Anthropocide an essay in green cultural criminology

Anthropocide is the destruction of human civilisation, a slow apocalypse characterised by economic, political, and social collapse in response to the irreversible reduction of the Earth’s capacity to support human life. Green cultural criminology explores the ways in which environmental crimes and harms are constructed by the media and in popular culture, the impact of patterns of commodification and consumption, and the significance of activism and resistance. The theoretical framework is founded on culture as a tool for intervention in the politics of climate change and on popular culture and art as both reflecting and representing the reality of the societies in which they are produced and consumed. This essay argues first that the challenge of climate change is a cultural challenge, second that cinematic fictions can meet that challenge by shaping the desires of audiences, and finally that Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006) is exemplary in this regard. Bridging the disciplines of criminology, film studies, and philosophy and drawing on the work of Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, and Francis Fukuyama, this book is for everyone interested in climate change, the power of art, and the future of the species.