Anthropocene Good Reads #2020
A selection from Lyon Urban School’s daily Anthropocene information monitoring on twitter and Anthropocene2050.
🆕 Coming soon: a monthly review in English, sharing articles on the Anthropocene in all fields of knowledge.
Let’s start with a beautiful, non-classifiable UFO:
Anna L. TSING, Jennifer DEGER, Alder KELEMAN SAXENA, Feifei ZHOU (dir.), Feral Atlas. The More-Than-Human Anthropocene (Stanford Press, 2020).
An exploration of the Anthropocene viewed through the feralization (the return to the wild) of ecosystems, that were initially fostered by human infrastructure, and that flourished outside of all human control. The project brings together 79 fieldwork investigations by scientists, humanists and artists.
AGRICULTURE
Gilles LUNEAU, Steak barbare. Hold-up végan sur l’assiette (éditions de L’Aube, 2020).
An investigation into so-called “cellular” agriculture, i.e. the production by start-ups of food (animal products) from stem cells grown in the laboratory or from plant substitutes assembled with synthetic proteins (meat, egg, dairy product, fish, seafood, gelatin, leather, silk, etc.). The journalist investigates the funders of these initiatives and warns about the ideology behind them, fearing a real civilizational disruption.
Bertrand VALIORGUE, Refonder l’agriculture à l’heure de l’Anthropocène (éditions le Bord de l’Eau, 2020).
Anthropocene-induced changes are weakening the food system. Agriculture itself is being questioned by social movements about its role in climate change. New entrepreneurs of so-called “cellular” agriculture are emerging. The agricultural profession is called upon to transform itself and to branch out towards regenerative agriculture, or it will disappear.
ARTS
Antony GORMLEY, Martin GAYFORD, Shaping the World: From Prehistory to Now (Thames & Hudson, 2020).
Sculptor Antony Gormley, and art critic and historian Martin Gayford explore sculpture as a universal art form throughout the world, from prehistory to the present day. They analyze this gesture not as a simple aesthetic research but as the stigma of the imperious human need to impose its mark on the landscape, to build, to create images, to practice a religion and to philosophize.
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
Mathieu BABLET, Carbone & Silicium (Ankama, 2020).
An initiatory journey spanning almost three centuries: it is the journey of two robots created to take care of the aging human population. These mechanical and sensitive beings are in search of the meaning of their lives. Against the backdrop, human civilizations are being torn apart and are often reconstructed in pain, giving the androids food for thought.
Jérôme DUBOIS, Citéville (éditions Cornélius, 2020) et Citéruine (Éditions Matière, 2020).
Citéruine is a desolate city, emptied of its inhabitants, worn out by time and abandonment. It is the parallel reflection, the rest or the nightmare of a potential city, a big city spread out, without center nor periphery, a post-industrial and overpopulated megalopolis, urbanized to excess: Citéville. Both cities have been designed according to the same division; they communicate and complement each other in two distinct books.
Jessica OUBLIE, Nicola GOBBI, Katherine AVRAAM, Vinciane LEBRUN, Tropiques toxiques. Le scandale du chlordécone (Steinkis, 2020).
This graphic novel in the form of a well-documented investigation draws the history of chlordecone in the West Indies and tells the story of the struggle led by environmentalist NGOs, researchers, farmers, activists and citizens of Guadeloupe and Martinique to have France’s responsibility for chlordecone pollution of the soil and water recognized. The author highlights the slave-owner past and the position of the békés (white Creole inhabitants descended from the first European settlers) to shed light on the dynamics at work.
Joe SACCO, Paying the Land (Jonathan Cape, 2020).
The author returns to documentary comics to meet the indigenous people of the the Northwestern Territory in Canada. He draws their history since the arrival of the first settlers and paints a terrifying picture, both economic and ecological as well as human: with the discovery of oil and gold, the authorities appropriated the land no longer through massacres, but methodically and administratively through treaties.
DECOLONIALISM & POSTCOLONIALISM
Guillaume BLANC, L’invention du colonialisme vert. Pour en finir avec le mythe de l’Éden africain (Flammarion, 2020).
