THEMES IN SOCIAL THEORY

Series Editor: Rob Stones

This series explores how cutting-edge research within the social sciences
relies on combinations of social theory and empirical evidence. Different
books examine how this relationship works in particular subject areas, from
technology and health to politics and human rights. Giving the reader a brief
overview of the major theoretical approaches used in an area, the books then
describe their application in a range of empirical projects. Each text looks
at contemporary and classical theories, provides a map of primary research
carried out in the subject area and highlights advances in the field. The series
is a companion to the Traditions in Social Theory series, founded by Ian Craib
and edited by Rob Stones.

Published
HEALTH AND SOCIAL THEORY
Fernando De Maio
TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL THEORY
Steve Matthewman
HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL THEORY
Lydia Morris
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND SOCIAL THEORY
Karen O’Reilly
ENVIRONMENTS, NATURES AND SOCIAL THEORY
Damian F. White, Alan P. Rudy and Brian J. Gareau

Forthcoming
CRIME AND SOCIAL THEORY
Eammon Carrabine
IDENTITY AND SOCIAL THEORY
Stephanie Lawler
POLITICS AND SOCIAL THEORY
Will Leggett
TRADITIONS IN SOCIAL THEORY

Founding Editor: Ian Craib

Series Editor: Rob Stones

This series offers a selection of concise introductions to particular traditions

in sociological thought. It aims to deepen the reader’s knowledge of
particular theoretical approaches and at the same time to enhance their wider
understanding of sociological theorising. Each book will offer: a history of the
chosen approach and the debates that have driven it forward; a discussion of
the current state of the debates within the approach (or debates with other
approaches); an argument for the distinctive contribution of the approach
and its likely future value. The series is a companion to the Themes in Social
Theory series, edited by Rob Stones.

Published
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE (Second Edition)
Ted Benton and Ian Craib
CRITICAL THEORY
Alan How
MARXISM AND SOCIAL THEORY
Jonathon Joseph
MICRO SOCIAL THEORY
Brian Roberts
WEBER AND THE WEBERIANS
Lawrence A. Scaff
STRUCTURATION THEORY
Rob Stones

Forthcoming
POST-STRUCTURALISM AND AFTER
David Howarth
THE SIMMELIAN LEGACY
Olli Pyyhtinen
Environments, Natures
and Social Theory

Towards a Critical Hybridity

Damian F. White
Alan P. Rudy
Brian J. Gareau
© Damian F. White, Alan P. Rudy and Brian J. Gareau 2016
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2016 by
PALGRAVE
Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street,
London, N1 9XW.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave is a global imprint of the above companies and is represented
throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978–0–230–24103–9 hardback
ISBN 978–0–230–24104–6 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, Damian F., author.
  Environments, natures and social theory : towards a critical hybridity / Damian F. White, Alan P. Rudy,
Brian J. Gareau.
   pages cm — (Themes in social theory)
  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978–0–230–24103–9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–230–24104–6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
  1. Environmental sociology. 2.  Social ecology. 3.  Sociology. 4.  Social sciences—Philosophy.
I. Rudy, Alan P., author. II. Gareau, Brian J., 1973- author. III. Title.
  GE195.W497 2015
 304.201—dc23 2015026703
 Contents

Series Forewordx
List of Figures and Tablesxiv
Publisher’s Acknowledgementsxv
Prefacexvi

Introduction: The Socio-Ecological Imagination 1

There is No Unitary “Anthropos” and Environmental Problems are
  Socially Mediated 4
Nature-Cultures 7
Realism, Constructionism and Beyond 8
Material, Cultural and Political Ecologies 12
Power and Socio-Ecological Entanglements 14
Conclusion 15

1 Unnatural Social Theory? The Problem of Nature in

Classic Social Theory 17
Enlightenment and Social Theory 18
Naturalistic Reductionism in Social Theory: Malthus, Spencer and
  Social Darwinism 20
Social Reductionism: Durkheim 22
Looking Beyond Mainstream Traditions in Social Theory 24
Marx and Engels on Ecology and Environmental Questions 24
Social Anarchism, Mutualism and Regionalism 26
A.N. Whitehead, Gabriel Tarde and the Sociology of Associations 28
Human Ecology 29
Catton and Dunlap – Contesting Human Exemptionalism 30
Ted Benton – Rejecting Human Exceptionalism but Defending the
  Specificity of the Ecologically Embedded Social Agent 31
Haraway: A Relational View of Nature-Cultures 33
Negotiating Hybrid Worlds 34
Conclusion 35

v
vi Contents

2 Hybrid Histories: Historical Socio-Ecologies in the Age of “the

Anthropocene”36
Noble/Ignoble Savages and Postcolonial Histories 37
Environmental Histories of Small-Scale, Agricultural and Feudal
 Societies 39
Collapse, Overshoot or Social and Ecological Resilience? 41
Understanding the Landscape of the Pre-Columbian Americas:
  A Pristine World or a Worked and Populated Hybrid Landscape? 44
Mobile Nonhuman Histories: Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism 45
The Rise of “the Anthropocene”? 46
Anthropocene, Capitalocene or the Global Production of Multiple
  Socionatures? 49
Conclusion 50

3 Limits/No Limits? Neo-Malthusians, Prometheans and Beyond 52

The Rise of the Neo-Malthusians 53
The Global Environmentalism of Limits and the Problem of
  Exponential Growth in a Finite System 54
Epistemological Skepticism of Global Modeling 58
The Free Market Promethean Cornucopian Response 60
The Bet 61
A Zero-Sum Debate or Shifting Positions in the Light of Changing
 Circumstances? 62
Revisions and Reversals in the Environmentalism of Limits 62
Revisions and Reversals from the Promethean/Cornucopian
 Worldview 65
“Big State” Promethean Politics – Defending the Future or Protecting
  the Past? 67
Conclusion 70

4 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology: The Missing Third,

Fourth and Fifth Dimensions of the Environmental Debate 71
Murray Bookchin’s Social Ecology 72
Barry Commoner: Socialist Ecology 75
Feminist Political Ecology and Demographic Transition Theory 76
Southern Critiques of the “Northern” Environmental Debate 79
The Political Ecology of Land and Resources 81
Criticism of Social Environmentalism and Political Ecologists 84
Planetary Boundaries/Planetary Opportunities 88
Conclusion 91
 Contents vii

5 Structures and Institutions: The Treadmill of Production, the

Metabolic Rift and the Sociology of Ecological Modernization 92
Structural Political Economy Perspectives 94
The Treadmill of Production 94
The Metabolic Rift in Eco-Marxism 96
The Sociology of Ecological Modernization 98
Merits of the Metabolic Rift and the Treadmill of Production 103
Limits of the Metabolic Rift and the Treadmill of Production 103
Malthusianism and Dualism 103
The Challenge of Non-Equilibrium Ecology and Southern
  Political Ecology to Metabolic Rift and Treadmill Perspectives 104
The Limits of Zero-Sum Binary Thinking and Left Functionalism:
  The Disproportionality and Divergence Thesis 107
The Postpolitics of (Socialist) Eco-Catastrophism 108
Evaluating the Sociology of Ecological Modernization 109
Limits of the Sociology of Ecological Modernization 110
Functionalism and Theoretical Limitations in the Sociology of
  Ecological Modernization 110
Empirical and Methodological Deficiencies in the Sociology of
  Ecological Modernization: Ecologically Uneven Exchange,
  the Jevons Paradox and STIRPAT 111
Ecological Modernization as Postpolitical Eco-Managerialism?
  The Normative Deficit in Ecological Modernization? 112
The Problem with “Greenwash,” The Neo-Liberalization of
  Environmental Governance and the Politics of Bait and Switch 113
Conclusion 114

6 Hybridities and Agencies: Latour, Haraway, Beck and the

Vital Materialists 115
Hybridity 116
Bruno Latour: We Have Never Been Modern117
Latour and Actor-Network Theory 120
Doing Actor-Network Theory 121
Donna Haraway: We Have Never Been Human 123
Ulrich Beck: The Sociology of Risk 126
Democracy, Science and Environmental Politics in a
  Postnaturalistic Age 128
Evaluating the Hybrid Thinking of Latour, Haraway and Beck 129
Critical Thoughts on Beck – Risk Society or a Society of
 Hypochondriacs? 130
viii Contents

