by Manuela Zechner
Pluto Press
5/20/2026, paperback
SKU: 9780745352077
A guide to building caring communities in a world on fire
As myths of progress and modernization collapse amid the relentless polycrisis of our time, how do we strengthen alternative visions for moving forward - in community, practice, and struggle? How do we come together as movements to care for the earth and each other?
Focusing on agriculture, this book looks at peasant, indigenous, and transecofeminist practices, and puts forward an alternative conception of how we can sustain life collectively - beyond progress, plantation, and patriarchy.
Recovering and repurposing technologies, and breaking down the division between rural and urban, the ground is made fertile for growing other futures. Alongside works by writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, this work of radical political theory raises critical questions about technology and storytelling as matters of care and community.
Reviews:
"With charming prose, and built upon a solid basis of militant knowledge, this book asks the right questions at the right moment in the history of modern agriculture and land struggles. It will nourish the heart and mind of anyone who longs for 'earthcare transitioning.'" --Stefania Barca, author of Workers of the Earth
"Sylvia Wynter called the plots given to enslaved Africans in the Caribbean a source of cultural guerrilla resistance to the plantation system. Zechner's work is another such source. Drawing on plot resistances amongst peasant communities from Europe to Latin America, she has written a guerrilla handbook indispensable in these times. With her as our guide, we can put out the fire and start some of our own." --Stefano Harney, Professor of Transversal Aesthetics, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, co-author of All Incomplete
"Finally, a new entire book on earthcare! In times of ongoing ecocide and genocide, this combative manifesto offers a unique, contemporary (trans)ecofeminist analysis grounded in the author's long-standing social movement knowledge and experience. It champions the power of earthcare by truly thinking about transition from the resistant lands and fields in a class-sensitive and intersectional way." --Nadine Gerner and Lina Hansen, authors of Ökofeminismus
"At a time when fear and fascism are on the rise, we need books like this to remind us that other worlds are possible, grounded in care, solidarity and abundance. And as Zechner shows us, these worlds are not only possible, they are being made and fought for all over the place." --Patrick Bresnihan, author of From the Bog to the Cloud
About the Author:
Manuela Zechner is a researcher, educator, and organizer. She co-founded the Common Ecologies school, produces the Earthcare Fieldcast, and is affiliated with the Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking at Copenhagen University.