Janet Biehl

Janet Biehl

Janet Biehl (born 1953) is a writer associated with social ecology, the body of ideas developed and publicized by Murray Bookchin. In 1986 she attended the Institute for Social Ecology and there began a collaborative relationship with Bookchin, working intensively with him over the next two decades in the explication of social ecology from their home in Burlington, Vermont. From 1987 to 2000 she and Bookchin co-wrote and co-published the theoretical newsletter Green Perspectives, later renamed Left Green Perspectives.

She is the editor and compiler of The Murray Bookchin Reader (1997); the author of The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (1998) and Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics (1991); and coauthor (with Peter Staudenmaier) of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (1995). She has also authored numerous articles about or related to Bookchin’s thought, especially libertarian municipalism, social ecology and eco-feminism. Bookchin considered her The Murray Bookchin Reader to be the best introduction to his work.

In 2011 Biehl separated herself from social ecology, explaining that she could no longer advocate an anti-statist ideology, and reverted to her pre-1987 political identity as "what leftists call a social democrat".

She has written a biography of Bookchin, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Selected works

• Finding our Way. Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics (1991) ISBN 0-921689-78-0
• Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (1996) ISBN 1-873176-73-2
• The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (1997) ISBN 1-55164-100-3
• The Murray Bookchin Reader (1997) ISBN 0-304-33874-5
• Mumford Gutkind Bookchin: The Emergence of Eco-Decentralism (2011) ISBN 978-82-93064-10-7