Critical Thoughts on Latour: Enlightenment, Agency and the Missing

 Middle 131
Critical Perspectives on Donna Haraway: Towards a Critical
 Hybridity? 135
Exuberant Ontologies, Vital Materialisms and Decentered Humans 137
Conclusion 142

7 Culture, Spaces, Power: From Environmental Justice to Urban

Political Ecologies 143
Creative Historical Ecologies: Rereading the Historical Relations
  between Environmental History, Labor, Gender, Sexuality and Race 144
Environmental Justice and the Sociology of Environmental
 Inequalities 147
Hybrid, Cyborg and Relational Eco-Marxisms and Urban Political
 Ecologies 151
Critical Evaluations 154
Conclusion 156

8 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 158

Global Environmental Governance: A History of Transition
  and Change 159
The Early Years: Environmental Pollution and Resource Protection 161
The Transitional Years: Sustainable Development and Sustaining
 Growth 163
The Contested Years: Neoliberalism and the Environment 165
Neoliberalization of Global Environmental Governance 166
From Environmental Justice to Expertise: A Look at the
  Development of the Basel Convention 166
From Social Welfare to Individual Profits: A Look at the
  Neoliberalization of the Montreal Protocol 168
The Challenge of Global Climate Change 170
Conclusion 172

9 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™ 176

Neoliberal Hybrid Ecologies – Free People Living in Fortress
 Ecologies 177
End Times Ecology 179
Critical Evaluations 1 180
Bright Greens: Natural Capitalism, Cradle to Cradle and Beyond 182
Post-Environmentalism 185
Critical Evaluations II 186
Conclusion 191
 Contents ix

10 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies 193

Cosmopolitics: Democratic Experiments to Make Things Public 194
Redirective Practices, Plenitude and Experiments in Sustainable
 Living 197
Critical Evaluations I 200
A Hybrid and Post Free Market Economy? 202
Municipalist and NeoStatist Political Strategies for Developing
a Hybrid Politics 207
Critical Evaluations II 209

Conclusion: Hybrid Arguments, Hybrid Flourishing, Hybrid Futures 213

Bibliography216

Index246
 Series Foreword

A simple aim lies at the heart of this series. This is to deepen understanding
of the role of social theory in the creation and validation of the most valu-
able empirical research in the social sciences. The series rests upon a commit-
ment to explore the vast terrain upon which theory and the empirical meet,
and extends an invitation to readers to share in this exploration. Each book
takes on a specialized substantive area of research such as health, international
migration, crime, environments and natures, politics, technology, gender and
work, identity and human rights, and excavates the character of the theory–
empirical interplay in relation to key themes within the specialized area.
The authors of the volumes all write clearly and accessibly even when the
material they are dealing with is intrinsically difficult. They have a close knowl-
edge of the relevant field, an enthusiasm for the kind of theoretically informed
empirical research that has been produced within it, and possess a flair for the-
oretical analysis. Within the general rubric of the series each author (or team
of authors) has her or his own style and approach, and a distinctive authorial
voice. This should translate into a sense of pluralism within the series as a
whole, meaning that the investigation of the theory–empirical terrain will take
on the broad and varied character required to push forward our understanding
in the most open and constructive manner possible.
Each book in the series aims to bring together in one volume some of
the most significant theoretically informed empirical work in that subfield.
Environments, Natures and Social Theory is no exception to this. However, it
departs in various ways from the standard rubric of the series. This has much
to do with the authors’ view that many existing social theoretical approaches
toward environments and natures are fragmented, overly simplified, and ideo-
logically restricted. The field they address is vast, it demands engagement across
many academic disciplines and it is in great need of a more adequate social
theoretical framework able to guide analysis, normative judgment and stra-
tegic response. The challenges of this task prevented the authors from begin-
ning, as most books in the series do, by simply stating the main theoretical
approaches associated with substantive research in the area, before going on to
demonstrate in detail how these approaches have been important in facilitating
a range of key empirical studies. Instead, White, Rudy and Gareau begin by
indicating the need to draw together the best elements within different social
theories to create a “socio-ecological imagination.” The coupling of the social

x
 Series Foreword xi

with the ecological within this locution directs attention to the wisdom of
combining social analysis with analysis of ecologies, nonhumans and what
they call “lively technologies.” The explicit emphasis on combinations, mixings
and – a key term – hybridities of all these elements gradually increases as the
book proceeds.
The authors begin by explaining the implications of their framework for
the revision and appropriation of classic and established social theories.
They then take the reader through four successive stages that are gradually
interwoven with each other. A careful and illuminating historical analysis of
socio-­ecological relations comes first, and this is followed by an impressively
broad-ranging account of debates over the state of global ecologies that have
taken place over the last half-century. A following chapter focuses on the defin-
ing debate in recent versions of North American and European environmental
sociology. This debate revolves around questions of political economy, the sus-
tainability of capitalism, and the possibility of ecological modernization. The
combined impact of each of these discussions then lingers as a resonant back-
drop for an elaboration of the work of influential contemporary theorists such
as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway and Ulrich Beck, each of whom has made
seminal contributions to socio-ecological debates about hybridity.
The character of the socio-ecological imagination the authors produce
through these successive, interwoven encounters is best indicated by the book’s
subtitle: “Towards a Critical Hybridity.” Their emphasis on hybridity is closely
tied to a conception of the anthropocene – the idea that the biosphere has
been so decisively influenced by human activities that it should be considered
as a new geological epoch – a vision that gains more traction by the day in
scientific, critical and popular imaginations. The implications of this emerging
theoretical framework for empirical analysis are brought out in subsequent
chapters. These empirical issues involve a myriad of human entanglements
with natures and environments, and draw in vital issues of global environmen-
tal governance, the impact of neoliberalism, and the colossal challenges posed
for political strategy. The book concludes on as positive a note as the subject
matter allows, with a mapping and appraisal of the range of forces seeking to
articulate a critical hybrid politics.
It is hoped that this volume, like the other books in the series, will play its part
in helping to bridge the harmful gap between the theoretical and the empirical
that is still too often present within the social sciences, and that it will not only
be used on second and third year undergraduate courses to train and sensitize
the next generation of social analysts, but will also be helpful to researchers at
all levels. Environments, Natures and Social Theory provides a broad-ranging
analysis of the ways in which theory has been used to investigate empirical phe-
nomena, pointing to the various strengths and weaknesses of such uses along
the way. The new framework it advocates, which emerges from a synthesis of
the many approaches the authors discuss, aims to clarify the descriptive, explan-
atory and critical power of appropriate combinations of theory.
xii Series Foreword

In reading the volume it will be useful to keep in mind the two meanings of
themes that are signaled by the series title, “Themes in Social Theory.” The first
meaning is substantive and refers to the overall theme of the respective vol-
ume – health, environments and natures, human rights and so on – and, more
subtly, to the subtypes of thematic content to be found within each of the dif-
ferent clusters of studies highlighted in each volume and indicated through the
titles of the more substantive chapters. The second type of theme is methodo-
logical, and refers to the ways in which the theoretical and the empirical are
brought together within each of the studies highlighted. I prefer to refer to this
set of themes under the label of “conceptual methodology,” rather than just
“methodology,” in order to emphasize the ways in which particular theoretical
ideas or concepts (and combinations of these) guide more formal methods such
as observation, documentary analysis, surveys, interviews and so on, towards
certain types of empirical data. Concepts and theories, here, are seen to have
identifiable methodological and empirical consequences.
It is relatively self-evident that the key substantive themes that emerge in, for
example, Fernando de Maio’s volume on health – such as those around health
inequalities and demographics, the functioning of the sick role or the practices
of pharmaceutical companies – will be distinct from those in other volumes
such as Karen O’Reilly’s on international migration or Steve Matthewman’s on
technology. This is not to say that there couldn’t be fruitful overlap; it is very
easy to envisage research projects looking at the health implications of interna-
tional migration or at the use of technology in health care. However, it is to say
that one might expect a series of distinctive thematic concerns to emerge from
a focus on studies that have health as their primary concern. It is probable that
the lessons to be learned from the conceptual methodological themes will be
more general. Here, more commonality is likely to emerge across subfields in
the ways that the theoretical and the empirical are combined, notwithstand-
ing their different subject matters. This offers potentially fruitful possibilities
for transposing lessons from the broad, overarching theme of one book to
any of the others. Such cross-fertilization can be a positive centripetal force in
the social sciences, counterbalancing the many forces pushing in the opposite
direction.
All the authors in the series take it for granted that particular ways of see-
ing, hearing, interpreting and understanding – to name just some of the ways
we apprehend the world – are involved every time someone gives the status
of “empirical fact” to an aspect of knowledge. That someone, in turn, may be
any kind of everyday participant within society, deploying their own cultural
and social standpoint on the world, whether they are a political power bro-
ker, a homeless migrant, an environmental activist or an academic researcher.
Whoever it is who does the apprehending, all empirical facts – and the sto-
ries and arguments through which they are joined together into an account
of the social world – are already infused with their ideas and ways of seeing.
These ways of seeing, in turn, are associated with the particular cultures and
 Series Foreword xiii