The historian explores the weight of the colonial past which contributes to the perpetuation of a mythical vision of the African continent as a wild land, to be preserved from its own inhabitants, deemed too numerous and threatening for the natural parks created by the colonists. Bringing together unpublished archives and life stories, this book brings to light the contradictions of developed countries, which are destroying at home the nature, they believe they are protecting over there in Africa, prolonging, with an astonishingly good conscience, the scheme of a new kind of colonialism: green colonialism.
Sanjav SUBRAHMANYAM, Faut-il universaliser l’histoire ? Entre dérives nationalistes et identitaires (CNRS éditions, 2020).
The historian is wary of the “universalization” of history, which he sees as a process of deliberate exclusion. This is why he prefers “connected history” to “universal history”, and advocates above all for a historical practice developed in a spirit of exchange and openness to other experiences and other cultures, of curiosity for other parts of the world and other peoples, and not in a spirit of identity claims or national and cultural self-satisfaction.
DIGITAL
Yaël BENAYOUN, Irénée REGNAULD, Technologies partout, démocratie nulle part. Plaidoyer pour que les choix technologiques deviennent l’affaire de tous (FYP, 2020).
Technology everywhere, democracy nowhere. To escape the confiscation of progress, the authors call for democratic debate and citizen demands to be placed back at the heart of technological development. They remind us that collective deliberation has not been associated with the digitization of the world: it is still possible to sort out which technologies we want and which we do not want.
Cédric DURAND, Technoféodalisme. Critique de l’économie numérique (La Découverte, 2020).
A great regression is accompanying the digitalization of the world: the return of monopolies, the dependence of subjects on platforms, and the blurring of the distinction between economics and politics. The mutations at work are transforming the quality of social processes and giving new relevance to feudalism.
Nicolas NOVA, Smartphones. Une enquête anthropologique (Metispresses, 2020).
A meticulous anthropological investigation of the smartphone, this ambivalent object, this technological device, which accompanies us in our daily tasks and follows us around. An object that fascinates as much as it worries.
ECONOMY
Robert BOYER, Les capitalismes à l’épreuve de la pandémie (La Découverte, 2020).
The economist, co-founder of the “school of regulation”, believes that the pandemic has considerably strengthened capitalism. According to him, it has exacerbated the competition between the GAFA platform economy (a big winner that accentuates inequalities) and state capitalism, destabilizing international relations and risking the collapse of regional coordination projects, such as the European Union, to the benefit of nation states. The author proposes an “anthropogenetic” economy: a model of production of humanity by humans, which would satisfy essential needs.
Eve CHIAPELLO, Antoine MISSEMER, Antonin POTTIER (ed.), Faire l’économie de l’environnement (Presses des Mines, 2020).
The contributions in this book reflect the efforts of economic theory to think about the consequences of resource exploitation and to develop instruments of intervention. Combining economics, sociology and history, these articles explore the multiple facets of environmental economics using historical and contemporary analyses to show the challenges and limitations.
Alain GRANDJEAN, Nicolas DUFRENE, Une monnaie écologique (Odile Jacob, 2020).
The two economists argue for the loosening of the monetary straitjacket and propose that central banks should make the money needed to finance the ecological transition of the economy. This is the only way, they say, to mobilize the necessary means for the urgent transition to an economy that does not destroy the living environment of the human species.
Jacques RICHARD, en collaboration avec Alexandre RAMBAUD, Révolution comptable. Pour une entreprise écologique et sociale (Editions de l’Atelier, 2020).
Accounting: a response to the social and environmental crises? This manifesto for a new ecological and social business makes the radical proposal to put financial capital, human capital and natural capital on an equal footing. What if the company became an ecologically co-managed common?
GEOGRAPHY
Michel LUSSAULT, Chroniques de géo’ virale (Editions deux-cent-cinq, collection « A partir de l’Anthropocène », 2020). Drawing by Lou Herrmann.
The geographer proposes to “think the World with the virus”. He shows how the diffusion of Covid-19 reveals the major characteristics of globalization, in particular the generalized urbanization of the planet. The pandemic stems from the systemic nature of the world; it testifies to its vulnerabilities and underscores the extent of social injustice.
HEALTH
Adam HART, Unfit for Purpose. When Human Evolution Collides with the Modern World (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Stress, obesity, mental health problems, addiction, intestinal diseases, violence and even fake news: the biologist explores the gap between our Homo sapiens biology and the modern world we have created to reveal how the biological adaptations that have evolved to help us survive are now working against us (edifying example of stress).
