Emancipation writ large : toward an ecocentric green political theory (original) (raw)
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Green Political Theory: Nature, Virtue and Progress
This thesis offers an immanent critique and reconstruction of green moral and political theory. In chapter 1, the critical-reconstructive approach and spirit of the thesis is outlined in terms of contributing to the process of developing a green political theory that is different from, ‘ecologism' or ideological accounts of green politics. In chapter 2, deep ecology is critically interrogated in terms of its metaphysical (2 .3) and psychological claims (2.4). Its view of the 'ecological crisis" as a 'crisis' of western culture is criticised, as is its a priori defence of environmental preservation versus the human productive use of nature. While its ecocentrism is rejected as the normative basis for green politics, its concern with virtue ethics is held to be an important contribution. In chapter 3, a self-reflexive version of anthropocentrism is developed as the most appropriate moral basis for green politics. Some naturalistic arguments are presented in order to support' speciesism, and defend it from claims of arbitrariness and as being akin to sexism or racism. Arguments centring on demonstrating the tenuous character of the differences between humans and nonhumans are argued to neglect the fundamental moral significance of the difference between 'human' and' nonhuman'. I argue that an ethic of use, understood as reflexive mode of interaction with the nonhuman world, is a defensible form of anthropocentrism for green political purposes. The basis of this reflexive anthropocentrism turns on the claim that while human interests are a necessary condition for justifying a particular human use of nature, it is not a satisfactory one. Issues pertaining to the 'seriousness' of the human interest which is fulfilled are held to be important in distinguishing ‘use' from 'abuse. In chapters 4 to 7, I outline a particular conception of green political theory. In chapter 4, the eco-anarchist position is examined by focusing on two versions: bioregionalism (4 .3) and social ecology (4.4). While rejecting the eco-anarchist position, I conclude that it be thought of as a constitutive rather than a regulative ideal of green politics, on the basis that the transformation rather than the abolition of the state is consistent with green values and principles. Chapter5 builds on the latter and presents an institutional version of green politics, which I call collective ecological management. This understanding of green politics, in which both the ‘nation' and the 'state' have key roles, is developed from a critique of ecological modernisation (5.5), and Leopold's 'land ethic' (5.8). In chapter 6, I outline a theory of green political economy. Criticising both neoclassical environmental economics and free market environmentalism I, present an alternative green political economy which sees the 're-embedding' of the economy in society as a necessary part of the process of harmonising the human and natural economics. Issues around the 'formal' and 'informal' economy, local and global markets, self-sufficiency and self-reliance arc discussed as well the relationship between consumption, production and ecological virtue. In chapter 7, the democratic dimensions of green political theory are examined. Here, green democratic theory and practice is held to centre on a view or democracy as a form of society in which 'green citizenship" as an integrative mode of action and identity is central to the cultivation of 'ecological stewardship’. Chapter 8 concludes with a discussion of 'progress', virtue and ecological stewardship.
"Part of The Coming Ecological Revolution Pt 4 Political Philosophy and Ethics by Dr Peter Critchley This paper examines the Green claim that society - indeed, civilisation as we know it - cannot survive on the current basis and that a sustainable society must now be built on ecological principles. For O’Riordan, greens offer a ‘simple binary choice’ between two opposing 'world-views' (O'Riordan 1981: 300). Except that there is no real choice between survival or self-administered destruction. The argument contrasts the 'Life Necessities Society (LNS) to 'the 'Industrial Growth Society (IGS)' (Kvaloy 1990) in terms of competing 'Bioregional’ and 'Industrial-Scientific' paradigms (Sale 1985: 50). These are not choices but alternatives, with green values or principles as imperatives demanding a fundamental reconstruction of political society. For Ophuls, 'liberal democracy as we know it ... is doomed by ecological scarcity; we need a completely new political philosophy and set of institutions' (Ophuls 1977a: 3). This means that incremental reform and a piecemeal gradualism within existing political institutions is merely part of the general crisis of the existing techno-industrial system and not a coherent response to it. The paper argues that the Green failure to develop a new political philosophy and a new institutional framework derives from on an internal fracture within Green politics, split between an authoritarian vision based on fundamental green values and ecological imperatives on the one hand, and a democratic vision which, within an unchanged parliamentary and electoral politics, is based on people’s own opinions. Without a transformation of political institutions, green politics is extremely vulnerable, having to dilute its principles in order to widen electoral appeal, thus risking accommodation and absorption within the existing system, or even coming to supply the rationale justifying authoritarian government when the impact of ecological crisis starts to be felt. To accept the horizons of the existing political system is to limit aims to incremental tinkering within the system, with green politics reduced to little more than the attempt to manage and administer a mounting ecological crisis and disaster. The alternative to Green politics as a rescue squad is ecological praxis bringing about the ecological society, the idea that the practical transformation which brings about the ecological society is at the same time a political transformation in which the individuals composing the demos come to be capable of participating within communitarian direct democracy, thus uniting means and ends, form and content. As a goal abstracted from the constitutive praxis that brings it about, the ecological society is a utopia, incapable of realisation and lacking in electoral appeal. The same applies to all other ecological values. The notion of ecological praxis identifies the individual members of the demos as change agents bringing about the future sustainable society."
