In The Political Uncommons, Kathryn Milun presents a cultural history of the global commons: those domains, including the atmosphere, the oceans, the radio frequency spectrum, the earth's biodiversity, and its outer space, designated by international law as belonging to no single individual or nation state but rather to all humankind. From the res communis of Roman property law to early modern laws establishing the freedom of the seas, from the legal battles over the neutrality of the internet to the heritage of the earth's genetic diversity, Milun connects ancient, modern, and postmodern legal traditions of global commons. Arguing that the logic of legal institutions governing global commons is connected to the logic of colonial doctrines that dispossessed indigenous peoples of their land, she demonstrates that the failure of international law to adequately govern the earth's atmosphere and waters can be more deeply understood as a cultural logic that has successfully dispossessed humankind of basic subsistence rights. The promise of global commons, Milun shows, has always been related to subsistence rights and an earth that human communities have long imagined as 'common' existing alongside private and public domains. Utilizing specific case studies, The Political Uncommons opens a way to consider how global commons regimes might benefit from the cross-cultural logics found where indigenous peoples have gained recognition of their common tenure systems in Western courts.

In The Political Uncommons, Kathryn Milun presents a cultural history of the global commons: those domains, including the atmosphere, the oceans, the radio frequency spectrum, the earth's biodiversity, and its outer space, designated by international law as belonging to no single individual or nation state but rather to all humankind. From the res communis of Roman property law to early modern laws establishing the freedom of the seas, from the legal battles over the neutrality of the internet to the heritage of the earth's genetic diversity, Milun connects ancient, modern, and postmodern legal traditions of global commons. Arguing that the logic of legal institutions governing global commons is connected to the logic of colonial doctrines that dispossessed indigenous peoples of their land, she demonstrates that the failure of international law to adequately govern the earth's atmosphere and waters can be more deeply understood as a cultural logic that has successfully dispossessed humankind of basic subsistence rights. The promise of global commons, Milun shows, has always been related to subsistence rights and an earth that human communities have long imagined as 'common' existing alongside private and public domains. Utilizing specific case studies, The Political Uncommons opens a way to consider how global commons regimes might benefit from the cross-cultural logics found where indigenous peoples have gained recognition of their common tenure systems in Western courts.

This book presents a cultural history of the global commons, connecting the logic of legal institutions governing global commons to colonial doctrines that dispossessed indigenous peoples of their land. It demonstrates how global commons regimes might benefit from the cross-cultural logics found where indigenous peoples have gained recognition of their common tenure systems in Western courts.

Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century illuminates the transnational agrarian movements that are remaking rural society and the world's food and agriculture systems. Marc Edelman explains how peasant movements are staking their claims from farmers' fields to massive protests around the world, shaping heated debates over peasants' rights and the very category of "peasant" within the agrarian organizations and in the United Nations. Edelman chronicles the rise of these movements, their objectives, and their alliances with environmental, human rights, women's, and food justice groups. The book scrutinizes high-profile activists and the forgotten genealogies and policy implications of foundational analytical frameworks like "moral economy," and concepts, such as "food sovereignty" and "civil society." Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century charts the struggle of agrarian movements in the face of land grabbing, counter agrarian reform, and a looming climate catastrophe, and celebrates engaged research from Central America to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

This introduction to global environmental politics examines why environmental challenges occur and how we can effectively respond to them.

The ubiquitous nature of mobile and pervasive computing has begun to reshape and complicate our notions of space, time, and identity. In this collection, over thirty internationally recognized contributors reflect on ubiquitous computing’s implications for the ways in which we interact with our environments, experience time, and develop identities individually and socially. Interviews with working media artists lend further perspectives on these cultural transformations. Drawing on cultural theory, new media art studies, human-computer interaction theory, and software studies, this cutting-edge book critically unpacks the complex ubiquity-effects confronting us every day. The companion website can be found here: http://ubiquity.dk

This book investigates competing constructions of areas beyond national jurisdiction, and their role in the creation and articulations of legal principles, providing a broader perspective on the ongoing negotiation at the UN on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.

"Based on years of archival work and fieldwork, Climate Politics on the Border distinctly demonstrates why ecological and anticolonial approaches to rhetoric are essential for grappling with climate politics. The book argues persuasively for treating climate and environmental justice through ecology and decoloniality, and it provides rich theoretical language, methodological innovations, and practical insight for engaging these intersections through local climate politics"--

While digital media give us the ability to communicate with and know the world, their use comes at the expense of an immense ecological footprint and environmental degradation. In Finite Media Sean Cubitt offers a large-scale rethinking of theories of mediation by examining the environmental and human toll exacted by mining and the manufacture, use, and disposal of millions of phones, computers, and other devices. The way out is through an eco-political media aesthetics, in which people use media to shift their relationship to the environment and where public goods and spaces are available to all. Cubitt demonstrates this through case studies ranging from the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang to an image of Saturn taken during NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, suggesting that affective responses to images may generate a populist environmental politics that demands better ways of living and being. Only by reorienting our use of media, Cubitt contends, can we overcome the failures of political elites and the ravages of capital.

The continent for science is also a continent for the humanities. Despite having no indigenous human population, Antarctica has been imagined in powerful, innovative, and sometimes disturbing ways that reflect politics and culture much further north. Antarctica has become an important source of data for natural scientists working to understand global climate change. As this book shows, the tools of literary studies, history, archaeology, and more, can likewise produce important insights into the nature of the modern world and humanity more broadly.