Frédéric KECK, Avian Reservoirs. Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts (Duke University Press, 2020).
The anthropologist shows how “virus hunters” and public health officials work with veterinarians and bird watchers to track the mutation of influenza viruses between wild birds, farmed poultry and humans. Using the methods of social anthropology, he describes how pandemic preparedness techniques are transforming human and non-human relationships over the long Anthropocene period.
HISTORY
Jean-Baptiste FRESSOZ, Fabien LOCHER, Les Révoltes du ciel. Une histoire du changement climatique XVe-XXe siècle (Seuil, 2020).
A history of the ancient and constant interest in climate change and the role that humans play in it: from the colonization of the Americas to the industrial era and the French Revolution. However, a parenthesis: between the 19th and the end of the 20th century, technical progress allowed humankind to forget the climate.
François HARTOG, Chronos. L’Occident aux prises avec le Temps (Gallimard, 2020).
The historian believes that the Anthropocene introduces a new regime of historicity that upsets our economy of time: not only does time begin to escape our control, but also it is marked by the reintroduction of a future perspective — collapse. The end of history? On the contrary, bursting the bubble of presentism, the anthropocenic catastrophe opens a new reflection on the long time, evolution and our choices of civilization.
François JARRIGE, Alexis VRIGNON, Face à la puissance. Une histoire des énergies alternatives et renouvelables à l’âge industriel (La Découverte, 2020).
For a long time, the history of energy was summed up by the rise of power, made possible by technical progress. However, this reassuring narrative, which has been moving along with modernity, is now cracking: the belief in energy abundance, and the quest for infinite power that supports it, are coming up against planetary limits, despite the abstract utopias that continue to promise abundant and free energy.
Pierre SINGARAVELOU, Sylvain VENAYRE (ed.), Le magasin du monde. La mondialisation par les objets du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours (Fayard, 2020).
Nearly 90 historians offer a scholarly and playful history of the world through objects. From the flip-flop to the sari, from the yellow vest to the plastic bottle, via the sex toy and the chicotte, these objects, alternately trivial and extraordinary, shed light on our most intimate practices while inviting us to understand globalization and its limits in a different way.
Laurent VIDAL, Les hommes lents : résister à la modernité (XVe — XXe siècle) (Flammarion, 2020).
A history of slowness: the historian shows how Modernity was built on discrimination, based on speed as a social virtue. Speed and power are thus intimately linked. However, if slowness is a vice, more readily attributed to the poor, and to colonized natives or migrants, it can also become a weapon of subversion in the hands of the dominated.
Greg WOOLF, The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020).
A natural history of the origins of urbanization and its growth, published at a time when a pandemic is shaking our faith in the cities. In particular, it reveals that old epidemics have not made cities disappear. However, the author moderates the projections of a continuous growth of urbanization until we are “uniformly urbanized”: “If the study of ancient cities teaches us anything it is that there have been many urban moments, but few that lasted more than a few centuries.”
LITERATURE
Andrew MILNER, J.R. BURGMANN, Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach (Liverpool University Press, 2020).
Starting from the premise that climate change is a geological and socio-cultural phenomenon, the authors use the tools of cultural sociology and literature to analyze how a genre, which defines itself in relation to science, tries to respond fictitiously to the challenges of climate reality.
Kim Stanley ROBINSON, The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020).
The science-fiction author, known for his trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, in which he imagines the terraformation of the planet Mars over more than two centuries, explores here the possibility of a terraformation of the Earth! The COP29 of 2025 creates an international agency responsible for implementing the decisions of the Paris Agreement and defending the interests of all living creatures present or future. Its unofficial name: the Ministry for the Future. Shortly afterwards, a slightly stronger than usual heat wave kills 20 million people in India. This is the starting point of a revolution in Indian society and economy, which becomes a model for the Ministry for the Future, itself confronted with the inertia of the economic and political world and the resistance of the population.
Pierre SCHOENTJES, Littérature et écologie. Le mur des abeilles (José Corti, 2020).
For a long time reluctant to include ecology in its universe, French literature has, since the end of the 2000s, given an important place to environmental damage. This essay explores the relationship between French literature, the environment and ecology, from an ecopoetic perspective. It anticipates a profound reinvention of the forms and modalities of narrative, due to the specificity of the ecological subject: for example, it seems difficult to address the sensitivity of non-humans by resorting to the traditional approach of psychology.
