Earthlings
Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World
by Adrian Parr
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Pub Date Jul 05 2022 | Archive Date Aug 24 2022
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Description
Amid environmental catastrophe, it is vital to recall what unites all forms of life. We share characteristics and genetic material extending back billions of years. More than that, we all—from humans to plants to bacteria—share a planet. We are all Earthlings.
Adrian Parr calls on us to understand ourselves as existing with and among the many forms of Earthling life. She argues that human survival requires us to recognize our interdependent relationships with the other species and systems that make up life on Earth. In a series of meditations, Earthlings portrays the wonder and beauty of life with deep feeling, vivid detail, and an activist spirit. Parr invites readers to travel among the trees of the Amazonian rainforest; take flight with birds and butterflies migrating through the skies; and plunge into the oceans with whales and polar bears—as well as to encounter bodies infected with deadly viruses and maimed by the violence of global capitalism.
Combining poetic observation with philosophical contemplation and scientific evidence, Parr offers a moving vision of a world in upheaval and a potent manifesto for survival. Earthlings is both a joyful celebration of the magnificence of the biosphere and an urgent call for action to save it.
Advance Praise
"This highly original contribution on the impending climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene is nothing short of a new bio-ecological philosophy for life. It confronts head-on the need for a new ethics for cohabitation with other life forms on this planet. In doing so, it asks profound questions on the basis of what it means to be human in the twenty-first century."
--Brad Evans, author of Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780231205498 |
| PRICE | $22.00 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
Chantal L, Reviewer
From an academic point of view, I'd give this book 4 or 5 stars; from a mainstream point of view, 3 stars. I'm still not sure who 'Earthlings' is targeted at - other environmental social scientists, or the general public? If it's the latter, then the writing is badly judged in its inaccessibility.
Having done an environmental MA with a lot of more-than-human geography thrown in, I "got" most of the content. Parr selects poignant and striking examples to illuminate her philosophical musings, from a day out on the beach in Australia to a broken polar bear being held captive in a Chinese mall. Still, I only have so much patient for academicspeak, and I would have loved Parr to have shared far more vignettes from what I'm sure is an extensive collection of experiences during her career and life as an environmentalist. Much of the book feels very abstract, and therefore more forgettable, despite moments of piercing analysis.
(With thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)
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