Marx’s “Species Being” as an Ontological Revolution Against the “Green City/Global City” Agenda: Two Possible Moments of Reclaiming “Species Life”

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cities are experiencing continuous growth in population and must straddle a delicate balance between nurturing nature and providing livelihood. In that context, the contemporary urban agenda of sustainability must find creative ways of meeting global environmental expectations and resolving issues of displacement and rehabilitation of the poor. First, I use Marx’s concept of species being and estrangement to understand how sustainability discourses commodify and externalize urban nature as “environment,” estranging urban citizens from a deep sensuous connection with nature. Second, I use Marx’s species being to demonstrate how globalization-induced displacement estranges labor from itself and spaces in which labor produces existence. I provide two empirical moments, green city-New Town, Kolkata and the globalizing city-Ahmedabad in India to explore how urban policy fails to fundamentally alter nature–society relationship or eradicate estrangement of labor from itself, labor from nature, and nature from itself. This article argues that cities are caught up in a nature–society paradox that puts society in contradiction with nature.