Gene

Engineering

Philosophy

Ecology

Biology

Place making

Political ecology

Biochemistry

Capitalism

White (mutation)

Environmental ethics

Politics

Political science

Democracy

Political economy

Sociology

Architectural engineering

Chemistry

Empire

Colonialism

Articulation (sociology)

Antipode

This introduction calls for political ecology to systematically engage with the ways that white supremacy shapes human relationships with land through entangled processes of settler colonialism, empire and racial capitalism. To develop the analytic of abolition ecology, we begin with the articulation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ abolition democracy together with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s spatially attuned analytic of abolition geography. Rather than define communities by the violence they suffer, abolition ecologies call for attention to radical place‐making and the land, air and water based environments within which places are made. To that end, we suggest that an abolition ecology demands attention to the ways that coalitional land‐based politics dismantle oppressive institutions and to the promise of abolition, which Gilmore describes as making “freedom as a place”.

On Abolition Ecologies and Making “Freedom as a Place”