The Critique of Civilization
Works interrogating civilization itself — its origins, costs, and trajectory — from anarchist, anthropological, and ecological perspectives.
45 works
Bodley JH (2003)
The power of scale: a global history approach
Armonk, New York & London, England: ME Sharpe.
Bodley JH (2012)
Anthropology and contemporary human problems (sixth edition)
Lanham, New York, Toronto, Plymouth: Altamira Press.
Bodley JH (2014)
Victims of progress
Sixth Edition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Camatte J (1995)
This world we must leave and other essays
New York: Autonomedia.
Cohen MN (1989)
Health and the rise of civilization
Yale University Press.
Debord G (1994)
The society of the spectacle
Translation by Nicholson-Smith D. New York: Zone Books. [Originally published 1967].
Diamond S (1974)
In search of the primitive: a critique of civilization
London: Transaction Publishers.
Dunlap A (2022)
I don't want your progress! It tries to kill…me!: decolonial encounters and the anarchist critique of civilization
Globalizations, DOI:10.1080/14747731.2022.2073657.
el-Ojeili C & Taylor D (2020)
The future in the past: anarcho-primitivism and the critique of civilization today
Rethinking Marxism, 32, 168–186.
Ellul J (1965)
The technological society
London: Cape.
Glendinning C (1994)
My name is Chellis and I'm in recovery from western civilization
Gabriola Island BC: New Catalyst Books.
Gowdy J (2019)
Our hunter-gatherer future: climate change, agriculture, and uncivilization
Futures 115 (2020) 102488.
Gowdy J (2021a)
Ultrasocial: the evolution of human nature and the quest for a sustainable future
Cambridge University Press.
Gowdy J (2021b)
Hunter gatherers and the crisis of civilization
Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Volume LV, June 2021: 35-54.
Griffiths J (2006)
Wild: An elemental journey
New York: Tarcher Perigee.
Jensen D, Keith L, Wilbert M (2021)
Bright green lies: how the environmental movement lost its way and what we can do about it
New York: Monkfish Publishing.
Kidner D (2012)
Nature and experience in the culture of delusion: how industrial society lost touch with reality
Palgrave Macmillan.
Kingsnorth P (2022)
How the Left fell for capitalism: progressives were always part of the corporate eliteUnHerd.
Kingsnorth P (2025)
Against the machine: on the unmaking of humanity
New York: Thesis.
Lieberman M (2010)
The failure of civilization from an anarcho-primitivist perspective
In A Creative passion: anarchism and culture, ed. Shantz J, 31–62. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Lord E (2016)
Modern Madness: a wild schizoanalysis of mental distress in the spaces of modernity
Winter Oak Press.
McGilchrist I (2021)
The matter of things: our brains, our delusions, and the unmaking of the world, volumes I & II
London: Perspectiva Press.
Narvaez D & Tarsha M (2021)
The missing mind: Contrasting civilization with non-civilization development and functioning
In Henley T & Rossano M (Eds.), Psychology and cognitive archaeology: An Interdisciplinary approach to the study of the human mind. London: Routledge. (pp. 55-69).
Norberg-Hodge H (1992)
Ancient futures: learning from Ladakh
Sierra Club Books.
Perlman F (1983)
Against his-story, against Leviathan! an essay
Detroit: Black and Red.
Ponting C (2007)
A new green history of the world
New York: Penguin Books.
Sakolsky R & Koehnline J (eds) (1993)
Gone to Croatan: origins of North American dropout culture
New York: Autonomedia.
Scott JC (2017)
Against the grain: a deep history of the earliest states
New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Scout U (2016)
Rewild or die: revolution and renaissance at the end of civilization
Portland: Myth Media.
Seely M (2012)
The revolutionary posture of anarcho-primitivism
Fifth Estate #386, Vol. 47(1):37.
Seely M (2012)
Born expecting the Pleistocene: psychology and the problem of civilization
OldDog Books.
Seely M (2013)
Anarchist by design: technology and human nature
OldDog Books.
Seely M (2020)
Civilization heresies
Boston MA & San Francisco CA: Big Table Publishing.
Seely M (2022)
Old dog: a traveler's tale
Eugene, Oregon: Resource Publications.
Selvatico I (2021)
Black blossoms at the end of the world
LBC Books.
Tucker K (2019)
The cull of personality: ayahuasca, colonialism, and the death of a healer
Black and Green Press.
Wells S (2010)
Pandora's seed: the unforeseen cost of civilization
New York: Random House.
Zerzan J (1994)
Future Primitive and Other Essays
New York: Autonomedia.
Zerzan J (2008a)
Running on emptiness: The pathology of civilization
Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.
Zerzan J (2012)
Future primitive revisited
Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.
Zerzan J (2015)
Why hope? The stand against civilization
Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.
Zerzan J (2021)
When We Are Human: Notes from the Age of Pandemics
Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.
Ziq (2018)
Indigenous anarchy & the need for a rejection of the colonizer's “civilization”
Anarchist Library.