subcultures they belong to. Embedded within these cultures are concepts, pre-
suppositions and categorizations that can range from a mixture of the simply
inherited, prereflective and muddled, at one end of the spectrum to a mixture
of the systematically reflected upon and analytically lucid at the other end of
the spectrum. Social theory’s attempts to produce ways of seeing and appre-
hending the social world, including the empirical evidence that social analysts
draw on to give weight to their claims, aspire to be nearer the latter end of the
spectrum than the former.
The degree of rigor and intellectual seriousness implied by these standards,
brought into close liaison with the imaginative ways of seeing that good social
theory seeks constantly to renew, are what should make the activities and
claims of social science stand out. Our claim should be that the accounts we
produce add something further to public and civic culture, and to political life,
than, say, news journalism or the everyday understandings of ordinary people.
Social science has its own generic standards, standards that we constantly need
to explore, reflect upon and improve, not least with respect to the relationship
between social theory and substantive studies. It is only by doing this that
we can genuinely carry forward the ambitious aspirations of a public social
­science that can play its rightful and much needed part in a thorough and
­continuing interrogation of the social.
Rob Stones
University of Western Sydney
May 2015
 List of Figures and Tables

Figures
  2.1 The Great Acceleration 48
10.1 The Iceberg. J.K. Gibson-Graham 203

Tables
  4.1 From Two to Three and Beyond Dimensional Readings of
the Classic Postwar Environmental Debate 85
  4.2 Planetary Boundaries 89
10.1 The Diverse Economy 204
10.2 Diverse Logics of Political Economic Governance for Diverse
Ecological Modernities 210

xiv
 Publisher’s Acknowledgements

The authors and publishers would like to thank the copyright h

­ olders for per-
mission to reproduce the following:

Epigraph in the Preface from Marris, Emma (2011) Rambunctious Garden

(New York: Bloomsbury USA) © Emma Marris, 2011, ‘Rambunctious
Garden’, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. Reprinted with permission of
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.

Epigraph in the Introduction from Gould, Stephen Jay (1990) ‘This View
of Life’ Natural History 99, 9, 24. Reprinted with permission of Patricia
Shannon and Rhonda Shearer, executor of the Estate of Stephen Jay Gould.

Figure 2.1 adapted from Steffan, Will et al. (2005) Global Change and the
Earth System (Berlin: Springer-Verlag). Reprinted with kind permission of
Springer Science and Business Media.

Epigraph in chapter 3 from Meadows, Donella and Meadows, Dennis

(1972) The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books) http://www.­
dartmouth.edu/~library/digital/publishing/meadows/ltg/. Reprinted with
permission of Dennis Meadows.

Epigraph in chapter 3 from Simon, Julian (1995) The State of Humanity

(Wiley-Blackwell, London). Reprinted with permission of Wiley.

Table 4.2 from Rockstrom, Johan et al. (2009) ‘A Safe Operating Space for
Humanity’ Nature 461, 472–475. Reprinted with permission of Nature
Publishing Group.

Figure 10.1 from Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), Figure 18 on p. 70.
Reprinted with permission of University of Minnesota Press.

Table 10.1 adapted from Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), figure 36 on p. 174–175.
Reprinted with permission of University of Minnesota Press.

xv
 Preface

The Nature that preceded human history … no longer exists anywhere

(except perhaps on a few Australian coral islands of recent origin).
Karl Marx (1846/1970:63)

Inhale. That breath has 36 percent more molecules of carbon dioxide than
it would have had in 1750. There is no going back.
Emma Marris (2011:2)

In 1848, Marx and Engels captured the experience of the social, technological
and political revolutions surging through the 19th century in terms of a world
where “all that is solid melts into air.” As climate scientists inform us that the
West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt into the ocean, who could have
imagined that the dissolving qualities of capitalism and modernity might ges-
ture to our very Earthly relationships? To be a citizen of Planet Earth in the
21st century though is to exist within a bewildering array of information flows
about social and environmental change. Almost every month, one can come
across troubling scientific studies documenting the severity of climate change
or biodiversity loss. A newspaper article informs us of struggles between indig-
enous peasant farmers and biotech companies over seeds, genes and property
rights. A radio report tells us that women of childbearing age working in agri-
culture are regularly exposed to toxic sprays known to increase rates of fetal
maldevelopment. A contrarian blogger proclaims that the whole environmental
discussion – like the moon landing – is all part of “the big lie.” News of the social
and the ecological colliding is everywhere. Indeed, the two domains appear
self-evidently linked as to warrant talk of the existence of socio-­ecological and
socio-environmental problems. However, the conceptual tools that we have to
grapple with these issues often seem inadequate to the task.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City in late October
2012, we can see the beginnings of a discussion in the news media about how
this event may well be linked to anthropogenic climate change and fossil fuel
dependency. When combined with other major disasters, such as those follow-
ing Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans),
we can see that poverty and inequality, class, gender and “race,” whether you
are able-bodied or disabled and your position in the global division of labor
all shape how people experience and are impacted by such disasters. Indeed,

xvi
 Preface xvii

the more such “natural” disasters are viewed as socio-environmental, the more
questions can arise about the unevenness of their impacts and the capacity for
creative responses. For even the most disengaged observer, it becomes apparent
that it is not just wealth or geographic proximity to the storm that matters. The
further existence of well-designed and well-maintained infrastructures, coor-
dinated social services, accessible healthcare and transportation, the existence
of networks of mutual aid and robust social movements (and so on) all medi-
ate how different groups are impacted by socio-environmental problems. An
entangled view of socio-environmental problems additionally prompts entan-
gled views of socio-environmental solutions. Ideas start to float through the
public sphere that if we started to remake our social, technological and ecolog-
ical relations, re-orient healthcare, rethink energy systems, perhaps we could
live differently and perhaps even live better. These critical and reconstructive
discussions are difficult to sustain and dissipate quickly. Why is this?
Environments, Natures and Social Theory is an attempt to think about the
connections and disconnections between the social and the ecological through
the lens of modern social theory. It is our sense that part of the problem is that
all too often a two-dimensional frame descends on public discussions to tidy
up, reframe, disentangle and disempower public debate. Let us rehearse some
overly familiar positions.
Environmental problem X is announced and immediately following this, the
“pessimists” declare that pure Nature (with a capital “N”) is “out of balance,”
hovering on the edge of collapse. With apocalyptic certainty, a generic vision
of a parasitical “Humanity” is identified as the force that has “transgressed”
Nature’s fixed and law-like limits. Quickly, the uneven and unjust socio-
environmental impacts of a tsunami, hurricane or earthquake are reworked
as proof of a generic “Humanity’s” shared contributions to improvident eco-
logical transgressions. Swiftly following this, “the optimists” – a wide-ranging
group of industrialists, skeptics and contrarians – appeal to private interests to
defend claims that socio-environmental problems are all overblown, a hoax or
symptomatic of a “culture of fear” marked by an increasingly irrational rejec-
tion of modernity. Here, a different kind of generic “Humanity” – God-like,
invulnerable – is invoked to dispel or deny any idea that capitalist social rela-
tions might generate environmental problems. Indeed, we are told free markets,
privatization and technological innovation will resolve whatever problems are
grudgingly recognized.
This book is informed by the growing sense that we are poorly served by
these older frameworks but do not have the new brought into public view. This,
of course, is not to argue that this two-dimensional debate is unimportant. The
clash between what we will introduce later as Malthusian “pessimists” and
Promethean “optimists” is critical for understanding the modern environmen-
tal debate. These positions have deep roots in modern Western thought, and
they continually return to frame environmental discussions. Environments,
Natures and Social Theory will suggest, though, that even at the beginning of
xviii Preface

