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florisw's review against another edition
4.0
Put simply, this is a polemic against theories of nature and society that are increasingly if not already mainstream in university lecture halls. Andreas Malm targets different strands of postmodernism and posthumanism, tearing into some of the most popular names in modern-day sociological, ecocritical, historical, etc. theory. He argues that the theories which are dominant today are not helpful for the contemporary climate movement. The antidote, according to Malm, is a return to a more traditional, Marxist theory of nature and society, defined through the relationship between nature and labour. This would allow for a more coherent basis for political action. His productive arguments, however, are not the book’s strongest suit. In fact, I found his agreements with scholars far less memorable than his disagreements. I’d therefore recommend this book to those who consider themselves proponents of the theories he attacks (the (socio-natural) constructivists, new materialists, and so forth), because you’d find in Malm a valuable foil. Being somewhat familiar with these theories will also help you spot instances where he is maybe indulging a bit too much in stereotypes and prejudice. Below you’ll find a speedy summary.
Chapter 1 pits the natural constructivists against Malm the natural realist. Amongst the former you’d find Bill McKibben [b:The End of Nature|199359|The End of Nature|Bill McKibben|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385167858l/199359._SY75_.jpg|1308224] and Steven Vogel [b:Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory|2545347|Against Nature The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory|Steven Vogel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347347937l/2545347._SX50_.jpg|2552878], who argue that “nature” itself is, in a sense, no longer “nature” (it is dead, ended, irreversibly transformed). There are of course different kinds of constructivists: idealists that consider nature as a concept, and literalists that literally see nature as constructed and built by humans. Malm finds the latter laughable. “Ten herders can draw very different portraits of the same goat, but that does not mean that the goat is a painting”. Similarly, we humans “cannot say what the storm [of climate change] is like without deploying language, but that does not mean that the storm is a linguistic entity or consists of speech acts” (28). For Malm, and likely most other people, nature existed before humans, and has by no means “died” (yet). What humans do with nature, however, is another story.
In Chapter 2 Malm begins his tirade against nature-society hybridism – the idea that because natural and social phenomena have become compound-phenomena, they cannot be differentiated from one another anymore (unless by some sort of intellectual violence). Hybridists, Malm claims, are defined by two assumptions, which he calls ontological and methodological hybridism. The ontology (or, knowledge of how things are) of hybridism states that because they are so intertwined, nature and society do not exist separately from one another. The methodology (or, methods of understanding things) which arises from this ontology therefore implies that because they are so intertwined, there is no point in differentiating society from nature (43). The poster boy of this kind of thinking, and member of the top-10 most-cited authors in the humanities and social sciences, is Bruno Latour. Latour is a favourite subject of critique for Malm, and appears frequently throughout the book. Malm warns us that the danger of hybridism lies in its inability to make meaningful statements about reality. I LOVE the examples he uses here to give an idea of the limitations of hybridism (the colour of Donald Trump’s thoughts; the experience of being at a Run the Jewels concert after a white man has been acquitted of killing a black man), even though they're unnecessary at this point and a quite self-indulgent. In arguing against conflating nature and society, Malm ultimately advocates for keeping them separate. He agrees with Alf Hornborg (another prominent polemicist) that only by keeping nature and society as distinct entities can we understand how they intermingle. Keeping them separate will still allow us to distinguish between things humans/societies have constructed, and things that are generated by natural forces.
