John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Brian M. Napoletano

  • Henri Lefebvre’s Conception of Nature-Society in the Revoltuonary Project of Autogeston

    “Henri Lefebvre’s Conception of Nature-Society in the Revoltuonary Project of Autogeston” (coauthered with Brian M. Napoletano, Pedro Urquijo, and Brett Clark—Foster listed fourth), Dialogues in Human Geography (prepublished online March 29, 2022), 20 pp.

    Henri Lefebvre’s intricate material-dialectical approach to the nature-society problematic, taken together with his advocacy of a praxis oriented to total transformation from the ground up through autogestion, offers a unified, critical, and dialectical approach to political ecology. Unfortunately, his work in these areas has too often been interpreted as divided and fragmentary, splitting his radical analysis of the production of space-time from his critical praxis related to autogestion. We offer a corrective to this by elaborating briefly on his use of Marx’s material-dialectical approach, outlining how Lefebvre brings this method to bear on the nature-society problematic, and how his theorization of autogestion points to a radical praxis aimed at overcoming the social-ecological contradictions of capital. His engagement with Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, and his advocacy of a radical project of autogestion as part of the critique of everyday life, serve to place the underlying issue of alienation in spatial terms, offering geography a transformative perspective that avoids positing closed systems and attempting to exhaust the various meanings assigned to nature. In this, Lefebvre demonstrates how the nature-society problematic overflows issues of ontological framing and language, calling for a unity of radical theory and practice to overcome the separations.

  • Henri Lefebvre’s Marxian Ecological Critique

    “Henri Lefebvre’s Marxian Ecological Critique: Recovering a Foundational Contribution to Environmental Sociology” (coauthored with Brian M. Napoletano, Brett Clark & Pedro S. Urquijo), Environmental Sociology 6, no. 1 (2020): 31-41. DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2019.1670892. [PDF]

    French Marxist sociologist, Henri Lefebvre, was one of the foremost social theorists of the twentieth century, celebrated for his critiques of everyday life, urban revolution, and the production of space. We argue here that his mature work also encompassed a theory of ecological crisis, drawing directly on Marx’s theory of metabolic rift. In this conception, the dialectics of nature and society were subject to alienated capitalist accumulation, giving rise to metabolic rifts, epochal crises, and new historical moments of revolutionary praxis aimed at the metamorphosis of everyday life. Lefebvre thus ranks as one of the foundational contributors to environmental sociology, whose rich theoretical analysis offers the possibility of a wider social and ecological synthesis.

  • Making Space in Critical Environmental Geography for the Metabolic Rift

    “Making Space in Critical Environmental Geography for the Metabolic Rift” (coauthored with Brian M. Napoletano, Brett Clark, Pedro S. Urquijo, Michael K. McCall & Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Napoletano listed first), Annals of the American Association of Geographers, vol. 109, no. 6: 1811-1828, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2019.1598841. [PDF]

    Marx’s concept of metabolic rift has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework with which to explain the socioecological crises of capitalism. Yet, despite its relevance to key concerns in critical environmental geography, it has remained marginal within the field. Here we address this by distinguishing between metabolic rift theory and two predominant Marxist approaches in environmental geography: the production-of-nature thesis and posthumanist world ecology. We follow this comparative assessment with a detailed analysis of metabolic rift theory and a brief overview of how the concept relates to key concerns in critical environmental geography. We conclude by discussing how a stronger engagement with the metabolic rift approach could benefit the field.