the modern environmental debate and indeed up to the present day, one can
identify many dissenting currents: from social ecologists and eco-socialists to
feminist environmental scientists, from social activists, critical social scientists,
environmental campaigners, to many diverse voices from the Global South
that have never accepted this two-dimensional view. Indeed, all these latter
currents have sought to think beyond it.
Environments, Natures and Social Theory seeks to accomplish four main
tasks. The first is to provide undergraduate students, postgraduates and, hope-
fully, the general reader with a relatively concise account of the contribution
that social theory, sociology and the critical environmental social sciences have
made to environmental questions. As John Urry (2011) has observed, to the
extent that the social sciences are acknowledged at all in mainstream policy
discussions around environmental questions, it is almost exclusively through
drawing from neoclassical economics or cognitive psychology to supplement
work conducted in the environmental sciences. Now, we will see in this book
that there are many reasons why this state of affairs has prevailed.
Readers will quickly grasp that part of the problem is that the society-centric
wings of the social sciences have, for much of their history, conspired in their
own marginalization by keeping ecologies, nonhumans and lively technologies
out of the purview of the social sciences. Nevertheless, by locating our discus-
sion in the intersections between social theory, environmental sociology, and its
related and overlapping “sister disciplines” of political ecology, environmen-
tal justice studies, human and environmental geography, science and technol-
ogy studies, critical design studies and environmental history, we will suggest
an increasing rich and fluid set of discussions are attempting to rethink our
socio-environmental futures. It is our sense that the best critical work emerging
out of these quarters is informed by the acknowledgment that the social and
the environmental are profoundly intertwined, that environmental problems
are inescapably social problems. Building on this simple point, the book will
attempt to further convince our readers that power relations play a very sig-
nificant role in how broadly or narrowly “socio-environmental problems” are
defined, how the histories of socio-environmental relations are narrated, how
they are experienced, who they impact and how we approach solutions.
Second, Environments, Natures and Social Theory unpacks the relationship
between social theory and environmental problems from the vantage point of
a sociological imagination, but it tries to locate itself within the flow of these
broader discussions. Much productive exchange has been generated across the
critical environmental social sciences across the last two decades. At the same
time, despite the widespread recognition that environmental concerns require
cross-disciplinary or even post-disciplinary modes of inquiry, there are still
important debates that remain surprisingly siloed. For example, engagements
between what are ostensibly closely related fields such as environmental sociol-
ogy, political ecology, historical ecology and environmental geography have been
modest over the last four decades. A great deal of hybrid talk in actor-network
 Preface xix

theory rarely moves beyond internal discussions. There are tendencies at the
explanatory end of critical environmental discussions to skirt engagement with
the prefigurative discussions, proposals and imaginaries that have continually
surfaced from environmental social movements, workers, citizen scientists, art-
ists, radical designers and diverse critical publics. This book purposely attempts
to nudge a few of these silos into conversation and sometimes confrontation.
Third, Environments, Natures and Social Theory will suggest that some of the
most interesting contemporary writings grappling with our entangled worlds are
centered on discussions of socionatural hybridity. The idea of hybridity is con-
cerned with mixing elements otherwise conceived of as discrete. We will intro-
duce readers to a full range of “hybrid talk” that has progressively expanded
across the environmental social sciences: from seminal discussions of cyborgs,
companion species and nature-cultures emerging out of science and technology
studies (see Haraway, 1985, 1991a; Latour 1993) to debates that have emerged
in geography around “the social production of nature” (Smith 1984; Harvey,
1996; Swyngedouw, 1996; Braun and Castree, 1998). The book will map the
long histories of human/nonhuman boundaries crossings and entanglements
that are of increasing interest to environmental historians (e.g. Crosby, 1986;
Mann, 2011), to talk of the rise of a “global risk society” (Beck, 2012) in soci-
ology. Readers of this book will also quickly see that this preoccupation with
entangled worlds is not simply occurring in the social sciences. We will see that
many geologists and ecologists are now arguing that the biosphere has been so
decisively influenced by humans’ impacts (e.g., from climate change to ocean
acidification), that it perhaps deserves to be considered a new geological epoch:
the anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000).
The fourth and final aim of Environments, Natures and Social Theory is to
suggest that while we may live in entangled worlds, this observation perhaps does
not do all the critical work that is often claimed for it. For example, many con-
temporary currents of hybrid scholarship are excited by the prospects of recov-
ering the “agency” of nonhumans, technological artifacts and objects, but oddly
less inclined to celebrate the reconstructive political agencies of hybrid humans.
Hybridity has generated a great deal of creative work around scientific, aesthetic
and metaphysical issues. There has been noticeably less attention paid to how
these issues relate to struggles occurring at points of production, in the work-
place, the community or the boardroom. Talk of “the anthropocene” can present
generic “humans” as a geological force reshaping the planet. This discourse can
also rather sidestep the observation that the “anthros” is profoundly divided in
power, wealth, voice and opportunity. Basic political questions concerning whose
interests this emerging anthropocene serves remain underinvestigated.
It is for this reason that this book is entitled Environments, Natures and
Social Theory, because for us, “the environmental debate” is not about how
a single static “thing” called “nature” or “the environment” relates to a single
static thing called “society.” Rather, as will become clear as the book unfolds,
we see it as a debate about the kinds of socio-ecological relations we want, the
xx Preface

kinds of entanglements it is believed we should recognize, the kinds of natures

and the kinds of environments (in the plural) that are seen worthy of valuing,
protecting or transforming. It is also about who counts when we assert this
“we.” The book is subtitled “towards a critical hybridity” because in a context
when “hybrid assertions” are so expansive and flexible, it has become rather
urgent to gather together currents and allies that can articulate the basis of a
critical hybrid worldview. Objects matter. Non-humans matter. Entanglements
matter. Yet, when all is said and done, it is our view that a more just, egalitar-
ian, democratic and hopeful anthropocene will only be brought into being
by reclaiming, celebrating and channeling the productive and reconstructive
potential of us. Yes, us – entangled, diverse, fractured hybrid humans as inven-
tive hominids, creative gardeners, critical publics, political agents. For if we
cannot do this, the pessimists are probably correct. All is lost.

Plan of the Work:

So, that is the rationale for this book project. The concrete plan of the work is
as follows. In the Introduction we outline the basic argument for why social
theory should matter to the environmental debate, and we outline the virtues
of an entangled hybrid worldview, which we refer to as “the socio-ecological
imagination.” In Chapter 1, we explore why so many dominant traditions in
social theory have struggled to incorporate “Nature,” ecology and the agency
of nonhuman forces into their schemes. We consider why so many other influ-
ential currents of social thought have often overcompensated for this failure by
sliding towards forms of naturalistic reductionism. Following this, we recover
subordinate traditions of social theory that may open up some nonreductionist
ways forward.
In Chapter 2, we attempt to think historically and expansively about our
hybrid worlds, across the long view. Here, we provide a survey of contempo-
rary debates in archeology, anthropology, environmental history and histori-
cal ecology. We identify convergent literatures in all these fields that do not
simply problematize “onward and upward” Whig histories of socio-ecologi-
cal relations, but also problematize ecological romanticism and the curious,
morbid obsession with reading socio-ecological relations in terms of impeding
“collapse” (that has become definitive of the pessimists). We also consider the
possibilities and problems that have already emerged in use of the term “the
anthropocene” for understanding our historical socio-ecological relations.
In Chapters 3 and 4 we map the classic postwar environmental debate about
the state of our global ecologies. Readers will be introduced to the “limits to
growth”/Promethean battles of the 1970s and to contemporary debates about
planetary boundaries and planetary opportunities. Either/or logic dominates
the classic two-dimensional debate: limits/no limits; growth/no growth. We
disrupt this conventional genealogy by outlining that there have long been
third, fourth and fifth dimensions to this discussion. Readers will see that
 Preface xxi

