Black Environmentalisms

In Black Environmentalisms, editors Cajetan Iheka and Jonathan Howard reengage African and African Diaspora studies around the urgent question of environmental crisis. Probing the continuities between global antiblackness and the endangerment of planetary life, contributors argue that black life and expressive culture constitute unique sources of ecological thought and practice. Across a wide variety of black geographies and thought, their essays bear witness to not only black ecological precarity but also the cultivational practices that people of African descent have summoned over time to combat their exploitation and enact a living relationship to the earth. As they show, the rich practices of black communities emerge from a radical alignment with, rather than paternalistic conservation of, the nonhuman natural world. Reimagining environmentalism beyond the limits of western humanism, Black Environmentalisms charts new pathways of environmental criticism by foregrounding the ecological worldmaking practices of black people across the planet.