The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Labour Studies, 1st ed. 2021

In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.

Chapter 1:Introduction: Expanding the Boundaries of Environmental Labour Studies.- Part I: Histories.- Chapter 2: Labour and the Environment in India.- Chapter 3: Energy Transitions in the Global South: the Precarious Location of Unions.- Chapter 4: The New Struggles to be Born: The Difficult Birth of a Democratic Ecosocialist Working-Class Politics.- Chapter 5: The Green New Deal and Just Transition Frames within the American Labour Movement.- Chapter 6: Working-Class Environmentalism: The Case of Northwest Timber Workers.- Chapter 7: Trade Unions and Environmental Justice.- Part II: Seeking Common Ground.- Chapter 8: ‘Beware of the Crocodile’s Smile’: Labour –Environmentalism in the Struggle to Achieve a Just Transition in South Africa.- Chapter 9: Fighting in the Name of Workers: Exploring the Dynamics of Labour-Environmental Conflicts in Kerala.- Chapter 10: Trade Union Politics for a Just Transition: Towards Consensus or Dissensus?.- Chapter 11: Climate Jobs Plans: A Mobilising Strategy in Search of Agency.- Chapter 12: The Role of Ecuadorian Working-Class Environmentalism in Promoting Environmental Justice: an Overview of the Hydrocarbon and Agricultural Sectors.- Chapter 13: A Just Transition for All? A Debate on the Limits and Potentials of a Just Transition in Canada.- Part III: Farmers, Commoners, Communities.- Chapter 14: Labouring the Commons. Amazonia’s ‘Extractive Reserves’ and the Legacy of Chico Mendes.- Chapter 15: Connecting Individual Trajectories and Resistance Movements in Brazil.- Chapter 16: Whose Labour, Whose Land? Indigenous and Labour Conflicts and Alliances over Resource Extraction.- Chapter 17: Commoning Labour, Labouring the Commons: Centring the Commons in Environmental Labour Studies.- Chapter 18: Agroecological Farmer Movements and Advocacy Coalitions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Between De-Politicisation and Re-Politicisation.- Chapter 19: Working-Class Environmentalism in the UK – Organising for Sustainability Beyond the Workplace.- Part IV: Trade Unions and the State.-  Chapter 20: A Just Transition Towards Environmental Sustainability for All.- Chapter 21: Labour Resistance against Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reform: Neoliberal Discourses and African Realities.- Chapter 22: Challenges and Prospects for Trade Union Environmentalism.- Chapter 23: From ‘Just Transition’ to the ‘Eco-Social State’.- Chapter 24: Environment, Labour and Health: The Ecological-Social Debts of China’s Economic Development.- Part V: Organic Intellectuals.- Chapter 25: Trade Union Environmentalists as Organic Intellectuals in the US, UK, and Spain.- Chapter 26: Embedding Just Transition in the USA: The Long Ambivalence.- Chapter 27: Caring for Nature, Justice for Workers: Worldviews on the Relationship Between Labour, Nature, and Justice.- Chapter 28: Individuals Transforming Organisations: Spanish Environmental Policies in Comisiones Obreras.- Part VI: Rethinking and broadening Concepts.- Chapter 29: The Commodification of HumanLife: Labour, Energy, and Money in a Deteriorating Biosphere.- Chapter 30: Workers, Trade Unions and the Imperial Mode of Living. Labour Environmentalism from the Perspective of Hegemony Theory.- Chapter 31: André Gorz’s Labour-Based Political Ecology and its Legacy for the Twenty First Century.- Chapter 32: Rethinking Labour/Work in a Degrowth Society.- Chapter 33: Labour and Societal Relationships with Nature. Conceptual Implications for Trade Unions.- Chapter 34: Society - Labour - Nature. How to Think the Relationships?.- Chapter 35: Labour Centred Design for Sustainable and Just Transitions.- Chapter 36: Technology and the Future of Work: The Why, How and What of Production.

Nora Räthzel is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Umeå (Sweden). Her main research areas are environmental labour studies, transnational corporations and gender and ethnic relations in the everyday. Publications include:  Marxist-Feminists Theories and Struggles Today with Khayaat Fakier and Diana Mulinari (eds.); Transnational Corporations from the Standpoint of Workers with Diana Mulinari and Aina Tollefsen; Trade Unions in the Green Economy. Working for the Environment (with David Uzzell, eds.).

Dimitris Stevis is Professor of Politics at Colorado State University (USA). His research focuses on global labour and environmental politics, with particular attention to labour environmentalism and social and ecological justice. He is a founder of the Center for Environmental Justice and recently published (with Dunja Krause and Edouard Morena) Just Transitions: Social Justice in the Shift Towards a Low-Carbon World(Pluto Press 2020).

David Uzzell is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey and Visiting Professor, Grupo de Investigación Persoa-Ambiente, University of A Coruna, Spain. His research interests include critical psychological approaches to changing consumption and production practices. He edited (with Nora Räthzel) Trade Unions in the Green Economy: Working for the Environment (Routledge, 2013).