diverse social ecologists, political ecologists, feminists and scholars from the
global South have never accepted the two-dimensional binary. We also suggest
that the contemporary environmental social sciences may still have much to
learn from these latter currents.
Chapter 5 engages with the defining debate in North American and
European versions of environmental sociology over the last two decades,
notably, the dispute between structural political economists of the metabolic
rift/treadmill schools versus the sociology of ecological modernization over
the sustainability of capitalism. We appraise these literatures against discus-
sions in political ecology and currents in political sociology focused on the
disproportionality of socio-ecological impacts that run across different sectors
of the economy. From this, we suggest that this debate could be more pro-
ductively pursued if the messy complexities underpinning the capital/ecology
relationship were more openly engaged with. Chapter 6 considers how the
seminal writings of Latour, Haraway and Beck have opened up a rather differ-
ent series of socio-ecological debates about hybridity, particularly in science
and technology studies, environmental geography and vital materialism. We
acknowledge the great strengths of the posthuman moment in social theory
and we acknowledge the importance and creativity of the applied research it
has generated. But we also explore some limitations of this literature and raise
concerns about the recent turn to “vital materialisms” and “object-orientated
ontologies.”
In Chapter 7, we suggest that hybrid discussions are perhaps brought back
down to Earth and rendered more critically relevant to the fleshy concerns of
entangled humans by considering the rich body of empirical work that has
been generated around labor/environmental histories, queer ecology, environ-
mental justice studies, urban political ecologies and various cyborg, hybrid or
relational versions of historical geographical materialisms. Chapter 8 turns to
consider what the current literature on global environmental governance can
tell us about unfolding global hybrid relations. It considers the dismal impact
neoliberalism has had on the politics of climate change and ozone depletion
and hence on the current making of our hybrid worlds.
The final two chapters of this book attempt to provide a taxonomy and
appraisal of what we refer to as the new politics of the anthropocene. As such,
in Chapter 9, we introduce transhumanists and advocates of hybrid neolib-
eral ecologies and contrast them with end times ecologists, bright greens and
post-environmentalists. In Chapter 10, we turn to consider rather more criti-
cal possibilities for hybrid futures. Here we examine the diverse discussions
around cosmopolitics and democratic experimentalism. We look at the grow-
ing interest in “hacking,” greening and repurposing basic features of our infra-
structure which is emergent in talk of plenitude and redirective practices. We
consider various proposals to rethink, “queer” and green our political econo-
mies. Finally, we map the tension emerging between advocates of bottom up
and top down paths to achieve new socio-ecological transitions.
xxii Preface

This book is the product of many discussions that the authors have had with
each other on these issues stretching back many years. Damian is fortunate to
share his life with many lively, inventive, ingenious and compassionate hybrid
humans, notably Sarah Friel, Xavier White, Cormac White, Finbar White and
many more friends and family that sustain and enrich him. He would like to
acknowledge the debt he owes his teachers: Andrew Dobson, Murray Bookchin,
Paul Q. Hirst and Ted Benton. He would like to acknowledge the broader
influence on his thinking of Timmons Roberts, Cameron Tonkinwise, Erik
Swyngedouw, Fletcher Linder, Jennifer Coffman, Liam Buckley, Chris Wilbert,
Jessie Goldstein, Anne Tate, Yuriko Saito, Noel Castree, Julian Agyeman, Dave
Ciplet, Jason Grear, Geoff Robinson, Jody Boehnert, Aidan Davison, Gideon
Kossoff, Terry Irwin, Anders Blok, Nicole Merola, Ijlal Muzaffar, Peter Dean,
Liliane Wong, Markus Berger, Elizabeth Dean Hermann and the late David
Warner. He would like to thank his cowriters, and finally he would like to
acknowledge the support of family and friends near and far and the love and
support provided by his mother, Mary White, who died during the last weeks
of finishing this book.
Alan’s professional life remains a joy because of the rich, hybrid back-
ground his mother, Kendy (the data-focused anthropologist), and his father,
Don (the physicist, engineer, mathematician and tinkerer), provided. Those
perspectives on life, learning and research were enriched tenfold and more by
Richie Schuldenfrei, Steve Piker and Ken Sharpe as an undergrad, by David
Chatfield at the Pesticide Action Network then in the San Francisco Offices of
the Friends of the Earth, and, most directly, by Bill Friedland, Jim O’Connor
and Donna Haraway in graduate school. That hybrid joy continues in large
part because of his colleagues in Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at
Central Michigan University, the generosity and discipline of Damian White,
and the amazing, exhausting and wondrous respite from academic work served
up daily by Diane Donham, Aiden and Shea.
Hybrid social theory was introduced to Brian in graduate school by Andy
Szasz, David Goodman, Margaret Fitzsimmons, Ben Crow, and Melanie
DuPuis, and he is very grateful for their guidance in those early years of his
theoretical work. Many have challenged and encouraged his work on hybrid-
ity since then, including Alan Rudy, Damian White, Dustin Mulvaney, Max
Boykoff and Noel Castree, among others. Brian is grateful to Leslie Salzinger
(now at the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UC-Berkeley) and
the graduate students in the Department of Sociology at Boston College for
encouraging him to construct a course on science and technology studies in the
actor-network theory tradition, especially Meaghan Clark, Monique Ouimette,
Jasmina Smajlovic and Jared Del Rosso, and this book benefits greatly for the
fruitful conversations had therein. He would like to thank Cristina Lucier for
her help with research on the Basel Convention found in Chapter 8. As always,
without the support and love of Tara, Delphine, Beatrix, and Leonel, this book
would not have been possible.
 Preface xxiii

All the authors of this book would like to thank all the participants who
attended the New England Critical Environmental Social Science Workshop
at Brown University in November 2014. We received a range of generous
and productive reviews of this project in that setting and we would like to
acknowledge in particular helpful critique by Timmons Roberts, David Ciplet,
Samantha McBride, Peter C. Little and Scott Frickel. We would all like to thank
Rob Stone, Lloyd Langman, Nicola Cattini, Janelle Bowman and Alex Antidius
for helping us bring this project to fruition. This book is dedicated to our rich
community of friends, colleagues and students that have helped us think and
act in hybrid worlds. All the usual disclaimers apply.
 Introduction: The
Socio-Ecological Imagination

Nature does not exist for us, had no idea we were coming, and doesn’t give
a damn about us.
Stephen Jay Gould (1990:24)

Why do we need social theory to understand environmental problems? What

possible contribution can the critical social sciences make to debates that are
generally seen as the primary domain of the natural and physical sciences?
A half century ago the sociologist C. Wright Mills defended the centrality of
a critical social theory to the academy and to the vitality of the public sphere
by evoking the idea of the sociological imagination (Mills, 1959). Mills sug-
gested that the sociological imagination was of central importance because
it possessed the potential to connect “biography” to “history,” “private trou-
bles” to “public issues.” What Mills had in mind here was an imaginary that
could move beyond a narrow individualism to reveal how our common
(human) fates are intertwined and connected to broader social forces, social
institutions, forms of social stratification and social relations. But how can
such an imminently social worldview guide us in an era of climate disrup-
tion and widespread socio-environmental change? How can such a singular
focus on social and political institutions help us when we are slowly coming
to recognize that our common human fates are additionally connected to
the fates of many other nonhumans, ecologies and broader material forces
on the planet? Do we now need to deploy something a little more expansive
to deal with the problems we face: the socio-ecological imagination? What
might this be?
At the most abstract material level, we might try and think of the socio-
ecological imagination by observing that human social life is certainly enacted
and reproduced through social institutions, cultural practices, technologies and
political and economic institutions. However, these relationships are them-
selves mixed up with, and embedded in, a range of material cycles, energy
flows, environmental conditions and natural resource contexts (from photo-
synthesis and evolution to the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, the law
of thermodynamics, etc.). These material, ecological and energy systems are