Chap 3 introduces a new kind of hybridism, “new materialism”, as well as other “post-human” theoretical turns since the 1970s. New materialists (generally) hold that human agency cannot be separated from the environments in which that agency emerges (83). Not only humans, but also the objects and technologies around them have the capacity for “acting” with agency. These kinds of ideas also lead to alternative “-cenes”, like the “Carbocene” or the “Anthrakacene” that historian Timothy LeCain advocates for, which refer to the agency of non-human materials like carbon or coal which shape our modern world (91). Malm considers these theories as variations on a pathetic fallacy (giving human feelings to something non-human), and urges us to see humans as special. They alone are responsible for the climate crisis. They alone can wipe out all other animals simply by means of the energy the former chooses to use. “A pacemaker carries scant weight against that reality” - you simply can't make them equal with animals and the environment (97). Here I believe he’s making a bit too much of a strawman for his arguments – I don’t think anyone will think of a pacemaker or any other type of mundane objects as a destroyer of life purely by virtue of its “agency”. In trying to maintain the human-nonhuman binary he believes is at risk, Malm fails to consider that different objects, technologies, or environments have different ways of affecting mankind. Would love to have seen a more nuanced acknowledgement of this. But alas, he finishes with a pretty funny and commendably straightforward quip: "Less of Latour, more of Lenin: that is what the warming condition calls for" (98)
Chap 4 serves as Malm’s defence of climate (or scientific) realism (using, again, Latour and his Actor-Network-Theory as a foil). Scientific realism ultimately comes down to the belief that nature and the universe will run its course regardless of how it is interpreted (or socially constructed). Though he credits Latour for his search of understanding science in a warming world, he immediately discredits him for the ammunition his theory has given climate denialists (whether this argument still holds water is up for debate). He is, however, in favour of Latour's insistence that human relations can be and are mediated through matter (like technology). Even though this is a slight reinvention of the wheel, given that Marx & Engels' Capital talks of human relations embodied in things as well (pastures, steam-engines, coats, etc). Ultimately, the point of criticising Latour and other hybridists (constructivists, new materialists) is to show that these theories don't help us study the social dynamics of a warming world. If constructionists collapse nature into society, new materialists do the opposite (121). Neither, according to Malm, provides a useful foundation for taking (climate) action. He criticises several ideals for the future of climate activism which stem from these newer theories, such as the Democratic Anthropocene concept (based on idea that no democracy has ever endured a famine, and we are all co-authors of the world around us. Malm ridicules this position. no flood or typhoon is going to care if a society is democratic or not. Here I kind of feel that Malm might be missing a point, or at least making some form of false equivalence, because DA would be a principle for guiding society towards a future where more is being done to mitigate warming and therefore is a step towards combat those floods and typhoons, not a solution in itself.
Chap 5 is where Malm wants to provide a stronger theoretical basis for ecological militancy, arguably the aim of his book. The answer lies in historical materialism. He is very much in favour of Marx's realist, anti-purist view of nature, namely that all nature is earth + labour. Labour is the “pivot of material flows” (128). You can see this most clearly in capitalist systems. The causes of climate change are top-down (i.e. nature itself didn't make CO2 levels increase), and capital is to blame for those changes. Humans are to blame in so far as they are the only species cable of the capitalist mode of production (referring back to his humans-are-special argument). He notes that “every productive force, nay every human artefact can be seen as a combination of the social and the natural" (135). NOT a hybrid, mind you, because it has the all the negative connotations he just listed, but a combination (a Marxist term), which is more uneven and dynamic, suggesting contradicting forces at work. Capital creates this imbalance between nature and society wherever its power extends. Nature-society combinations, therefore, are the way forward.
Chap 6 further develops this combination-perspective by arguing that polarisation between nature and society (keeping them at opposite ends of a spectrum) is a good thing. He defends this by supporting a Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems, termed “metabolic rift theory” - a very cool name for a pretty familiar academic idea. It can be summed up very crudely like this: “Nature consists of biophysical processes and cycles. So does society: human bodies must engage in metabolic exchanges with nonhuman nature. That need not be particularly harmful to any of the parties”. Over the course of history, however, these exchanges have become “fractured and forcibly rearranged”, causing harm not only to those (humans and nonhumans) disadvantaged by this change but also disturbing those natural biophysical processes and cycles. This is the rift that has opened up (142). Great. How does this fit with the rest of his argument? Well, in theories based on hybridism, all binaries are collapsed into a unity (he refers to this is called dissolutionism). When academics write books and articles in a dissolutionist manner, what you end up with is “an orgy in the mud”: fluffy prose which doesn’t say anything and – importantly – fuels an “emperor’s-new-clothes syndrome” in academia and beyond, when people don’t want to admit they don’t understand (Malm cites Ellen Hertz’s “refreshing outburst” here) (150-151). Having very recently experienced how frustrating this can be in the context of a group discussion, I wholeheartedly agree with this observation. Malm instead suggest that we need more radical binaries, so that inequalities in climate change can be addressed (e.g. a more radical rich-poor divide to show how much more the rich are contributing to CO2 emissions than the poor, to put it bluntly). Continuing with permanent “in-hyphenation” (insisting on talking about “nature-in-society”, “capital-in-nature”, etc. as a means of communicating how everything is unified), as proposed by historian Jason Moore, would get cumbersome and not get us anywhere. He blames Moore for blunting the radical climate movement’s key argument: “you did this to enrich yourself, not we are dying because of it”. What he wants is for this kind of feeling to be mobilised into an “ecological class hatred” (157). It’s a position I can understand but don’t feel comfortable with myself – surely theory may also allow us to work cooperatively? I don’t think Malm would share this view. Rich, predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly western populations benefit from and sustain their lifestyles on the current exploitation and destruction of the Earth. Climate science is an existential threat to them. And so there is no other option than confrontation. Malm gives us the choice of being militants or apathetic bystanders – there is no alternative in his world of radical binaries.
