The Renewable Normal confronts the aesthetic, affective, and political dimensions of the transition to renewable energy. Written by the After Oil Collective, the book examines how renewable energy is being marshaled to sustain existing systems of inequality and exploitation under a banner of techno-optimism and green growth. It introduces the concept of the “renewable normal” to describe a regime of energy transition that promises transformation but delivers continuity, repackagin...

Popular Culture: A User’s Guide, International Edition ventures beyond the history of pop culture to give readers the vocabulary and tools to address and analyze the contemporary cultural landscape that surrounds them.Moves beyond the history of pop culture to give students the vocabulary and tools to analyze popular culturesuitable for the study of popular culture across a range of disciplines, from literary theory and cultural studies to philosophy and so...

Electric cars, smart apps, green AI, carbon capture, solar panels-everywhere we turn, we're told technology will save the planet. Green Dreams shows why that promise is so compelling, and why it keeps us chasing solutions that leave the real causes of the climate crisis untouched.Blending cultural criticism, political analysis, and environmental history, Green Dreams traces the rise of green techno-optimism from postwar fantasies of progress to Si...

"The wide range of subjects . . . provides a glimpse of the extent to which Bourdieu's theories of culture have gained widespread currency in the humanities." —David Eick, SubStanceThe work of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential French intellectuals of the twentieth century, has had an enormous impact on research in fields as diverse as aesthetics, education, anthropology, and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture is the first ...

How has our relation to energy changed over time? What differences do particular energy sources make to human values, politics, and imagination? How have transitions from one energy source to another—from wood to coal, or from oil to solar to whatever comes next—transformed culture and society? What are the implications of uneven access to energy in the past, present, and future? Which concepts and theories clarify our relation to energy, and which just get in the way? Fueling Culture offe...

Power Shift traces recent social and cultural shifts in how we understand and imagine energy, the environment, and the challenges of global warming. Across the globe, the need to transition to renewables has become the guiding reality of our energy present and future, despite continuing resistance to change. But what does this moment of energy transition look like for those struggling to make it happen in a way that benefits every individual and all communities?Featuring brief essa...

Who will lead the transition from fossil fuel–dependent societies into renewable energy futures?Energy transition is crucial to the struggle against climate change. But even while embracing the death of fossil fuels, some want to preserve the current social and political order. Futures of the Sun explores the competing eco-stories being offered by people intent on shaping the transition to fit their vision and version of a renewable society. Imre Szeman ex...

AFTER GLOBALIZATION“Relentlessly, remorselessly, endlessly, we are told there is no alternative to globalization, whether our lecturers are bourgeois economists, progressive journalists, or imaginative litterateurs. Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman dare to go beyond the standard thinking of the day and query the very heart of mobile capital and its impact on daily life. Their alternative vision breathes new life into our sense of evolution and inevitabi...

How can humanities scholars help us respond to growing concerns about climate change and fossil fuels?Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the unsustainability of the fuels we use to power our modern society, energy humanists ...

This helpful guide serves as an introduction to contemporary literary theory.Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: The Johns Hopkins Guide is a clear, accessible, and detailed overview of the most important thinkers and topics in the field. Written by specialists from across disciplines, its entries cover contemporary theory from Adorno to Žižek, providing an informative and reliable introduction to a vast, challenging area of inquiry. Materials inclu...

Around the globe, contemporary protest movements are contesting the oligarchic appropriation of natural resources, public services, and shared networks of knowledge and communication. These struggles raise the same fundamental demand and rest on the same irreducible principle: the common.In this exhaustive account, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval show how the common has become the defining principle of alternative political movements in the 21st century. In societies dee...

Contemporary life is founded on oil - a cheap, accessible, and rich source of energy that has shaped cities and manufacturing economies at the same time that it has increased mobility, global trade, and environmental devastation. Despite oil’s essential role, full recognition of its social and cultural significance has only become a prominent feature of everyday debate and discussion in the early twenty-first century.Presenting a multifaceted analysis of the cultural, social, and p...