Call for Papers: Labor Ecologies and the Right to Survive

Who has the right to survive? This shocking question captures the defining problem of our era. From medical care to mass incarceration, homelessness to mass starvation, the right to survive is hardly guaranteed in the U.S., and the question of survival only grows more urgent as global capitalism seems bent on squeezing out the last drops of petrocarbon profits from the withered husk of our planet. If we are to seize the right to survive, we must understand the ways that these issues are intertwined.

The COVID-19 pandemic made these existing issues of precarity increasingly visible in the “supply chain” and the “essential worker.” Although we heard a great deal about the upwardly mobile doctors and nurses essential to the treatment of the disease, no less “essential” were underpaid food workers–from migrant farmers to grocery clerks and cooks. To their number, we must add the garment workers who churn out and distribute an endless supply of cheap clothing, those involved in extractive industries and manufacturing, along with builders, electricians, plumbers, sanitation and transportation workers. Finally, if we are honest, we must also acknowledge our debt to those deemed “unfit” for survival–either by poverty, geography, gender, or disability (and now long COVID)–whose dispossessed place in the global economy helps suppress wages and prices enjoyed by the global consumer class. The poorest participants in global capitalism are responsible for producing the bulk of the goods and services upon which we depend for survival.

In partnership with The Activist History Review, Green Theory and Praxis invites contributions for Volume 14, Issue 2 that explore how we seize the right to survive for one another and in solidarity with our global community.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Labor and liberation ecologies.
• Internationalist solidarities.
• The relationship between democracy and ecology.
• The looming specter of ecofascisms and perpetual capitalisms.
• Labor dimensions of the animal movement.
• Crisis capitalism(s).
• Expropriative philanthropies.
• The production of scarcity.
• The mass production of waste, toxicity, and death.
• Mutual aid and survival programs.
• Food sovereignty.

Please send completed drafts (3000-5000 words) with an abstract (200 words) and bio (100 words) to William Horne (horne.activisthistory@gmail.com) and Céire Kealty (ceireakealty@gmail.com) by July 1, 2022.