The conclusion is very choppy and feels a bit like Malm’s train of thought has run out of steam. No worries, by this point you’d have probably guessed what his main takeaways are. As I said, I recommend this book to people who are already slightly familiar, and ideally consider themselves proponents of, the theories attacked by Malm. Hopefully this book can prompt such people to question what it is they find valuable about such theories, and to what extent they are needed in both an academic and a political sense. I generally prefer arguments that take clear and bold positions in academia (see the fluff section above), and in that sense Malm has provided an excellent (if flawed) contribution to our ways of thinking about nature and society.
Chapter 1 pits the natural constructivists against Malm the natural realist. Amongst the former you’d find Bill McKibben [b:The End of Nature|199359|The End of Nature|Bill McKibben|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385167858l/199359._SY75_.jpg|1308224] and Steven Vogel [b:Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory|2545347|Against Nature The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory|Steven Vogel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347347937l/2545347._SX50_.jpg|2552878], who argue that “nature” itself is, in a sense, no longer “nature” (it is dead, ended, irreversibly transformed). There are of course different kinds of constructivists: idealists that consider nature as a concept, and literalists that literally see nature as constructed and built by humans. Malm finds the latter laughable. “Ten herders can draw very different portraits of the same goat, but that does not mean that the goat is a painting”. Similarly, we humans “cannot say what the storm [of climate change] is like without deploying language, but that does not mean that the storm is a linguistic entity or consists of speech acts” (28). For Malm, and likely most other people, nature existed before humans, and has by no means “died” (yet). What humans do with nature, however, is another story.
In Chapter 2 Malm begins his tirade against nature-society hybridism – the idea that because natural and social phenomena have become compound-phenomena, they cannot be differentiated from one another anymore (unless by some sort of intellectual violence). Hybridists, Malm claims, are defined by two assumptions, which he calls ontological and methodological hybridism. The ontology (or, knowledge of how things are) of hybridism states that because they are so intertwined, nature and society do not exist separately from one another. The methodology (or, methods of understanding things) which arises from this ontology therefore implies that because they are so intertwined, there is no point in differentiating society from nature (43). The poster boy of this kind of thinking, and member of the top-10 most-cited authors in the humanities and social sciences, is Bruno Latour. Latour is a favourite subject of critique for Malm, and appears frequently throughout the book. Malm warns us that the danger of hybridism lies in its inability to make meaningful statements about reality. I LOVE the examples he uses here to give an idea of the limitations of hybridism (the colour of Donald Trump’s thoughts; the experience of being at a Run the Jewels concert after a white man has been acquitted of killing a black man), even though they're unnecessary at this point and a quite self-indulgent. In arguing against conflating nature and society, Malm ultimately advocates for keeping them separate. He agrees with Alf Hornborg (another prominent polemicist) that only by keeping nature and society as distinct entities can we understand how they intermingle. Keeping them separate will still allow us to distinguish between things humans/societies have constructed, and things that are generated by natural forces.