1
2 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

dynamic and changing, as are human societies. One influential way to think
about these relations is to draw from Marx and his focus on the ways that soci-
eties and natures metabolize together (cf. Marx, 1973[1857–1858]; Benton,
1991, 1993; Foster, 1994, 2000; Swyngedouw, 1996, 2009; O’Connor, 1998).
It is these patterns of mutual metabolism that generate the constraints and
enablements, the possibilities and limitations for human agency within which
the drama of social development is played out. Transformations in these rela-
tionships have had and will continue to have profound impacts on human
social life in general, the species and ecologies that we need or wish to share
the planet with, and the capacities of certain specific groups to sustain their
material and cultural means of existence.
We will see in this book then that most contemporary currents of envi-
ronmental social theory are, at some level, in agreement that a credible
socio-­ecological imagination for the 21st century needs to take as its point
of departure an understanding that we live in social, ecological and material
worlds, where natural and human history are intertwined and interacting. We
will also see though that beyond this, there are considerable differences in
opinion over how these socio-ecological relations should be further conceptu-
alized, what the central drivers of these relations are and the ethical and politi-
cal consequences that follow from them.
For example, we need to take human agency seriously, or the ability that
humans possess to act in the world. However, as we shall see in future ­chapters,
social theorists influenced by the writings of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway
suggest that a credible contemporary socio-ecological imagination needs to
further acknowledge that when social theorists speak of human agency, this
always occurs in a context of multiple other agencies involving characters
and forces that have often been viewed as lying outside the scope of tradi-
tional social scientific inquiry. We live in worlds where every life-form on the
planet – from microbes and ant colonies to plant life and mammals – are also
actively and persistently involved in terraforming the planet. As the biologist
Lynn Margulies reminds us, it is microorganisms and viruses that make up
over 90% of the living matter on the Earth. We can thank these for not only
creating the atmosphere but for landscaping the planet (see Margulies, 1992,
but also Haraway, 1991; Latour, 1993; Whatmore, 2002; Clark, 2011; Mann,
2011; Hyrd, 2013). Modern humans are sustained by all manner of nonhuman
agencies from the (often factory-farmed) food on our plate to the bacteria in
our gut that facilitate digestion, to the ozone molecules in the stratosphere that
protect us from ultraviolet radiation thus making life on Earth possible. Many
of the features of the world that sustain us are technologies, or perhaps more
accurately socio-technical relations, which, as Donna Haraway observes, are
in some senses “frighteningly lively.” Think of the genetically modified break-
fast you ate or the pacemaker, heart stents, blood thinners and so on that keep
granny alive and sitting across the table from you.
 Introduction 3

More unsettling still is the recognition that the worlds emerging from these
processes, relations and interplay of agencies are in many respects dynamic
and contingent worlds. As the ecologists Yrjo Haila and Richard Levins note,
an ecological view of the planet informed by evolutionary biology necessitates
recognition that the biosphere is in the final analysis indifferent to our projects,
plans, aspirations and follies. The contingencies of evolution mean that “the
evolution of the biosphere is no guarantee that conditions favorable for any
particular species, including us, will persist” (Haila and Levins, 1992:6, see
also Gould, 1993; Clark, 2011).
A genuinely critical social theory clearly needs to ground itself in the mate-
rial world. At the same time, this material world is not static nor is knowl-
edge about it solely the province of the natural sciences. Human societies have
been profoundly dependent on their ecological conditions and contexts for
their maintenance, flourishing and reproduction (or not) since their inception.
This observation needs to be counterbalanced by acknowledging the extent to
which human societies have not simply been passively shaped by their envi-
ronments but also persistent and active shapers of these environments (see
Smith, 1984; Harvey, 1996; Ellis, 2012; Moore, 2014a). Biophysical and eco-
logical processes can play a very important role in shaping the social. As we
shall see in Chapter 2, through hunting and gardening, fire and water man-
agement, plant and animal breeding, irrigating and farming, the building of
settlements, cities, infrastructures and all manner of sociotechnological inno-
vations, human societies have for a very long time been involved in dynami-
cally metabolizing with, and systematically transforming, these ecological
conditions and contexts.
One initial answer then to the question “why does the environmental debate
need to engage with social theory?” can be drawn from Haila and Levins and
their self-evident yet unsettling observation, that nature “does not tell us when
problems emerge” (Haila and Levins, 1992:6). Ecosystems and the biosphere
are in a constant state of change, and these changes create opportunities for
some species and difficulties for others. The biosphere will continue whether
we see two-, three- or six-degree temperature increases over the next century.
Life in one form or another will carry on and probably recover eventually
from anthropogenic (human-generated) climate change in the same way that
it has recovered in the past from extraterrestrial bombardments, seismic and
volcanic activity, mass extinctions, hurricanes, tsunamis and so on. The extent
to which the seven billion human beings now enrolled in global capitalist
networks (networks that have been around in their present form for a mere
two centuries and are underpinned by very specific climate conditions and
agro-ecologies, fossil fuel resources and urban infrastructures) will display the
same adaptability and resilience has become a much more open question. Let’s
think then about the relationship between the social and the environmental a
little more.
4 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

There is No Unitary “Anthropos” and Environmental Problems are

Socially Mediated

In contemporary Western societies that have been influenced by popular forms

of environmentalism that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s (often originat-
ing in the United States), it is common to hear the claim that “we humans”
have disrupted some kind of stable, static, benign thing called “global nature.”
Indeed, there is a mountain of environmental literature – from deep ecologists
and environmental ethicists – that endlessly replay the idea that the source of
“our” environmental problems are ultimately to be found in “our” anthropo-
centricism, “our” human-centeredness. Now, this observation emerges from
the often-reasonable intuition (that can be found in thinkers as varied as Max
Weber, Martin Heidegger and those of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory)
that a narrowly instrumental approach to the world can generate profound
problems in understanding socio-ecological relations. We might understand
the term instrumental here as a calculative worldview that sees things as tools
to achieve preset ends. We will see in the next chapter that this instrumental
worldview or instrumental form of reason has been rather central to certain
dominant traditions of Western thought since the Enlightenment, and in some
senses it has been a foundation for modernity. Instrumental reason has its place
in human life. Try building a house, embarking on dental surgery, constructing
infrastructure or building a computer program that could model global climate
change without it. However, we are all familiar with a certain manifestation
of this way of thinking, which, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, knows “the cost
of everything and the value of nothing” and, as such, looks at trees and sees
just timber, at fields and sees just potential parking lots, at people and sees just
entities to manipulate or “process.” We are also familiar with more extreme
manifestation of instrumentalism that cultivates hubristic modes of thinking.
Critiques of instrumental forms of anthropocentricism are important and have
their insights. A great deal of misery, to be sure, can be traced to the view that
humans, or the broader natural environment, should simply be seen as tools, as
instruments to achieve preset ends. A great deal of avoidable suffering has clearly
been generated by the view that diverse nonhumans are merely tools to achiev-
ing human ends. However, this critique can become unhelpful, and indeed can
quickly dissolve into rather scolding, misanthropic and ethnocentric narratives
when there is a refusal to reflect on the simple observation that neither the com-
position of, nor responsibility for, the anthros is straightforward (see Hayward,
1997). Let’s bring a critical socio-ecological imagination to bear on this matter.
Firstly, look around you. It should be immediately apparent that this anthros
is composed of many different social actors that are bound up in complicated
forms of stratification, marked by vastly different and unequal power relations,
forms of resource use, extraction and disposal. Gender, “race,” class, caste and
where one finds oneself in the global division of labor are all hugely conse-
quential for life chances and how we metabolize with the environment more
 Introduction 5

generally. Let’s think of this anthros more carefully. These diverse social actors
that aggregate up to “humanity” are not only embodied in social relations but
also sociohistorical relations. They come into the world with vastly different
histories, and different relations to colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, mili-
tarism and other institutionalized systems of servitude and subordination. In
our contemporary world, studies persistently show that the richest 1% of the
anthros takes around 40% of the world’s household wealth, whereas a third of
this anthros lives on two dollars or less a day. Indeed, between the 1800s and
the mid-20th century, a majority of this humanity were “colonial subjects” of
European powers, living in extractive economies whose societies and ecologies
were to very significant degrees shaped by and oriented to serving the narrow
interests of these Imperial powers (see Mann, 2011). Many people in the global
South would insist that these relations of servitude and subordination continue
today as a defining feature of the modern world economy. It may come as
something of a surprise to this latter group to be told by environmentalists in
the affluent world that they have been living in a world that has been system-
atically too human-centered!
Now, why should any of these issues matter to environmental questions?
These issues matter because, as we shall suggest throughout this book, the
dominant discourses that shape our understanding of environmental problems
tend to conduct this debate extracting questions of power, difference, justice,
inequality and so on from socio-ecological and socio-environmental issues.
Let’s take a concrete issue here to illustrate this point: climate change.
Aggregated scientific expert opinion on climate change summarized in the
various reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) demonstrates that the biosphere is warming, and warming at a histori-
cally unprecedented speed as a result of the release of greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere (IPCC, 2013, 2014). It is, of course, difficult to directly trace
specific extreme weather events back to current anthropogenic climate change
(and it may well be beyond the capacity of science to make direct causal con-
nections between particular weather events and long-term climate changes).
However, it is widely acknowledged that, all things remaining equal, climate
change (to use the phrase of Stephen Schneider) “loads the dice in favor of
increased temperatures, changes in precipitation, and extreme climatic events”
(see Jamieson, 2011:48; IPCC, 2014). It is estimated by climate scientists that
if a medium-high emissions scenario for the release of greenhouse gases comes
to pass, by 2020, 2050 and 2080 the number of hot days could increase by 2.1,
3.6 and 5.1 times relative to 1961–1990 (see Cuerta Martinez et al. cited in
Hanna, 2011:219).
Now, these possible outcomes are invariably presented in the popular press
and media as portending general catastrophe for all. But these views are quite
misleading. Why so? A simple starting point here would be to observe that
we already know from social science research into public and environmen-
tal health that heat waves are socially shaped and impact different groups in
6 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