Antagonism, Co-optation, Fragmentation: Unravelling the Triple Bind of Green Political Struggle
Climate change represents the entry of the planet and its inhabitants into uncharted territory, but a meaningful collective response is elusive. This thesis seeks to unravel this political deadlock, in both senses: to trace its structural causes and to transcend it. It aims to trace and to advance the fortunes of ecologism as a political ideology. It approaches climate change as a problem of cultural politics, as a contest to define climate change, as it is the meaning of climate change that sets the parameters of what action can appropriately be taken. Part One employs discourse theory to analyse the formation and reproduction of environmental discourses, how they recruit subjects, and the conflicts between them. Chapter one examines the climate sceptic movements in the US and Australia. It goes beyond analysis of the material bases of these movements to explain how they exploit deep-seated imaginaries of nation and frontierism to corrupt rational deliberation. At the other end of the scale, leading climate nations spruik their green credentials. Yet by analysing the official climate discourse of Great Britain, chapter two reveals a co-optive strategy aimed not at ecological crisis but at the legitimation crisis it poses to key market and state institutions. A third feature of climate politics is the ‘silent majority’. Chapter three enumerates the unfulfilled conditions that keep certain citizens from engaging in climate politics, even when they accept the science. Part One concludes that ecologism, which seeks to reconcile ecology and society, is caught in a triple bind of antagonism, fragmentation, and co-optation that preserves the hegemonic order of growth- and consumerism-based capitalism. Part Two assesses possible ways to transcend the triple bind. Chapters four and five pursue the promise of an ecological subject, a collective agent that retains a kernel of autonomy from hegemonic discourse. It suggests such a subject does not exist behind or before discourse – as a primordial, pre-linguistic subject – but in the spaces between discourses, spaces that are not, as such, natural, but social. Chapter six further develops this argument. Enlisting the burgeoning ‘post-nature’ literature, it contends that an ecological subject, as liberatory social subject, is held back by the overarching category of Nature. Nature is implicated in the hegemony of capitalist modernity, and engenders a transcendent, ‘monotheistic’ planet immune to the damage humans inflict upon it. Finally, I turn to the strategic question of how Greens may negotiate the choice between radicalism – ‘pure’ but irrelevant – and the Faustian bargain of reform. Chapter seven contends that a third strategic alternative exists. It suggests that co-opted environmentalism can undermine the binaries that exclude its radical wing through a strategy of ‘subversive rearticulation’. Through a carefully orchestrated series of discursive pivots, subversive rearticulation can incrementally deflect, and ultimately unravel, the hegemonic logic of the triple bind.
