{"product_id":"reading-better-states-rebecca-oh-9781531512651","title":"Reading Better States: Utopian Method and Environmental Harm in the Global South","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eReading Better States\u003c\/i\u003e traces the persistence of desires for the postcolonial state in an era of environmental harms and climate catastrophe. As pollution, toxicity, drought, and flood increasingly threaten peoples and environments across the global South, postcolonial writers and ordinary citizens alike have not ceded their futures to the damaged presents they inhabit. Rather, \u003ci\u003eReading Better States\u003c\/i\u003e shows how they turn to the state as a resource, imagining postcolonial states as powerful actors and calling upon them to intervene in processes like global capitalism and environmental racism, or to provide environmental protections and basic material necessities. These utopic possibilities are concrete rather than grand, limited and situated rather than totalizing. But they are no less utopic for being quotidian. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eReading Better States\u003c\/i\u003e challenges the anti-statism prevalent in postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities, where states are predominantly defined through violence. Seeing postcolonial states beyond their bad surfaces requires a utopian method of reading, a way of seeing the state that reads its negativity against the grain for alternative possibilities. In \u003ci\u003eReading Better States\u003c\/i\u003e the state is Janus-faced. It is a bad actor, but it is also a site of collective hopes and concrete utopian visions. Using a wide-ranging archive of novels, films, court decisions, legislation, poetry, and testimony, \u003ci\u003eReading Better States\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the importance of environmental concrete utopias in the present and reconsiders the postcolonial state for its interventionist possibilities as well as its violence. It does this through a utopian method that, like concrete utopias themselves, attends to negativity while stretching beyond it, seeking out visions of surplus which exceed, even if they cannot escape, the damage and disappointment of the present earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Rebecca Oh\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1531512658\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781531512651\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Fordham University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/06\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 240\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback","brand":"Rebecca Oh","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47136641876223,"sku":"9781531512651","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_da56c57d-046a-4cb2-9b62-64471d6007e4.jpg?v=1755023960","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/reading-better-states-rebecca-oh-9781531512651","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}