profoundly different ways. As Elizabeth Hanna observed (2011:219), socially

isolated and immobile old people, the sick, young children from lower income
families, those who cannot afford air conditioning or who work outside and
are remunerated by output are all much more vulnerable to chronic heat expo-
sure, and even death, than the affluent. In short, existing forms of social strati-
fication greatly impact how socio-ecological events are experienced. Indeed,
such differentials magnify even more at the global scale. Hanna (2011:219)
observed that the “existing disproportion in risk of being affected by weather
related natural disasters is almost 80 times higher in developing countries than
in developed countries.”
So, the way in which climate change impacts people is socially mediated.
Let’s consider the matter of how we might start to resolve this issue. Consider
the current global negotiations that are occurring around climate change. For
even those that agree on the mainstream position on climate science as articu-
lated by the reports produced by the IPCC, we can see that climate negotiations
at the global level are profoundly defined by multiple further disputes which
cannot be resolved by the natural sciences. Who is historically responsible for
past greenhouse gas emissions? Who has benefited most from current green-
house gas emissions? Who has the “right” to develop? Who should contract or
embark on a different path of development? And perhaps most critically, who
has voice and who counts in this discussion? (see Agarwal and Narain, 1991;
Roberts and Parks, 2006; Parks and Roberts, 2010; Kartha, 2011; Ciplet,
Roberts and Khan et al., 2015). These “matters of concern” all stretch beyond
“matters of fact,” as Bruno Latour has observed (Latour, 2004). Environmental
problems, understood as socio-environmental problems by necessity, involve
engagement with the natural sciences and the social sciences, with ethics and
epistemological discussions, and with debates about value, futures and politics.
When we adopt a critical sociological understanding of environmental prob-
lems, we can perhaps start to see why a reading of the environmental debate can
be enriched by the socio-ecological imagination. The natural sciences can tell
us a great deal about environmental change. Ecology and evolutionary biology
are vital for positioning ourselves within living worlds. Climatology, physics,
chemistry and the earth sciences more generally encourage us to telescope out
of the timescales of everyday life to think not simply in human historical time,
but in evolutionary time and indeed geological time. They can help us find
the anthropogenic (human) signal in environmental change, and all these sci-
ences provide empirical data about the world that is “hard won by” knowledge
(Haraway, 2007) vital for public debate. Yet, empirical data does not speak
for itself. Different groups with different priorities can frame the significance
of different forms of data gathered at different spatial scales of abstraction
in different ways. The different temporal and spatial scales at which the vari-
ous environmental sciences operate offer vitally important horizons for think-
ing about environmental change. Scientific knowledge is truly vital but also
­insufficient in itself for grasping what is at stake in the politics surrounding
 Introduction 7

socio-ecological relations. As we need to expand out, we also need to zoom in

so as to understand how certain kinds of environmental changes become social
problems for whom and in which ways. While knowledge of nature, ecology
and the life sciences clearly matter, central social concerns about sociohistorical
relations, institutional dynamics and social stratification, power and inequal-
ity, the social shaping of time and space, interpretation, culture and meaning
are also vitally important in understanding socio-environmental relations.
We might say then that a critical socio-ecological imagination forces us to
consider some rather counterintuitive notions. We can now begin to see that
simply evoking “the human,” “the global,” “solid science,” “Nature,” “self-
evident environmental problems” will only get us so far. We need the criti-
cal social sciences because “Nature” cannot tell us unambiguously what is an
environmental problem. Environmental problems do not simply fall out of
the sky with a label on for us to then act. “Problems” are by definition social
categories. As such, we can say that “environmental problems” are social clas-
sifications of a transformation in the relations between – or the metabolism
between – society and nature, that specific societies, groups or strata deem
problematic (see Soper, 1995).

Nature-Cultures

Let’s try and illustrate how the material and the cultural, the social and the eco-
logical can be seen as intimately related. When European Americans encoun-
tered the swamps and mangroves of Florida in the 19th century, they viewed
such places with great ambiguity. They were represented as dark places, nei-
ther liquid nor solid, containing many dangers and best dealt with by clear-
ance, needing to be subdued and controlled (Cronon, 1993). For some African
Americans and Native Americans – such as the Seminole people – these places
came to play a rather different role, as a place of sanctuary from the Southern
slavocracy. Some 150 years later, the nature of how we understand these enti-
ties has changed again. What we now call the Everglades are understood as
“wetland ecosystems” containing all manner of valuable biota, insects and
animals. They provide soft edges for storm surges and all matter of further
“ecosystem services” for both land and water-dwelling life.
In 1724, when Daniel Defoe passed through what we now call the Lake
District in England, he reflected the sentiments of many of his countrymen
when he declared it “a country eminent only for being the wildest, most bar-
ren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England.” As Colin Ward
observed, Defoe’s 18th-century eyes read the landscape in this way because “it
lacked the signs of human activity, ingenuity and well-being that mattered to
him.” Traveling through the Lake District in the 18th century could be hazard-
ous and dangerous. A century later, as the Industrial Revolution moved through
England, Bishop Heber – along with the Lake Poets – famously celebrated the
8 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

emptiness of a landscape in a manner alien to Defoe where “every prospect

pleases, and only man is vile” (see Ward in Wilbert and White, 2011:311).
Today, in what is in large part a post-industrial England populated by large
swathes of people employed in service and culture industries, the Lake District
National Park is widely regarded as a place of outstanding natural beauty.
We are encouraged to celebrate its “limestone pavement, upland heath, screes
and arctic-alpine communities, lakeshore wetlands, estuary, coastal heath and
dunes” (see http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk). Its dry stonewalls and hedgerows,
roman roads and peasant hovels – now gentrified cottages – are broadly viewed
as an integral part of “the cultural heritage of England” (see Massey, 2005).
These changes in cultural attitudes to, and relations with, these material
places have of course occurred in part because we know different things about
swamps and lakeland areas. In part, this is also because people in the Western
world stand in different cultural and material relations to these kinds of
natures than they did 300 or even 150 years ago. Visitors to the Lake District
move through Defoe’s “barren landscapes” in one-ton metal vehicles moving
at up to 70 miles an hour, with airbags for safety, air conditioning to regu-
late temperature and with perhaps a soundtrack playing in the background
to augment appreciation of the stunning vistas of “upland heath, screes and
arctic-alpine communities” as they seek to locate the outward-bound center.
As the sociologist Mike Michael (2009) observed, smartphones, maps, snacks,
water bottles, walking boots, water proofs, parking lots with carefully sculpted
“scenic views” and fleshy humans are all carefully brought together on walk-
ing trips in the Lake District to allow us to “get away from it all.” Cultural
and material forces such as industrialization and urbanization, colonialism,
the rise of the tourist industry and leisure culture, the rise of conservation biol-
ogy and environmentalism have all ensured that such places have been socially
and culturally reframed as complex, rich, diverse and potentially fragile (see
MacNaghten and Urry, 1998; Urry, 2002; Michael, 2010). They have also been
materially transformed by these forces. Not only do we view these places in
different ways, but we also move through these places with our fleshy, sensu-
ous bodies in different ways as a result of this.
Part of the aim of this book is to try to rethink socio-ecological and socio-
environmental relations as social and ecological, material and cultural. Let us
think a little more about how we can do this.