2018
This thesis locates itself in the field of critical green political theory. It takes the present environmental crisis as its object of study to provide a critical account of the way it is currently addressed in dominant Anthropocene narratives and liberal capitalist growth-based institutions. This work offers a constructive and emancipatory delineation of what could be an ecological civilisation respectful of its natural environment and social differences, and describes how to shift from an ‘arrogant speciesism’ and materialistic lifestyle to a post-anthropocentric ecological humanism focusing on the ‘good life’ within ecological limits. Whilst there are already countless research works and books dealing with this issue, the major novelty of this thesis is to propose a green republican analysis building on John Barry’s work that covers the ethical, political, and economic aspects of the transition away from ‘actually existing unsustainability’. Taking as a starting point the society as it is constituted today and not as it should be, that is a consumer capitalist society characterised by ecologically flawed ontological, ethical, and practical approaches, this dissertation presents a normative investigation concerned with the real world applicability of the changes it suggests to implement. Indeed, while rooted in ethical thinking and political philosophy, this thesis seeks to offer a concrete roadmap of how sustainable societies can be fostered. It, therefore, represents an attempt in the field of ‘realist utopianism’, that is a position committed to a transformative narrative which advocates humans’ reconciliation (and re-connection) with the planet and the more than human world. This work aims at integrating and synthesising across different bodies of knowledge such as Earth Systems Sciences (ESS), philosophy, political theory, political science, political economy, ecological economics, but also sociology, psychology, and cultural studies. In this regard, it is an interdisciplinary applied form of critical green political theorising.
In this essay, I: (a) criticize the current political strategy of most environmentalists, both radical and moderate; (b) propose the intellectual terms of a political alliance that could overcome the traditional political separation between conservative and progressive when dealing with the environmental question; (c) report on a case; (d) suggest how to shift from a non-political situation into a political and institutional action. My goal is to create a political-cultural background which brings together both environmentalists and those who are inspired by new economy, cultural creatives, wikinomics, organic farming, cultural and immaterial consumption models, etc. The new alliance will be grounded on a new covenant between humans and nature, and on a non-materialist interpretation of politics. Therefore, I call for new research that helps to radically change the political and the production system, not because it is unjust in the usually considered terms, but because it endangers both nature and society. By changing the priority order I do not deny the importance of social justice and individual freedom in everyday life. Rather, I think that meaningful political reforms and consistent political platforms will be possible if we place the relation between humans and nature at the beginning of political debate.
Green Political Theory and the State
Political Studies Association (UK), 1993, 1993
The aim of this paper is to argue that the concept of the state and related issues are integral elements of green political theory, both in terms of its critique and positive proposals. The focus will be on the idea of sustainability and how its achievement depends on a positive commitment to the idea of a ‘green state’. This idea goes against the anarchistic self-understanding that permeates green political literature. For many green theorists and commentators, that green political theory is basically a contemporary variant of anarchism is to a great extent self evident. Goodin offers a typical example in declaring that ‘greens are basically libertarians- cum-anarchists’ (1992: 152). However, unless this affiliation with eco-anarchism is transcended the coher- ence of green theory cannot be guaranteed. Its theoretical consistency lies, I argue, in the articulation of a green theory of the state (and civil society) and citizenship. I use the idea of a green state as a way of both understanding recent developments in green theory, and, together with the idea of ‘environmental citizenship’, of in- dicating the direction of its future development.
Discursive Sustainability: The State (and Citizen) of Green Political Theory
Lovenduski, J. and (eds), Contemporary Political Studies, Vol 1 (Glasgow: PSA), 1-12, 1994
The aim of this paper is to argue that the concept of the state and related issues are integral elements of green political theory, both in terms of its critique and positive proposals. The focus will be on the idea of sustainability and how its achievement depends on a positive commitment to the idea of a ‘green state’. This idea goes against the anarchistic self-understanding that permeates green political literature. For many green theorists and commentators, that green political theory is basically a contemporary variant of anarchism is to a great extent self evident. Goodin offers a typical example in declaring that ‘greens are basically libertarians cum-anarchists’ (1992: 152). However, unless this affiliation with eco-anarchism is transcended the coherence of green theory cannot be guaranteed. Its theoretical consistency lies, I argue, in the articulation of a green theory of the state (and civil society) and citizenship. I use the idea of a green state as a way of both understanding recent developments in green theory, and, together with the idea of ‘environmental citizenship’, of indicating the direction of its future development.
