This is a book review of Joan Martinez-Alier’s 2002 classic “The Environmentalism of the Poor.” This is a book about the history of environmentalism that tries to fit the struggles of native peoples into that history.
My last review was of a recently-published biography of Sup Marcos, the EZLN (Zapatista) figure; my next review will to a certain extent integrate the insights of Zapatismo into Martinez-Alier’s framework. This, to a certain, extent, forms the knowledge background for my interest in people’s movements (centered on, but not exclusive to, peasant movements) as a counterweight to the environmental predations of the mainstream of capitalist industry.
(Crossposted at Big Orange)