PHILOSOPHY, SOCIOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY & IDEAS
Serge AUDIER, La cité écologique. Pour un éco-républicanisme (Le découverte, 2020).
In this counter-current essay, the philosopher calls for reinventing our great ideals of freedom, equality and solidarity to collectively confront the ecological catastrophe. The challenge is to create an ecological city and thus to propose a common vision and narrative — eco-republicanism — , capable of inspiring a policy of expanded solidarity with the Earth.
Pierre CHARBONNIER, Abondance et liberté. Une histoire environnementale des idées (La Découverte, 2020).
The pact between democracy and growth is today challenged by climate change and the disruption of ecological balances. The philosopher calls for saving the democratic project by decoupling it from our destructive way of life, while our imaginations and institutions are marked by this pact between growth and autonomy.
Frédéric KECK, Signaux d’alerte. Contagion virale, justice sociale, crises environnementales (Desclée de Brouwer, 2020).
The anthropologist analyzes the reception of the increasing number of warning signals about ongoing ecological disasters. The value of these signals is measured by “the attractiveness of the signal, i.e. its capacity to attract the attention and interest of those who receive it”. Based on a study of pandemic sentinels in Asian societies, he compares the behavior of regions that emit warning signals to the behavior of birds that collaborate to warn of the presence of a predator. He thus points to the possibility of a new form of global solidarity and social justice.
Catherine LARRERE, Raphaël LARRERE, Le pire n’est pas certain. Essai sur l’aveuglement catastrophiste (Premier Parallèle, 2020).
The environmental philosopher and the agricultural engineer and sociologist denounce the powerlessness on which current catastrophism is based: in the reverse of their discourse, collapsologists feed neoliberal logic. “What if, by dint of denouncing the State and institutions to praise the mutual aid of citizens and bioregions, the collapseists had become the useful idiots of business as usual?”
Achille MBEMBE, Brutalisme (La Découverte, 2020).
Brutalism — this is the name given by the philosopher to the age of the manufactured being in a manufactured world: the great burden of our time, the weight of raw materials. The transformation of humanity into material and energy is the ultimate project of Brutalism. By detailing the monumentality and gigantism of such a project, this essay argues in favor of a refoundation of the human community in solidarity with all living beings, which will only come about, however, if what has been broken is repaired.
Baptiste MORIZOT, Manières d’être vivant (Actes Sud, 2020).
At a time when we are now incapable of considering the living around us other than as a setting for our own use, the philosopher calls for a transformation of our ways of living and dwelling together. Interpreters and diplomats of interdependence are then necessary to translate the behaviors and relationships that weave the living.
Sonia SHAH, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move (Bloomsbury, 2020).
The journalist presents the human and non-human migrations that will result from climate change as an integral part of the history of life. Alongside moving stories of migrant families, she analyses the annual migrations of certain birds, the dissemination of seeds, or the movements of animals in search of partners or new territories to highlight our different attitudes towards non-human and human migrations.
POLITICS & GEOPOLITICS
Mark ALIZART, Le coup d’État climatique (PUF, 2020).
There is no climate crisis but a political will that the climate be in crisis: this is the provocative thesis defended by the author, who shows how individuals are betting on the collapse of the world as on falling stock market values. He calls for a revolution in favor of true “ecosocialism” to counter this “carbofascist” coup.
Stefan AYKUT, Climatiser le monde (Quae, 2020).
The political scientist analyzes the “climatization of the world”: how climate change aggregates and connects previously separate issues, such as food security, finance or soils. He decrypts the climate governance established notably in the Conferences of Parties (COP) to reveal the complexity, ambiguities and contradictions of climate policy making.
Simon DALBY, Anthropocene Geopolitics. Globalization, Security, Sustainability (Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2020).
The professor of geography and environmental studies analyzes the conditions for a true sustainability policy that takes into account global limits at a time when ensuring the survival of an economy based on the consumption of fossil fuels remains a political priority to this day.
Yifei LI, Judith SHAPIRO, China Goes Green. Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet (polity, 2020).
An analysis of the promises and risks of China’s authoritarian state environmentalism, which is combined with political agendas such as widespread surveillance and geopolitical influence.