THE COMING ECOLOGICAL REVOLUTION Pt 4 Political Philosophy and Ethics
Political Philosophy and Ethics This part examines the emancipatory potentialities of reason and freedom to constitute the good life for human beings. The argument considers politics as creative human self-realisation to possess an ineliminable normative dimension concerning the appropriate regiment for the good. Green political theory is analysed in the context of a philosophical concept of ‘rational freedom’ drawn from the work of Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel.
FROM GREEN PRINCIPLES TO POLITICS
"Arguing that a principled standpoint is a condition for any person or movement seeking to effect real social change, this book foregrounds social and environmental justice as against economic imperatives based on accumulation, profit and endless growth. If the world's resources are to be saved for future generations, the world's citizens will have to assume a standpoint based on a set of ethical considerations and principles which are directly opposed to the overarching imperatives of the global economy. But these principles will also have to be in favour of something, confronting the world with a positive vision of change in order to inspire and motivate effort. This book argues that the reality of environmental crisis and the prospect of future social transformation challenges our science and our values. Whilst it is plain that change is normal in the history of the planet and that human beings, as change agents, are very adept at responding to change, the nature of the contemporary environmental crisis is the uncertainty with respect to the levels, character and timings of changes. And the evidence is that the rates of change may well be increasing, with a whole number of practical implications. The book examines the key questions within the many-sided predicament concerning the factors influencing environmental change and how to respond to that change: How is nature conceived and how should nature be conceived? What should human beings do and how should human beings act? What are the objects and what principles should action be guided by? In putting these questions the paper is concerned to relate Green politics not only to the scientific analysis of the environmental crisis but above all to moral, cultural and psychological states and attitudes. This implies that ecologists need to discover and advance answers to the moral, social and political questions that are of most concern to individuals. This comes with the corollary that ecologists in politics should leave most of their scientific capital behind and address individuals on the level of the issues that most concern them. What kind of world do people want to live in? What kind of social and natural landscape fits this world? What contribution can people make and what can people do to move that part of the world in which they live and work in this direction, whether as individuals alone or as part of a collective project? Of course, the life support systems of planet earth is a universal cause which gives some substance to notions of the common good. Humankind as a whole has a common interest in protecting life on this planet. Ecology as politics can therefore envisage the inclusive politics that has been pursued by the great religions and the grand narratives of politics, but which has continued to prove elusive. The elusive character of the general interest and the universal ethic should warn anyone thinking that building consensus is easy. In pursuing the common good, human beings are approaching the universal from very uncommon ground. So the goal of an inclusive environmentalism involves a re-thinking of ethics, one capable of integrating a diversity of social movements in a common moral cause. The goal is to act and make a contribution so as to create a liveable and sustainable world for all, humans and nonhumans alike. The main challenge is not technical and institutional but moral and psychological, the way that the human personality has been moulded to fit the system. For the best part of a century, a long succession of thinkers, politicians and advertisers have urged individuals to throw off moral, psychic and communal restraint to act on impulse, yield to desire, and abandon measure in self-gratification. The result is an inability to think for the long term common good. These observations are shown to point to the need to embed a cognitive praxis within the institutional framework of government and politics so that actions and outcomes are more closely connected, greater cooperation and coordination is achieved between actors, greater clarity is expressed with regard to decision making results, and insight into long term ends comes to inform short term choices. Rather than concentrate on achieving predictability within existing modes of thought, action and organisation, the argument of this book is that the emphasis should be upon increasing adaptability through the innovation of new modes on the basis of immanent lines of development. This makes the affirmation of ecological and social capacity building as at least a much a part of Green politics as campaigns for votes and office. The position emphasises human beings as makers, as doers, as change agents capable of assuming ethical and political control of a world which is in large part self-made. This argument is developed in terms of concepts and values, mentalities and modalities, which allow for a plurality of meanings, institutions and practices which are adaptable in face of new developments and unforeseen events — and which also facilitate positive and coherent responses to change. This commitment to praxis as the means by which human agents reclaim the ethical content of a self-made world is considered worthy in its own right, as well as being an integral part of dealing with the challenges presented by climatic change."