The ground has volume. It is a voluminous surface. As such, it cannot be an object of sovereignty.

‍Cornel West once wrote that “it is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective” (West, 1993, 2017: 57). West’s warnings of the twin dangers of racism, both of which have been flirted with by geographers, serves as a useful reminder for thinking about the vortex.

‍The rush of air and water over a territory are not the only flows that shape its terrain. And it is movement that, “instead of being subsequent to geography, is geography” (Steinberg 2013, 157). The term “eddy” can capture not just unidirectional movement and flows but also their unpredictable, counter-intuitive, spiral-like, concentric, centrifugal, and centripetal tendencies. Eddy is both natural phenomenon and a spatial metaphor for “human vulnerability and adaptability in times of unprecedented transformation.”

Acknowledging resilience’s ubiquity and conceptual ambiguity, Resilience by Kevin Grove appears all the more commendable in its ambition, its scope, timeliness and, in the end, how it illuminates possible lines that might be pursued to reorient the potential of resilience for critique and practice alike. The prevalence of resilience, and its possible existence as an empty signifier, is occasionally the grounds for its dismissal in the eyes of some scholars. But for Grove it is this popularity that is motivation for his engagement with resilience in the first place.

Jesse Goldstein’s book, "Planetary Improvement", is a welcome addition to the critical environmental analysis of capitalism. An interdisciplinary project, the book explores the emerging cleantech marketplace and connects work on entrepreneurialism, the creative economy, and technological innovation within a Marxist framework.