Microontologies and the politics of emergent life

Bibliographic Data

ID20076933
AuthorsNigel Clark (0000-0003-3738-1583), Myra Hird, Myra J Hird
Year2018
Publication date2018-07-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueHandbook on the Geographies of Power (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherEdward Elgar Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4337/9781785365645.00023
OpenAlexW2811185445
ISBN9781785365645
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited9

What kind of a political problem are microorganisms that climate change is `waking up' after a million-odd years frozen in ice sheets? Or bacteria that feed off waste we bury in landfills – then go on to proliferate and evolve in ways that we may never know? The unpredictable behavior of microorganisms in increasingly interconnected worlds has sparked much innovative spatial-political thinking that highlights human–nonhuman entanglement. We suggest, however, that further steps are needed to account for the ways that microorganisms and other living things not only interact with humans but are the very condition of human existence. An appreciation of such `subtending' relations, we propose, offers new challenges to spatial and political thinking, including exploration of the limits of effective political action

Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Political action · Political science · Politics · Quantum entanglement · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

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