Confronting harsh ecological realities and the multiple cascading crises facing our world today, An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction. For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—and yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable. The climate crisis has already progressed beyond simple or nondisruptive solutions. The end result will be apocalyptic; the only question now is how bad it will be. Jackson and Jensen examine how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. The solution requires addressing today’s systemic failures and confronting human nature by recognizing the limits of our ability to predict how those failures will play out over time. Though these massive challenges can feel overwhelming, Jackson and Jensen weave a secular reading of theological concepts—the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace—to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world.

First published in 1998. No other issue has divided the feminist movement in the past two decades quite like pornography. By providing the first book to engage in an empirical investigation of the pornography industry itself, the authors--each grounded in the radical feminist anti-pornography movement--move beyond the rhetorical bomb-tossing of an often polarized debate. The authors engage in a systematic examination of the politics, production, content, and consumption of contemporary mass-market heterosexual pornography, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of pornography's role in the cultural construction of gender, racial and sexual identities, and relations. They begin with an overview of the social and political history of the feminist anti-pornography movement and the debate over pornography within feminism. Then they address the various rhetorical dodges--definitional, legal, and causal--used to distort the fact that institutionalized pornography helps maintain the sexual and social oppression of women within a patriarchal system. Exploring the beginnings of the commercial pornography industry, the book focuses in part on the history of Playboy magazine. It also analyzes the content of contemporary mass-market videos. Dines, Jensen, and Russo argue that the sexual ideology of patriarchy eroticizes domination and submission, with pornography playing a significant role in how these values are mediated and normalized in American society. They discuss the effects of pornography on the lives of those who use it and those against whom it is used. In so doing, the authors hope to contribute to creating a world in which sex is not a site of oppression but of liberation.

Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions reveals what makes Wes Jackson tick. What kind of lessons does he draw from his unique life experiences, and how do they shape his profoundly revolutionary worldview? Sometimes funny, sometimes wistful, always insightful, this volume demonstrates that when telling a good story, digressions can be the main point. Born during the Great Depression, Jackson tells stories of his youth on a diversified farm in the Kansas River Valley near Topeka, Kansas, culminating in more than forty years of leadership to radically transform agriculture, literally at its very roots. Wes Jackson draws deeply from the lessons learned from his experience dating from World War II to his work at The Land Institute to establish a new Natural Systems Agriculture. But this book is more than that. It includes an eclectic mix of thinkers and doers he's met along the way. Wes Jackson is heavily influenced by the cultural legacy of grandparents, all four of whom were born before the Civil War began, and from his parents, who were born before 1900. He was born into a culture of crop diversity where animals and people were out in the fields and around. He saw the tractor arrive and the horses leave. After you read Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions you may share his misgivings about what conventional thinkers see as 'progress.' Jackson is constantly exploring the world around him and will engage anyone who can help him think about a discovery, an experiment, or recent insight. Jackson believes that our insights must go beyond the latest scholarly study and government report if we are to get the necessary interest for people to change. The stories and digressions he shares in Hogs Are Up are the fruit of a longtime effort to lay the agricultural and cultural foundation for a new worldview grounded in nature's principles and located in rural communities able to survive through a new relationship of humanity to the ecosphere.

Confronting harsh ecological realities and the multiple cascading crises facing our world today, An Inconvenient Apocalypse argues that humanity’s future will be defined not by expansion but by contraction. For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—and yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable. The climate crisis has already progressed beyond simple or nondisruptive solutions. The end result will be apocalyptic; the only question now is how bad it will be. Jackson and Jensen examine how geographic determinism shaped our past and led to today’s social injustice, consumerist culture, and high-energy/high-technology dystopias. The solution requires addressing today’s systemic failures and confronting human nature by recognizing the limits of our ability to predict how those failures will play out over time. Though these massive challenges can feel overwhelming, Jackson and Jensen weave a secular reading of theological concepts—the prophetic, the apocalyptic, a saving remnant, and grace—to chart a collective, realistic path for humanity not only to survive our apocalypse but also to emerge on the other side with a renewed appreciation of the larger living world.

In more than four decades as president of The Land Institute, Wes Jackson became widely known as one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement for his work on perennial grains and Natural Systems Agriculture. But Jackson's contribution to contemporary intellectual and political life goes well beyond plant breeding. Ever since he created one of the first university environmental studies programs in the early 1970s, Jackson has been exploring the human predicaments around sustainability and justice, asking questions that pull not only on agriculture and ecology but also on politics, economics, and culture. That work has appeared in four sole-authored books by Jackson, but nowhere is there an accessible summary of his key ideas. Robert Jensen provides a short, elegant introduction to Jackson's ideas on ways to provide humanity with a truly sustainable foundation in grain agriculture, presented in a way that connects to the growing concern about climate change and other ecological crises. Jackson's strength has been in generating new ideas and pushing the envelope not only on sustainable agriculture but also on the other dramatic changes necessary if we are to create a sustainable and just society. This volume helps the reader to organize those exciting ideas in a way that can expand the horizons of students and lay readers as well as challenge specialists in these fields. In a time when critical thinking and clear understanding are desperately needed if we are to face the multiple, cascading ecological and social crises, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson presents Jackson's crucial insights about the natural world and human societies that can help provide a framework for understanding the tough decisions we will have to make. But just as important is the book's glimpse into the curiosity that drives Jackson and the creativity that distinguishes his intellectual and activist work.

