What are the limits to reform environmentalism? Rearticulating ecological modernisation towards ecologism (original) (raw)
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Subversive rearticulation between radicalism and reform: The case of ecologism
Journal of Political Ideologies
Ruling ideologies typically erect binaries between acceptable and non-acceptable discourse that work to marginalise dissenting voices. Critical political projects are then forced to choose between ‘purity’, which typically reinforces marginality, and ‘realism’, with its ever-present danger of co-optation. This article contends that a third option exists. The premise of 'subversive rearticulation’ is that a single, apparently innocuous, articulation can begin the process of undermining an exclusionary binary from within. This single articulation – to a ‘pivot term’ – does not in itself threaten an ideological edifice. But it can underpin a signifying chain that ultimately circumvents the binary prohibitions that reproduce dominant social orders. To demonstrate the operation of subversive rearticulation I pursue an emerging stream of radical Green political theory, as well as the example of the Chinese market reforms under Deng Xiaoping. The central contribution of the article is the proposed ‘rearticulatory arcs’, chains of signifiers that appear not to directly challenge the governing binaries, thus guarding against immediate marginalisation, while subverting the binaries themselves. In the unique way that they ‘bend the space’ of ideological discourse, these arcs ‘deconstruct’ the choice between radicalism and reformism. I conclude that subversive rearticulation presents realistic possibilities for political movements, but requires careful planning and strategic discipline.
Journal of Archetypal Cosmology
The concept of the "green economy" was revived after the global financial crisis of 2007-2011, without any consensus on its definition. i Various interpretations of the financial crisis have surfaced to frame the different narratives on the green economy, with different remedies proposed. This paper provides a cosmological and discourse analysis of these diverse narratives of the green economy, namely green revolution, green transformation, green growth, green resilience, new developmentalism, and just transitions (decoupling). While the rational scientific method has been the dominant mode of research for the modern and postmodern eras, this paper seeks to contribute to the broadening of our current worldview to include more intuitive, imaginative, speculative, and visionary aspects. Insights from an emerging archetypal cosmology provide a critique of the underlying assumptions found in the current discourses on the green economy, and empower us to re-imagine sustainability. This emerging cosmology seeks to bring a corrective to the more dominant, rational-discursive, one-dimensional, one-size-fits-all free-market economic view of life and its misenchantment visible in (green) techno-science and the increased financialization of labor and nature. ii Anchored in the bioregion, the emerging cosmology re-imagines existing patterns of economics, polity, and socio-cultural life. It is through morphic resonance that these emerging life-sustaining habits germinate and grow, mitigating the capture of the state by the economically and politically elitist networks that often exacerbate injustice, poverty, exploitation, and degradation.
Fictions of Sustainability The Politics of Growth and Post-Capitalist Futures
2018
This book discusses the growing political contest between conservative and reform-orientated defenders of capitalist societies on the one side, and the policies and imagined futures advanced by green and socialist critics on the other. All are subjected to detailed scrutiny. Is ‘green growth’ innovation able to resolve deep-seated global inequality and other socio-political and environmental problems? Can new technology sustain capitalist production and high consumption by decoupling economic growth from the limits of nature? How feasible or utopian are ‘post-work’ or post-capitalist societies based on full automation and a universal basic income? What are the political economic strengths and weaknesses of green post-growth or degrowth proposals? These and other crucial issues are analysed by the author in a challenging and thought-provoking book covering an extensive range of policy reports, social theories, environmental proposals and political practices across the world. Boris Frankel is a social theorist, political economist and cultural critic. He is Honorary Principal Fellow in the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne.
?Environmentalism?, ?New Politics? and Industrialism: Some Theoretical Perspectives
Scandinavian Political Studies, 1990
Various conceptions of 'Environmentalism' and 'New Politics' are surveyed and their logical inconsistencies are identified. It is argued that only a conception of the crisis of industrial society, not the least evident in Eastern Europe, enables a consistent understanding of 'new politics'. From this conception, stressing the limits of man's mastery over nature on the one hand and the limits of the expansion of formal rationality on the other, the ambivalences in 'New Politics' between 'pre-industrial' and 'post-industrial' solutions are identified. The article sketches how the 'post-industrial' position can be developed. Neoliberalism and 'green' politics are identified not only as adversaries but rather as competing responses to the crisis of industrialism. and the compatibility of 'green' and social democratic politics is analysed.
Neither Productivism nor Degrowth – Thoughts on Eco-Socialism
Spectre, 2023
Eco-Marxism and eco-socialism are currently haunted by a polarization between a socialist eco-modernism and degrowth.1 The publication of Kohei Saito’s Marx in the Anthropocene, and the ensuing havoc on Twitter, was only fuel to that fire.2 Behind the smoke, however, we find compelling research and arguments coming from both sides, and eco-Marxism is among the most innovative branches of Marxism today. In this there is much to celebrate. Yet, the growing polarization between socialist eco-modernism and degrowth is troubling in many respects. Theoretical discussions are often riddled with undefined concepts, hostile readings, and strawmen. That both sides have easily identifiable weaknesses only fuels the polarization. The disputes are usually organized around dichotomies—e.g. “for or against growth”—which obscure more than they clarify. Even more problematic is that the polarization yields political harms, making class struggle harder. The two poles of the debate have attracted so much attention that more productive alternatives can hardly find oxygen. An eco-socialist movement should not be occupied with wrangling over “growth” or have eco-modernism or degrowth as starting points. Socialist class struggle in the 2020s must acknowledge that we cannot have infinite economic activity on a limited planet certainly not infinite abundance of physical things—but neither can we mobilize the working class by making “less growth” the focal point of our project. Lucky for us, we don’t have to choose between eco-modernism and degrowth.