Andreas MALM, How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Learning to Fight in a World on Fire (Verso, 2021). Published in France in 2020.
The activist and associate senior lecturer of human ecology looks back at the history of several victorious social struggles, from the abolition of slavery to the Arab Spring, the suffragette movement in England or the fight against apartheid in South Africa. He points out that these movements, presented as non-violent, were all accompanied — and therefore helped — by more radical actions, which contributed to their success. For him, the global mobilization against global warming must take this path, otherwise it will remain powerless.
Thea RIOFRANCOS, Resource Radicals. From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020).
The political scientist analyzes the field of political struggle represented by resource policy in Ecuador, and its actors with contradictory visions of resource extraction. She shows how Ecuador’s commodity-dependent economy and the history of indigenous uprisings offer a unique opportunity to understand development, democracy and the ecological foundations of global capitalism.
ZETKIN COLLECTIVE, Andreas MALM (ed.), White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism (Verso, spring 2021). Published in France in 2020.
An attempt to think together about the rise in temperatures and that of the far right by analyzing the positions of the far right with regard to ecology throughout history and by showing how fossil fuels have been a cornerstone of the white domination of the modern world.
SCIENCE
Julia ADENEY THOMAS, Mark WILLIAMS, Jan ZALASIEWICZ, The Anthropocene. A Multidisciplinary Approach (Polity, 2020).
A multidisciplinary approach by scholars in paleobiology, paleoenvironment and history to understand the Anthropocene in all its dimensions: after a detailed exploration of the geological concept, the book examines the political and ethical issues of justice, economics and culture. It also analyzes the history and possibilities of mitigating the devastating effects of the Anthropocene.
Aurélien BOUTAUD, Natacha GONDRAN, Les limites planétaires (La Découverte, 2020).
The two scientists highlight the main variables that determine the equilibrium of ecosystems on a planetary scale in order to determine the boundaries that must not be crossed if humanity is to avoid the risks of collapse: beyond climate and biodiversity, they also address the imbalance of biogeochemical cycles, land use change, the introduction of anthropogenic pollutants into ecosystems and ocean acidification.
David FARRIER, Footprints. In Search of Future Fossils (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).
Archaeology of the Future: the book offers an anthropological examination of the Anthropocene, asking what the world will look like in 10,000 years, or 10 million years, and what stories will be told about us. It examines the traces we leave on the planet today — from plastic pollution to gases in the atmosphere and the skeletons of skyscrapers — and speculates on what these fossils might reveal to future archaeologists studying the 21st century.
Juan FRANCISCO SALAZAR, Céline GRANJOU, Matthew KEARNES, Anna KRZYWOSZYNSKA, Manuel TIRONI (ed.), Thinking with Soils. Material Politics and Social Theory (Bloomsbury, 2020).
This new social theory of soil reveals the growing interest of social science research in materiality. This book explores the transformations of socio-ecologies but also of political and artistic practices in the face of global change.
David C. HOLMES, Lucy M. RICHARDSON (ed.), Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change (Edward Elgar, 2020).
An essential book that provides the essential knowledge to communicate the emergency of the struggle against climate change. This research manual brings together international scholars, who review the main disciplinary foundations of climate change communication, including: climate science, audience studies, sociology, and the efficacy of diverse communication forms ranging from science communication, political communication and visual communication to film, theatre and the novel.
Marta SZULKIN, Jason MUNSHI-SOUTH, Anne CHARMANTIER (ed.), Urban Evolutionary Biology (Oxford University Press, 2020).
About fifty scientists present an emerging scientific field: evolutionary biology in the urban environment, which describes the consequences of human activity and urbanization on the major processes that influence genetic changes and provoke the evolution of species.
COLLECTIVE, Dictionnaire critique de l’anthropocène (CNRS Editions, 2020).
The 330 entries in this critical dictionary are based on field practice, attentive to detail and distrustful of pre-established discourse. They approach the Anthropocene as a concept that relaunches reflection on the relationship between nature and society, between scientific observation and political action, through a spatial and territorial approach.
URBAN
Matthieu ADAM, Emeline COMBY (ed.), Le Capital dans la cité. Une encyclopédie critique de la ville (Éditions Amsterdam, 2020).