The political Left has had a turbulent relationship with religion, from outright hostility to attempts to meld religious faith with progressivism. Confronted with contemporary social ills, the progressive Left continues to disagree about the role that religion should play, whether in understanding social challenges and solutions, or stimulating social critique and reform. Radical Religion presents valuable insights, from both religious and secular perspectives, for progressives today as they struggle to formulate a coherent agenda and effective strategies for social change. This book presents arguments from a diverse group of scholars, and offers a snapshot of contemporary, progressive thinking about religion.

The political Left has had a turbulent relationship with religion, from outright hostility to attempts to meld religious faith with progressivism. Confronted with contemporary social ills, the progressive Left continues to disagree about the role that religion should play, whether in understanding social challenges and solutions, or stimulating social critique and reform. Radical Religion presents valuable insights, from both religious and secular perspectives, for progressives today as they struggle to formulate a coherent agenda and effective strategies for social change. This book presents arguments from a diverse group of scholars, and offers a snapshot of contemporary, progressive thinking about religion.

As we approach the elections of 2004, U.S. progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of antiwar demonstrators glibly dismissed as a "focus group," and with the collapse of political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and soundbites used to stifle protest--"Support the Troops," "We Are the Greatest Nation on Earth," etc.--many people feel cynical and hopeless.

"Citizens of the Empire" probes into the sense of disempowerment that has resulted from the Left's inability to halt the violent and repressive course of post-9/11 U.S. policy. In this passionate and personal exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world's most powerful, affluent and militarized nation in an era of imperial expansion, Jensen offers a potent antidote to despair over the future of democracy.

In a plainspoken analysis of the dominant political rhetoric--which is intentionally crafted to depress political discourse and activism--Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of prevailing myths, using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions.

With an ethical framework that integrates political, intellectual and emotional responses to the disheartening events of the past two years, Jensen examines the ways in which society has been led to this point and offers renewed hope for constructive engagement.

Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream," among other books. He also writes for popular media, and his opinion and analytical pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.

In this fundamental rethinking of the rise of modernism from its beginnings in the Impressionist movement, Robert Jensen reveals that market discourses were pervasive in the ideological defense of modernism from its very inception and that the avant-garde actually thrived on the commercial appeal of anti-commercialism at the turn of the century. The commercial success of modernism, he argues, depended greatly on possession of historical legitimacy. The very development of modern art was inseparable from the commercialism many of its proponents sought to transcend. Here Jensen explores the economic, aesthetic, institutional, and ideological factors that led to its dominance in the international art world by the early 1900s. He emphasizes the role of the emerging dealer/gallery market and of modernist art historiographies in evaluating modern art and legitimizing it through the formation of a canon of modernist masters.

In describing the canon-building of modern dealerships, Jensen considers the new "ideological dealer" and explores the commercial construction of artistic identity through such rhetorical concepts as temperament and "independent art" and through such institutional structures as the retrospective. His inquiries into the fate of the "juste milieu," a group of dissidents who saw themselves as "true heirs" of Impressionism, and his look at a new form of art history emerging in Germany further expose a linear, dealer- oriented history of modernist art constructed by or through the modernists themselves.

At the root of the current political, economic, cultural, and ecological chaos is a national spiritual unrest, a fragmentation that has inhibited society's self-awareness and slowed theological progress to a glacial crawl. In a nation where three-fourths of the population identifies as Christian and religion salts the political discourse, unrest has manifested itself as the talking-head debate between atheists and believers. In All My Bones Shake, Robert Jensen reveals the multitiered complexity of the conflict and offers a progressive approach to its key theological questions. While fundamentalists on both sides have fought to an intellectual standstill and moderates seem content to ignore the battle, Jensen pushes for answers that make sense for anyone trying to exist in the modern scientific world, concluding, "There is no God, and more than ever we all need to serve the One True Gods." Jensen tests the mettle of his conclusion by holding it up to the best of religious and secular teachings. More than a simple study of the religious debate in America, All My Bones Shake marks a new communion: a way to use theology to create a sustainable society and meet the uncertainty of our lives with confidence.

Praise Seeking Understanding sits at the intersection of three important fields in theology: theological exegesis, Augustinian studies, and contemporary church practice. Jason Byassee deftly brings the three together, revealing an important symbiotic relationship between them -- a relationship hitherto largely ignored. Though current exegetical methods have swung away from a Christological reading of the Old Testament -- rejecting in particular Augustine's treatment of the text -- Byassee believes that is a mistake we must remedy. Using a recent translation of Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, Byassee describes in depth Augustine's psalm hermeneutic and his approach to scripture generally, offering a defense of these views in conversation with recent work in theological exegesis.

New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., Oxford, Wien. Political activists with radical ideas often find themselves shut out of the mainstream news media. Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream is designed for activists who want to take on that challenge. Based on the author's experience as a journalist, activist, and academic, this book offers insight into radical politics and mass media and then moves on to describe practical strategies for breaking into the mainstream. Illustrated by the author's own opinion columns published in daily newspapers, Writing Dissent explains how journalists work and how activists can successfully work with them.