The Allure and Tragedy of The Degrowth Perspective: Hegemonic Struggles over Green Imaginaries
Master Thesis, 2021
The thesis discusses the degrowth perspective as a green imaginary variant in the context of the Triple Crisis. It compares and contrasts degrowth with other contesting green imaginaries i.e., green capitalism, sustainable development and the Green New Deal (GND) in addressing the Triple Crisis and their hegemonic potential in the current interregnum. In this regard, this thesis primarily problematizes why the degrowth perspective failed to become the hegemonic vision as a growth critical perspective and was absorbed by its alternatives, despite its theoretical influence over the course of several organic and conjunctural crisis moments of the Fordist and post-Fordist accumulation regimes. The thesis attributes generations to degrowth perspective, in order to reveal the internal and external shortcomings it has carried along since its emergence. The thesis will employ Regulation Approach (RA) and Gramscian analysis as the main theoretical framework, along with several methodological instruments from Cultural Political Economy (CPE), to understand the dynamics behind the alternative techno-economic paradigm(s), mode of regulation and mode of societalization in a prospective “green” socioeconomic paradigm. Consequently, it is argued that the risks that the previous growth critical perspectives have experienced are still relevant for contemporary debates over degrowth, as degrowth underestimates the political struggle to become hegemonic and arises as a transformation projection without a valid transition strategy.
Journal of Political Ecology, 2022
Reviewed by Nikos Trantas. Email: nick.trantas "at" gmail.com At a time when classical geopolitics, war, and the rule of brute force make the more refined forms of political power and sustainable development goals seem ultra-progressive, any talk on the merits of a degrowth agenda appears to be sheer utopianism. This can be frustrating for degrowthers, who seek a more radical pathway to inclusive democracy and environmental sustainability. Both cynical realists and "progressive productivists" are putting forward arguments that aim to diminish the importance of degrowth's critique and proposals. Of course, this is no reason for the degrowth movement and school of thought to go on the defensive. Since there is a great deal of misunderstanding about degrowth (something to be expected due to the use of the d-word in the first place), Schmelzer, Vetter and Vansintjan's publication contributes decisively to the clarification of all major issues on the topic. The Future is Degrowth serves as an excellent introduction to the degrowth agenda and, as the subtitle mentions, a guide to a world beyond capitalism. Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian, networker and climate activist based in Berlin, Germany. He has published The Hegemony of Growth and edited Degrowth in Movement(s). Andrea Vetter is a transformation researcher, activist and journalist, using degrowth, the commons and critical ecofeminism as tools. Aaron Vansintjan is the co-founder of Uneven Earth, a website focusing on ecological politics. The book is written in plain language, as it tries to make the debate relatable to a wider audience, while the arguments are laid out clearly and the themes are well placed in the respective chapters. The merits of degrowth are not to be underestimated. The politicization of the debate on sustainability and development, which is part and parcel of the critique on green growth and the optimistic belief that science and technology in and of themselves will solve all problems, is its major contribution. By shedding light on the way that the capitalist growth paradigm works and calling for quite radical socioeconomic and political changes, the degrowth alternative paradigm allows for bringing together social movements and academics in the fight for social and ecological justice. The book opens by discussing economic growth, presenting it as a hegemonic ideology, a social "stabilizing" process, and as material process, where an expanding social metabolism of society with nature ends up throwing more and more resources into the economy, which consequently remain in the environment as waste and emissions. This is where the critiques of growth come in. The next 100-page chapter reviews seven major critiques: the ecological critique (economic growth destroys the ecological foundations of human life and cannot be transformed to become sustainable); the socioeconomic critique (growth mismeasures our lives and thus stands in the way of well-being and equality for all); the cultural critique (growth produces alienating ways of working, living, and relating to each other and nature); the critique of capitalism (growth depends on and is driven by capitalist exploitation and accumulation); the feminist critique (growth is based on gendered over-exploitation and devalues reproduction); critique of industrialism (growth gives rise to undemocratic productive forces and techniques); and the South-North critique (growth relies on and reproduces relations of domination, extraction, and exploitation between the capitalist center and periphery). The authors claim that degrowth can be understood as the convergence of these seven forms of growth critique (p. 169). Running through these various critiques of growth is the attempt to push back against 'the economic' as a sphere of independent rationality, and against economic calculation as the main basis for decision-making. The capitalist market functions like an iceberg. What is usually identified as "the economy"-commodities, labor, and investment-is in fact only the tip of this iceberg, beneath which lies an economy that is invisible, reproducing and sustaining life, and which makes the market economy possible in the first place. The "iceberg model" advanced in cultural theory, is just one of the reasons why we should deliberate and as we weigh our conflicting values and needs as a society by no longer asking the question "Does this meet the bottom line (i.e., profit)?", but instead ask, "Does this meet our needs, values and accord with our democratic decisions?" All the activities that take place underwater, so to speak, are invisible to economics and its tools of measurement. GDP measures only monetary flows-the tip of the iceberg-and simply ignores most economic activity. This chapter's added value is the brief discussion of growth critique outside of the degrowth debate, including conservative critiques (enactment of austerity policies so people do not "live beyond their means"); green fascism (strengthen borders and limit immigration, while simultaneously reorganizing