Murdoch Stephens has taken on the difficult task of sorting through and understanding much ignored critical theory relevant to environmental communication and has written an essential read for anyone interested in critical theory and environmental communication.

Richard Doherty, Chair, International Environmental Communication Association

Bucking a bias that insists on environmental communication as a crisis discipline that justifies an incoherent activism and smug moralism, in Critical Environmental Communication Murdoch Stephens advocates a return to thinking and theory. In a sustained and thoughtful engagement with such provocative thinkers as Latour, Žižek, Morton, and Sloterdijk, Stephens forces us to reconsider the grounds of our thinking and activism. As Stephens’ vital intervention argues, theory is not a necessary detour but the way itself that enables a thinking and acting that exceeds a mindless activism that pursues the media-amplified crisis du jour.

Kevin DeLuca, University of Georgia

By bringing four notable and provocative theorists into the orbit of environmental communication, Stephens’s work will reinvigorate discussions among environmental communication scholars about the possibilities for critique and critical scholarship.

Steve Schwarze, University of Montana