Chap 3 introduces a new kind of hybridism, “new materialism”, as well as other “post-human” theoretical turns since the 1970s. New materialists (generally) hold that human agency cannot be separated from the environments in which that agency emerges (83). Not only humans, but also the objects and technologies around them have the capacity for “acting” with agency. These kinds of ideas also lead to alternative “-cenes”, like the “Carbocene” or the “Anthrakacene” that historian Timothy LeCain advocates for, which refer to the agency of non-human materials like carbon or coal which shape our modern world (91). Malm considers these theories as variations on a pathetic fallacy (giving human feelings to something non-human), and urges us to see humans as special. They alone are responsible for the climate crisis. They alone can wipe out all other animals simply by means of the energy the former chooses to use. “A pacemaker carries scant weight against that reality” - you simply can't make them equal with animals and the environment (97). Here I believe he’s making a bit too much of a strawman for his arguments – I don’t think anyone will think of a pacemaker or any other type of mundane objects as a destroyer of life purely by virtue of its “agency”. In trying to maintain the human-nonhuman binary he believes is at risk, Malm fails to consider that different objects, technologies, or environments have different ways of affecting mankind. Would love to have seen a more nuanced acknowledgement of this. But alas, he finishes with a pretty funny and commendably straightforward quip: "Less of Latour, more of Lenin: that is what the warming condition calls for" (98)
Chap 4 serves as Malm’s defence of climate (or scientific) realism (using, again, Latour and his Actor-Network-Theory as a foil). Scientific realism ultimately comes down to the belief that nature and the universe will run its course regardless of how it is interpreted (or socially constructed). Though he credits Latour for his search of understanding science in a warming world, he immediately discredits him for the ammunition his theory has given climate denialists (whether this argument still holds water is up for debate). He is, however, in favour of Latour's insistence that human relations can be and are mediated through matter (like technology). Even though this is a slight reinvention of the wheel, given that Marx & Engels' Capital talks of human relations embodied in things as well (pastures, steam-engines, coats, etc). Ultimately, the point of criticising Latour and other hybridists (constructivists, new materialists) is to show that these theories don't help us study the social dynamics of a warming world. If constructionists collapse nature into society, new materialists do the opposite (121). Neither, according to Malm, provides a useful foundation for taking (climate) action. He criticises several ideals for the future of climate activism which stem from these newer theories, such as the Democratic Anthropocene concept (based on idea that no democracy has ever endured a famine, and we are all co-authors of the world around us. Malm ridicules this position. no flood or typhoon is going to care if a society is democratic or not. Here I kind of feel that Malm might be missing a point, or at least making some form of false equivalence, because DA would be a principle for guiding society towards a future where more is being done to mitigate warming and therefore is a step towards combat those floods and typhoons, not a solution in itself.
Chap 5 is where Malm wants to provide a stronger theoretical basis for ecological militancy, arguably the aim of his book. The answer lies in historical materialism. He is very much in favour of Marx's realist, anti-purist view of nature, namely that all nature is earth + labour. Labour is the “pivot of material flows” (128). You can see this most clearly in capitalist systems. The causes of climate change are top-down (i.e. nature itself didn't make CO2 levels increase), and capital is to blame for those changes. Humans are to blame in so far as they are the only species cable of the capitalist mode of production (referring back to his humans-are-special argument). He notes that “every productive force, nay every human artefact can be seen as a combination of the social and the natural" (135). NOT a hybrid, mind you, because it has the all the negative connotations he just listed, but a combination (a Marxist term), which is more uneven and dynamic, suggesting contradicting forces at work. Capital creates this imbalance between nature and society wherever its power extends. Nature-society combinations, therefore, are the way forward.
Chap 6 further develops this combination-perspective by arguing that polarisation between nature and society (keeping them at opposite ends of a spectrum) is a good thing. He defends this by supporting a Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems, termed “metabolic rift theory” - a very cool name for a pretty familiar academic idea. It can be summed up very crudely like this: “Nature consists of biophysical processes and cycles. So does society: human bodies must engage in metabolic exchanges with nonhuman nature. That need not be particularly harmful to any of the parties”. Over the course of history, however, these exchanges have become “fractured and forcibly rearranged”, causing harm not only to those (humans and nonhumans) disadvantaged by this change but also disturbing those natural biophysical processes and cycles. This is the rift that has opened up (142). Great. How does this fit with the rest of his argument? Well, in theories based on hybridism, all binaries are collapsed into a unity (he refers to this is called dissolutionism). When academics write books and articles in a dissolutionist manner, what you end up with is “an orgy in the mud”: fluffy prose which doesn’t say anything and – importantly – fuels an “emperor’s-new-clothes syndrome” in academia and beyond, when people don’t want to admit they don’t understand (Malm cites Ellen Hertz’s “refreshing outburst” here) (150-151). Having very recently experienced how frustrating this can be in the context of a group discussion, I wholeheartedly agree with this observation. Malm instead suggest that we need more radical binaries, so that inequalities in climate change can be addressed (e.g. a more radical rich-poor divide to show how much more the rich are contributing to CO2 emissions than the poor, to put it bluntly). Continuing with permanent “in-hyphenation” (insisting on talking about “nature-in-society”, “capital-in-nature”, etc. as a means of communicating how everything is unified), as proposed by historian Jason Moore, would get cumbersome and not get us anywhere. He blames Moore for blunting the radical climate movement’s key argument: “you did this to enrich yourself, not we are dying because of it”. What he wants is for this kind of feeling to be mobilised into an “ecological class hatred” (157). It’s a position I can understand but don’t feel comfortable with myself – surely theory may also allow us to work cooperatively? I don’t think Malm would share this view. Rich, predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly western populations benefit from and sustain their lifestyles on the current exploitation and destruction of the Earth. Climate science is an existential threat to them. And so there is no other option than confrontation. Malm gives us the choice of being militants or apathetic bystanders – there is no alternative in his world of radical binaries.
