Editorial: the 2 + n ecosophies

Contemporary ecological crises fundamentally threaten our ability to continue inhabiting earth, yet geographical research has only tentatively engaged with perspectives that seek to rethink the human– earth relationship. ‘Ecosophical’ theories, practices and politics recognize that ‘a global culture of a primarily techno-industrial nature is now encroaching upon all the world’s milieu, desecrating living conditions’ (Næss and Rothenberg 1989, 23) and that those who subscribe to its arguments ‘have an obligation directly or indirectly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes’ (29). This collection of papers seeks to explore ecosophical theories and practices, analysing the relationship between techno-industrial global culture and the world. It offers understandings of attempts to change this relation. Although multiple geographical and social science theories – includ- ing feminist perspectives (Gibson-Graham 2006a, 2006b; Haraway 1991), post-human and actor- network theory research (Latour 1993; Law 1994; Whatmore 2002), studies of the Anthropocene (Castree 2014; Clark 2013), and deconstructionist/phenomenological traditions (Morton 2007) – have worked hard to rethink the category of ‘human’ or ‘subject’, in their focus on forms of living, being and becoming with the world, environment and non-human, they have done less to rethink the ‘world’ part of that relationship. Ecosophy offers geography an approach to these questions which starts with how humans relate to nature and non-human at its core, alongside a strong ethical foun- dation for action. Specifically, it is the position of ecosophical theories that nature and the non- human are valuable independent of their human interaction, and that geography must contribute to ways of rethinking and practicing subjectivity that recognize this.