An encyclopedia that offers tools to understand, think and act on the urban transformations underway: capitalism has transformed urban policies into “a vehicle for managerial and financial logics that have led to the explosion of social and spatial inequalities. Reconfigured according to criteria of attractiveness, cities are transformed into marketing objects to be developed, while their precarious populations seem destined to evolve in a public space that is increasingly restricted and sanitized through successive privatizations”.
Armelle CHOPLIN, Matière grise de l’urbain: la vie du ciment en Afrique (Métis Presses, 2020).
The geographer takes us on an exploration of the cement industry in West Africa, at the heart of multiple political, social and economic issues. The very rapid urbanization of the African continent is reflected in the vogue for concrete constructions, even as “voices are being raised to denounce a cement industry with destructive effects on the environment”. The author conducts an investigation as close as possible to her subject, from the limestone quarry to the construction site, along the 500 km urban corridor that links Accra, Lomé, Cotonou and Lagos, but also as close as possible to the people linked to this “ grey gold “: “ giants of the sector, investors, political actors but also masons and inhabitants who build their own houses “.
Andrew DEENER, The Problem with Feeding Cities. The Social Transformation of Infrastructure, Abundance, and Inequality in America (The University of Chicago Press, 2020).
A historical and sociological study of the U.S. food system. The sociologist highlights the interlocking system of agriculture, manufacturing, shipping, logistics and sales that each food represents. He analyzes the transformation of the U.S. food system from supplying local communities to the nation as a whole over the course of a century, but also from meeting basic needs to making a profit. Finally, the study shows that the development of the market and cities, and the construction of distribution systems have led to poor infrastructure and the emergence of “food deserts”.
Hannah KNOX, Thinking Like a Climate. Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change (Duke University Press, 2020).
An ethnographic survey conducted in England, the cradle of the industrial revolution, among decision-makers, politicians, activists, academics and citizens to understand the challenges that climate change poses to knowledge production and public policy. It challenges administrative and bureaucratic boundaries and invites us to reinvent the social in climate terms.
Jean-Marc OFFNER, Anachronismes urbains (SciencesPo Les Presses, 2020).
A deconstruction of the dogmas inherited from the Trente Glorieuses (the boom decades after World War II) — which continue to govern cities and territories — to think about the city of tomorrow, mobile, connected and subject to environmental requirements.
Philippe RAHM, Histoire naturelle de l’architecture. Comment le climat, les épidémies et l’énergie ont façonné la ville (Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 2020).
This book invites us to recognize the essential role of natural, physical, biological or climatic causes in architectural history from prehistory to the present day. “How did the wheat give birth to the city? What do domes owe to the fear of stagnant air? How a sprig of mint invented urban parks? Why did the eruption of a volcano invent the modern city? How did oil make cities grow in the desert? How is CO2 transforming cities and buildings? ». This re-reading of the history of architecture through physical, geographical, climatic and bacteriological facts enables us to better understand and face the environmental challenges of the urbanized world.
Alexandre RIGAL, Habitudes en mouvement. Vers une vie sans voiture (MétisPresses, 2020).
In order to move towards a post-automobile society, the sociologist “starts from a simple premise: if we can get used to the automobile, we can also get rid of it”. He suggests focusing on moments such as youth or moving house in order to disaccustom oneself to the car and to train in new modes of travel (bicycle, train, bus) to create new habits. The “symbolic and ritual value of the driver’s license” could also be weakened by a “mobility license” that would mark the passage to adulthood through broad access to active and soft mobility.
Eric VERDEIL, Thomas ANSART, Benoît MARTIN, Patrice MITRANO, Antoine RIO, Atlas des mondes urbains (SciencesPo Les Presses, 2020).
Beyond speeches on the many ills of the city, this atlas reminds us that cities are also our common good, places of wealth production, innovation, cultural creation, solidarity and resilience. The authors explore urban worlds through a wide range of heterogeneous fields: megacities such as small towns, basements, vegetalisation, inequalities, smart cities and low-tech cities, etc.
Joëlle ZASK, Zoocities. Des animaux sauvages dans la ville (Premier Parallèle, 2020).
The philosopher investigates the kangaroos that roam the streets of Australia, or the coyotes those of New York. She “proposes an experience of thought. What would a city look like in which distances and spaces would make it possible to coexist with wild animals? A city that would no longer be thought against animals, nor for them, but with them? ».
