I especially thank Kenneth Surin, Jana Braziel, Annulla Linders, Marti Kheel, Thomas Heyd, and Eli Zaretsky for their thoughtful suggestions and comments. I am extremely grateful to Jack Elliott and the Hillier Endowment at Cornell University; Jill Bennett, Felicity Fenner, and Dennis del Favero at the University of New South Wales; and Joanne de Vries from the Fresh Outlook Foundation for providing me with opportunities to share earlier drafts of the manuscript. Sheryl Cohen kept me on track throughout every phase of this project, and I cannot thank her enough for her unwavering support.
Stimulating conversation with Nancy Fraser, Raj Patel, Michael Hardt, Debal Deb, Charles Waldheim, Stephen Seidel, Daniel Greenberg, Durganand Balsavar, Bryony Schwan, Noel Sturgeon, Greta Gaard, Mike Parr, Antoni Fokers, all the people I met in Dharavi, and the rural farmers outside Hyderabad, India, informed the arguments I develop throughout the book. I am very appreciative of my colleague Nnamdi Elleh for his continuing encouragement. My research assistants Erin Gulley and Katherine Setser worked hard investigating scientific evidence and reports; Katy Johnson’s eye for detail was an enormous help in the latter stages of the editing process; and Emily Schweppe saved the day on more than one occasion.
The University of Cincinnati Faculty Development Council, the University of Cincinnati Research Council, and the Taft Center for Research on the Humanities provided me with much needed funding to complete research for this book. I also thank Wendy Lochner and Amy Allen for their enthusiasm for this project as well as Christine Mortlock and copyeditor Annie Barva for their assistance at various stages of the publication process.
Last, I am very lucky to have Michael, Lucien, Shoshana, and Yehuda in my life; without them, this book would never have come to be.