Note for anglos: I am reviewing the German translation here but there is also an english translation under the name "Land Sickness"

In this 99-page mixture of sociological essay and travelogue, Danish sociologist Nikolaj Schultz describes his struggle for a new understanding of himself and the world in times of climatic and ecological crisis. The first third of the text is about Schultz in his stuffy and overheated Parisian apartment - deprived of sleep by the wave of drought that has now become normal in France and his struggle with the knowledge that his every action, every supermarket purchase, only exacerbates the ecological crisis. A depressing realisation that many of us have probably come to in recent years, which is why one wonders why Schultz dwells on it for so long, as if countless texts have not already been written about this uncomfortable truth.

Driven by the confines of Paris, he travels south to the Cote D'Azur to take a sailing trip with a friend to the small island of Porquerolles. Once there, he sets off on a long walk. He hopes to be able to organise his thoughts in this idyllic setting and find a reformed way of dealing with himself that is able to unite environmental realities with the very human need for freedom.

But first, he is confronted with the reality that he is not a blissfully wandering thinker on an idyllic island, but one of thousands of day tourists whose mere presence exposes Porquerolles to increased erosion, water shortages and the risk of forest fires, while at the same time providing an economic livelihood for many of the island's inhabitants. A local rubbish collector he meets on his hike tells of the tensions between various factions of the island's population. These different factions of the island's population, can be broadly divided into economisers and ecologisers.

Perhaps the most interesting part after his talk with the local and offers a certain expansion of the concept of socioeconomic class to include a territorial and ecological component. It is not the struggle for the means of production that is the predominant problem on Porquerolles. Instead, it is the struggle for the ecological and cultural basis of reproduction on the island.

Finally, Schultz takes a look at the super-rich, who try to escape social reality with luxury bunkers and space exploration, to completely detach themselves from the unwashed masses, which will probably only help for a short time.

Overall, a quite plain essay that takes a relatively broad look at the most common self-doubts and questions of young ecologically-minded people in the West, but then stops there without any deeper analysis or search for alternatives. Most likely to be of interest to those interested in sociology but not a must-read and certainly not worth the 15 quid for the paperback. If you want to take a look at it, I recommend pirating it/buying it second-hand.

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