Climate Change as a Crisis of Imagination
By Avi Brisman
Published
May 1, 2025Page count
160 pagesISBN
978-1529235715Dimensions
203 x 127 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
May 1, 2025Page count
160 pagesISBN
978-1529235722Dimensions
203 x 127 mmImprint
Bristol University PressStories have always enabled people to make sense of the world and others, and this book encourages a radical rethinking of how we tell stories about climate change. This book proposes that, while climate change may be a result of policy implementation and the incompatibility of capitalism with our finite resources, a narrative failure is also inhibiting our ability to imagine alternative futures.
Considering the contrasting perspectives of writer Amitav Ghosh and theorist Mark Bould, the book reconciles their storytelling for criminologists and all those concerned about—and working towards avoiding—catastrophic climate change.
Avi Brisman is Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University.
1. This is Personal: A Preface to an (the?) Apocalypse
2. The Planet is Burning and Drowning and Dying: Who Needs a Methods Section and a Literature Review?
3. Ghosh vs. Bould: The Great Derangement vs. The Anthropocene Unconscious
4. Does it Have to be Either/Or? (Part I): Bould and “the Old’”
5. Does it Have to be Either/Or? (Part II): Ghosh and “the New”
6. Conclusion: Failure or Crisis?