The conclusion is very choppy and feels a bit like Malm’s train of thought has run out of steam. No worries, by this point you’d have probably guessed what his main takeaways are. As I said, I recommend this book to people who are already slightly familiar, and ideally consider themselves proponents of, the theories attacked by Malm. Hopefully this book can prompt such people to question what it is they find valuable about such theories, and to what extent they are needed in both an academic and a political sense. I generally prefer arguments that take clear and bold positions in academia (see the fluff section above), and in that sense Malm has provided an excellent (if flawed) contribution to our ways of thinking about nature and society.
hannajor's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-paced
5.0
This book I will have to read again. It introduced me to a new way of thinking about my relationship with the environment, but in a very incoherent way and I’m not sure how much of it stuck.
shelbertcarr's review against another edition
2.0
"Now, theory does not seem like the most exigent business in a rapidly warming world," pretty much sums up how I felt about this book. I had very little patience for this book. Maybe I should instead read Malm's "How to Blow Up a Pipeline."
hbermudes's review against another edition
Reading this feels like going to a class discussion where you've missed class for a week and haven't done any of the pre-readings... The discussion is great and impressive and well researched, but at the end of it all, did you participate and will you remember it? Unclear. Malm is writing within a philosophical/theoretical discourse about climate change, working to breakdown the idea that nature has disappeared. He works to prove hybridism is not a sufficient understanding of nature, and can lead to a non-action that bolsters the destruction of capitalism. It can get pretty grim. I really have to emphasize that Malm is a fantastic writer. Funny, critical, and urgent.
exhausted_hedgewitch's review
I very much recommend this for anyone who's been reading posthuman/new materialist theory (as I have), looking for a cogent response to the climate and biodiversity crises. Malm's analysis of their shortcomings is refreshing, though (as another reviewer points out), I think he may miss some of the (limited) usefulness of such theory for understanding crises as they unfold (e.g.: I do think Jane Bennett's work helps us understand what it is like to live with unruly matter, even as it fails to offer a compelling political account of why and how the matter moves as it does). I very much look forward to reading more of his work.
lilytronciu's review
3.0
"The nature that is knocking on the door of the postmodern condition – occasionally breaking it down, crashing through glass, sweeping away screens, even in its heartlands – is something of a spectral creature, for it is carried forward by a human past."
"Just as the biosphere began to catch fire, social theory retreated ever further from sooty matter, into the pure air of text."
"Just as the biosphere began to catch fire, social theory retreated ever further from sooty matter, into the pure air of text."
viljesvag's review
5.0
Less of Latour, more of Lenin: that is what the warming condition calls for.
I wanted to get back into reading non-fiction after reading pretty much only fiction for a couple of years, so I decided to start 2020 off with digging into this book. The only thing I knew before starting was that it was about climate change and that several of my friends loved it: little did I know that the first parts of the book would be an angry Marxist polemic ripping Bruno Latour and other vapid theorists into shreds?
The focus of the book is obviously climate change, but Malm's angle on the issue here is to first determine what "nature" is and how humans and labour relate to it. Various philosophers and theorists get picked apart along the way, and while I found that a lot of the theories being discussed were incredibly dense (and quite honestly almost nonsensical at times), I can hardly fault Malm for that. His own writing is very clear and direct for such a heavy subject.
If you aren't interested in these philosophical discussions, I would still recommend the introduction and last two chapters, as they are more concrete about looking forward and working on ridding the world of fossil capitalism. But the polemic roast chapters are almost funny at times, if it wasn't for the feeling of dread that comes with reading about liberal idealists filling the climate movement with weak bullshit.
Essential reading during this time of warming, very much recommended.