Books by Ethan Miller
University of Minnesota Press, 2019
Much of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing dema... more Much of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing demands of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. “Jobs vs. environment” is only one of the many forms that such struggles take. But what if the very terms of this debate are part of the problem? Reimagining Livelihoods argues that the “hegemonic trio” of economy, society, and environment not only fails to describe the actual world around us but also poses a tremendous obstacle to enacting a truly sustainable future.
In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates, in its place, a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities.
In seeking a pathway of transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for how to build our lives on an increasingly volatile Earth.
Journal Articles by Ethan Miller
Environment and Planning A, 2014
Effectively engaging questions of sustainable regional development requires a substantive rethink... more Effectively engaging questions of sustainable regional development requires a substantive rethinking of the pervasive categories of “economy,” “society” and “environment.” Çaliskan and Callon's analytical approach to “economization,” a tracing of the material discursive production of the economic, is one important starting point for such work. Taking the contemporary field of economic
development in the state of Maine (USA) as a case study, and drawing on 15 recent interviews with a wide array of development professionals in this region, I pursue a critical analysis of regional economization and its accompanying constructions of society and environment. While affirming the economization concept as a useful tool for ethico political analysis, I challenge this strategy at its limits. The tracing of successful framings and their overflows risks performatively affirming these constructions by assuming that the composition of collective well-being takes the ultimate and successful form of an “economy.” Analysis of economization must be accompanied by other explorations of the ways in which the work of regional economic developers might be articulated. I propose a reading of development processes and struggles in terms of the "composition of livelihoods"—destabilizing economy, society and environment and beckoning toward a “transversal” politics that might open up possibilities for unexpected alliances and alternative regional development pathways.
Rethinking Marxism 25(4), 2013
Book Chapters by Ethan Miller
This book chapter challenges the conventional separations between "economy" and "ecology," propos... more This book chapter challenges the conventional separations between "economy" and "ecology," proposing instead a perspective of "ecological livelihoods" in which sustenance is understood as an always-collective process of ethical negotiation involving humans and myriad living others. Drawing on and modifying Gibson-Graham's previous work on "ethical coordinates," we suggest some glimmers of what an ethical economics in an acknowledged more-than-human world might look like.
Solidarity Economy I: Building Alternatives for People and Planet, 2010
Conference Papers by Ethan Miller
Paper presented at Rethinking Marxism Gala, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2013, 2013
Thesis by Ethan Miller
MS Thesis, Geography, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2011
"The basic premise of this thesis is that the stories we tell about "the economy" in discourses o... more "The basic premise of this thesis is that the stories we tell about "the economy" in discourses of regional economic development play an active role in shaping the economic worlds that we live in. The construction of more equitable, democratic and ecologically-sound economic relationships must involve an interrogation of our assumptions about what “the economy” is, how it works, and how these conceptions shape our senses of agency and possibility. This thesis consists of three parts. First, I argue that key texts in regional economic development present a concept of economy (an economic ontology) that renders the interrelationships between social, economic and ecological processes invisible or beyond ethical contestation, restricts our understanding of economic sites to a narrow field and thus obscures economic possibility, and generates a problematic sense of necessity in the pursuit of endless growth and competition. To effectively enact different forms economic relationship, I suggest, we must develop and utilize different economic ontologies. Second, I explore what it means to propose that that "the economy" is socially-produced and that economic ontologies can be "performative.” Drawing on work by Butler, Laclau and Mouffe, Latour and others, I suggest that economies are enacted continuously through complex relationships among human and nonhuman actants. Conceptual economic discourse cannot be elevated above materiality nor separated from it, and the relationship between words and world will always remain indeterminate, yet ontological accounts might very well become important agents in world-making if we use them to organize strategically and take advantage of openings into new possibilities. The final portion of the thesis investigates alternative economic ontologies in the work of Karl Polanyi, Stephen Gudeman and J.K. Gibson-Graham. After offering a conceptualization of economy as a process of actively constructing livelihoods in which human and more- than-human participation are recognized and the ethical nature of this interdependence is placed at the forefront of economic negotiation and construction, I distill a provisional toolbox of economic questions, concepts and coordinates which might become sites of new learning, imagination and construction when placed in the hands of communities who seek a different kind of development.
