Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference

This book engages with the politics of social and environmental
justice, and seeks new ways to think about the future of
urbanization in the twenty-first century. It establishes
foundational concepts for understanding how space, time, place and
nature - the material frames of daily life - are constituted and
represented through social practices, not as separate elements but
in relation to each other. It describes how geographical
differences are produced, and shows how they then become
fundamental to the exploration of political, economic and
ecological alternatives to contemporary life.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I describes the
problematic nature of action and analysis at different scales of
time and space, and introduces the reader to the modes of
dialectical thinking and discourse which are used throughout the
remainder of the work. Part II examines how "nature" and
"environment" have been understood and valued in relation to
processes of social change and seeks, from this basis, to make
sense of contemporary environmental issues.

Part III, is a wide-ranging discussion of history, geography and
culture, explores the meaning of the social "production" of space
and time, and clarifies problems related to "otherness" and
"difference". The final part of the book deploys the foundational
arguments the author has established to consider contemporary
problems of social justice that have resulted from recent changes
in geographical divisions of labor, in the environment, and in the
pace and quality of urbanization.

Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference speaks to
a wide readership of students of social, cultural and spatial
theory and of the dynamics of contemporary life. It is a convincing
demonstration that it is both possible and necessary to value
difference and to seek a just social order.