualities of Simone de Beauvoir
‘For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarrelling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it.’ Often quoted as they are
Marxism and Morality
Marx’s vision of communism is of a society that has transcended morality. Such a society is not only impracticable but inconceivable, since social and moral conflict requiring the arbitration of ethical rules will be an invariant feature of any human community however saintly one assumes its individuals to
Feminism as Critique
The usual idea behind the collective anthology is that it should serve as a means for bringing together the thought of several different authors in debate upon a common theme. In practice, this rarely happens, and it is all too common for volumes of this kind to be
The Thinking Muse
Postmodernism and Its Discontents
Towards the end of the 1980s, the decade in which postmodernist modes of thinking asserted themselves, and in so doing laid siege to a whole range of positions in theory which had grounded a socialist politics, 'actual existing socialism' collapsed under the pressure of popular revolution in Central and Eastern Europe. The net effect of this combined intellectual and political convulsion has been severely to disturb the equanimity with which many…
Postmodernism, Subjectivity and the Question of Value
Within the circles influenced by and sympathetic to postmodernism there has of late been discussion as to how long an engagement with traditional criteria of truth and value can be deferred. It has been suggested that the eclecticism and relativist logic of postmodernism is inherently self-stultifying—or at least
The Ideology of the Aesthetic
In Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute, the camera, throughout the overture, traverses the faces of an audience divided by age, sex, ethnicity and style, but united in its common rapture. It is a compelling image of the power of the ‘aesthetic’ to realize—despite everything that tends
Eco‐Feminism and Eco‐Socialism
1992). Eco‐Feminism and Eco‐Socialism: Dilemmas of essentialism and materialism. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 111-114
El posmodernismo y sus malestares
El posmodernismo y sus malestares
Troubled Pleasures
A Theory of Human Need
The higher the level of abstraction at which any argument for universal needs is cast, the less controversial it is likely to prove, but the more open it becomes to the charge of being vacuously uninformative as a guide to specific welfare provision. Not even the most committed
The Politics of Truth
This book is at once a textbook survey and critique of the theory of ideology, and the site of Michele Barrett's settling of accounts with Marxism. With the honesty we have come to expect of her, she announces that she has now nailed her colours 'to the mast of a more general postMarxism'. Foucault, despite some jitters about his competence, has been entrusted with the helm, and Laclau and Mouffe are prominent among the crew. That the theory of i…
Feminism and Ecology
Ecology and constructivism are motivated by broadly shared political aspirations and subscribe to similar critiques of technocratism, patriarchy. and "instrumental rational ity." But they diverge considerably in respect to the discourses they offer on "nature." By staging an encounter between ecological argument and feminist comtructivist theory, this article seeks to illuminate, and to indicate the means of resolving, the ontological tensions be…
Bodies That Matter
Love’s Work
‘As a form of counter-desolation,’ Ricoeur tells us, ‘consolation can be a lucid manner—just as lucid as Aristotelian katharsis—of mourning for oneself. Here, too, a fruitful exchange can be established between literature and being-toward-death.’
Womanizing Nietzsche
Bike Dreams
A green mythology
Human needs and natural relations
Of megaliths and motorways
John Clark's “A social ecology
1998). John Clark's “A social ecology”. Capitalism Nature Socialism: Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 25-45
Representing Nature
Political science (31 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Environmental ethics (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works)