Other Writing by Ethan Miller
Grassroots Economic Organizing 2(10), 2012
This text is part theory, part strategy and part call-to-action for the immediate and long-term w... more This text is part theory, part strategy and part call-to-action for the immediate and long-term work of identifying and seizing spaces of democratic practice (occupy!), linking them together in networks of mutual support and recognition (connect!), and drawing on our collective strength to actively create new ways of meeting our needs and making our livings (create!).
Dollars and Sense, 2006
... Ethan Miller is a writer, musician, subsistence farmer, and organizer. A member of the GEO Co... more ... Ethan Miller is a writer, musician, subsistence farmer, and organizer. A member of the GEO Collective and of the musical collective Riotfolk (www.riotfolk.org), he lives and works at JED, a land-based mutual-aid cooperative in Greene, Maine. ...
Papers by Ethan Miller
Effectively engaging questions of sustainable regional development requires a substantive rethink... more Effectively engaging questions of sustainable regional development requires a substantive rethinking of the pervasive categories of “economy,” “society” and “environment.” Çaliskan and Callon's analytical approach to “economization,” a tracing of the material-discursive production of the economic, is one important starting point for such work. Taking the contemporary field of economic development in the state of Maine (USA) as a case study, and drawing on 15 recent interviews with a wide array of development professionals in this region, I pursue a critical analysis of regional economization and its accompanying constructions of society and environment. While affirming the economization concept as a useful tool for ethico-political analysis, I challenge this strategy at its limits. The tracing of successful framings and their overflows risks performatively affirming these constructions by assuming that the composition of collective well-being takes the ultimate and successful fo...
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Books by Ethan Miller
In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates, in its place, a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities.
In seeking a pathway of transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for how to build our lives on an increasingly volatile Earth.
Journal Articles by Ethan Miller
development in the state of Maine (USA) as a case study, and drawing on 15 recent interviews with a wide array of development professionals in this region, I pursue a critical analysis of regional economization and its accompanying constructions of society and environment. While affirming the economization concept as a useful tool for ethico political analysis, I challenge this strategy at its limits. The tracing of successful framings and their overflows risks performatively affirming these constructions by assuming that the composition of collective well-being takes the ultimate and successful form of an “economy.” Analysis of economization must be accompanied by other explorations of the ways in which the work of regional economic developers might be articulated. I propose a reading of development processes and struggles in terms of the "composition of livelihoods"—destabilizing economy, society and environment and beckoning toward a “transversal” politics that might open up possibilities for unexpected alliances and alternative regional development pathways.
Book Chapters by Ethan Miller
Conference Papers by Ethan Miller
Thesis by Ethan Miller
Other Writing by Ethan Miller
Papers by Ethan Miller
In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates, in its place, a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities.
In seeking a pathway of transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for how to build our lives on an increasingly volatile Earth.
development in the state of Maine (USA) as a case study, and drawing on 15 recent interviews with a wide array of development professionals in this region, I pursue a critical analysis of regional economization and its accompanying constructions of society and environment. While affirming the economization concept as a useful tool for ethico political analysis, I challenge this strategy at its limits. The tracing of successful framings and their overflows risks performatively affirming these constructions by assuming that the composition of collective well-being takes the ultimate and successful form of an “economy.” Analysis of economization must be accompanied by other explorations of the ways in which the work of regional economic developers might be articulated. I propose a reading of development processes and struggles in terms of the "composition of livelihoods"—destabilizing economy, society and environment and beckoning toward a “transversal” politics that might open up possibilities for unexpected alliances and alternative regional development pathways.