Realism, Constructionism and Beyond

Grappling with socio-ecological and socio-environmental relations throws up

significant epistemological and ontological issues in the critical social sciences.
Epistemology is the field of philosophy that studies theories of knowledge. It
is concerned with the question under what basis are knowledge claims being
made about the world? Ontology is concerned with the broader question,
 Introduction 9

what is the nature of the things in the world? What is the nature of being? One
of the central tensions that exists in this discussion and has been central to
many debates in the environmental social sciences is the tension between real-
ists and constructionists. Realism and constructionism are complicated terms
and they have different meanings in different context. For the moment though
let’s define what these terms have come to be associated with in debates in
social theory.
Broadly speaking, realists want to affirm the objectivity of an external world –
sometimes referred to as “nature” – that exists independently of society. They
argue that the natural sciences provide relatively robust – if provisional and
fallible (Bhaskar, 1989) – knowledge of this external world or nature. Realists,
moreover, do not simply want to interpret this world. They want to identify
underlying causal mechanisms and structural forces that can explain surface
phenomena. As such, realists often claim that a certain surface phenomena
(such as the empirical fact that African Americans in the southern states of the
US are more likely to find themselves living in close proximity to toxic waste
facilities than white Americans) needs to be further explained by the identifica-
tion of underlying causal mechanisms and structural forces that give rise to this
phenomena (e.g., environmental racism, uneven capitalist ­development – see
Chapter 8). From this perspective, the environmental social sciences should
aspire to be informed by the best expert knowledge that can be gained about
nature, that is, we need to be fully literate of developments in the environ-
mental sciences. It is then argued that an understanding of expert scientific
knowledge has to be further supplemented by an understanding the social and
systemic logics of the broader social forces and institutions that further shape
socio-ecological relations (e.g., Catton and Dunlap, 1978; Benton, 1989, 1994;
Dickens, 1992, 1996; Sayer, 2000; Foster et al., 2010). It is believed that this
strategy will allow us to identify underlying drivers of socio-environmental
degradation.
Social constructionists have generally pushed back against realism in two
ways. First, constructionists have suggested we cannot see the natural sciences
as offering “a view from nowhere.” Rather, it is argued, the natural sciences
are situated in political, institutional and social contexts, and thus the argu-
ments that emerge from the natural sciences, the metaphors they use and the
diverse broader concepts they deploy are frequently influenced (often sub-
tly and unconsciously) by the prevailing ideologies of the time. The natural
sciences, according to this perspective, are entangled within society. Second,
it has been argued that environmental scientists or scientific experts more
broadly cannot have the last word in discussing “nature” because there are
many different ways of gathering knowledge or, indeed, making knowledges
about natures (in the plural). Many social constructionists have argued that
an adequate social theory of the environment should bring to the surface the
broader cultural priorities, institutional systems or semiotic engagements that
different classes, different professional groups, different kinds of “experts” and
10 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

­ ifferent organizations use to construct “natures.” For example, it has been

d
argued from this perspective that different groups – from African farmers,
herders and indigenous people that have acquired knowledge about land cul-
tivation and ecological conditions over generations (Leach and Mearns, 1996)
to sheep farmers in Britain observing the effects of radiation on their flocks
(Wynne, 1996) – can bring considerable expertise to the table in a way that
orthodox forms of science and experts trained in more orthodox methodolo-
gies find it hard to acknowledge (see Taylor and Buttel, 1994; Hannigan, 1995;
MacNaghten and Urry, 1998; Yearly, 2005, 2008). Social constructionists
maintain then that we need to attend more to the diverse ways in which differ-
ent peoples interpret, perceive, move through and engage with a diverse range
of natures that humans are always already ensconced within.
Both these positions have clearly made important contributions to thinking
about environmental issues. But drawn to the extremes, both can clearly gener-
ate problems as well.
The danger of a “no-nonsense” realist view of “Nature” (with a capital “N”)
is that it can end up dehistoricizing the historical, dynamic and contingent
features of socio-ecological and socio-environmental relations (see Chapter 2).
Strong forms of realism can appropriate the knowledge of some subdisciplines
of the natural sciences in hurried, selective or uncritical ways, smoothing out
disputes and antagonisms within and between sciences too quickly and leav-
ing the relationship between science and society or science and broader power
relations underinvestigated. Strong forms of realism, if left unmodulated, can
collapse into a dogmatic form of objectivism which either overemphasizes
the certainties that the natural sciences can provide or even collapses into
scientism, the ideology that assumes the natural sciences offers the last word,
the final trumping card on all matters of social, ecological, ethical or political
dispute. The political danger here is that such an ideology often leads to the
problematic idea that scientists, technocrats or experts should ultimately be
in charge.
In contrast, perhaps the classic problem that a naive social constructionism
faces is idealism: the reduction of all ecological and material forms to a flat
social surface of discourse, ideas or culture. Such approaches can fail to fully
grapple with the range of ways in which the material world acts upon us and
resists us. Biophysical variables after all do impact the social world, often dra-
matically, and the natural sciences can tell us a great deal about these impacts.
The second looming problem that strong forms of constructionism face is
naive relativism. There may well be many ways of viewing the world, but not
all of these ways are equally informed, valid or insightful, and the point of
intellectual work is to make critical informed judgments about the merits of
a particular worldview so we can move forward. Scientific experts should be
critically interrogated, transparent and democratically accountable. Laypeople
can bring real valuable knowledge, even scientifically valuable knowledge to
the table. However, a complete constructionist skepticism towards all forms
 Introduction 11

of expertise, as Harry Collins and Raymond Murphy have observed, is by

no means conducive to the development of a democratic culture (Collins and
Evans 2002; Collins 2010; Murphy, 2013). Hard constructionism can feed
profoundly misguided antiscience and conspiratorial movements: from crea-
tionism to anti-vaccination movements, climate change deniers to flat-Earth
advocates. Far from “opening up debate” in the fashion of a “radical democ-
racy,” hard constructionism can corrode public discourse, public health and
global environmental health. Hard constructionist approaches to global envi-
ronmental science – such as climate change – that naively assume all voices in
the discussion are equally empowered, acting in good faith and therefore need
to be represented, can simply ignore the purposeful and deliberate attempts to
create misinformation by organized and well-funded powerful economic and
political actors (see Freudenburg, 2000; Oreskes et al., 2008; McCright and
Dunlap, 2010; Dunlap, 2011).
A further danger that is shared by both these approaches, though, is that
in different ways, they can both reinforce strong dualist views of the world.
Notably, militant forms of realism and constructionism are often premised on
the view that “society” and “nature” are entirely clear and distinct spheres of
reality. As we will see throughout this book, many currents in the natural sci-
ences and the social sciences are moving towards the view that such ideas can
become unhelpful in a world of blurring boundaries and complicated mixings.
The debate between realism and constructionism raged across the humani-
ties, social sciences and the natural sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed,
the dispute became so heated at one point that it gave rise to the “the science
wars,” as extreme form of scientific objectivism faced off against extreme forms
of postmodern cultural constructionism (see Gross and Levitt, 1994; Latour,
2004) with predictably unproductive results. This book draws from a grow-
ing body of work that has sought to move away from such a polarized way of
understanding these issues. Over the last decade, there has been a discernible
shift in both the environmental social sciences and the natural sciences towards
more pragmatic positions. Within environmental social theory, there has been
a growing sense that we can, and indeed must, draw insights from both these
­traditions – “material” or “the cultural,” “realism” or “constructionism” –
to think about and engage with socio-ecological and socio-­environmental
­relations. In practice, most environmental social scientists are adopting prag-
matic views of these discussions (e.g., Benton, 1994; Castree, 1995; Barry,
2001; Latour, 2004; York, 2010; Dunlap, 2011). We will see throughout the
rest of this book that different currents are formulating the need to bridge
the divisions in different ways: from advocacy of cultural or semiotic mate-
rialism (Haraway, 1985), active historical geographical materialism (Harvey,
1996; Swyngedouw, 1996) or agential realisms (Barad, 2007). For the moment,
though, let us just say that one can identify a distinct desire running across the
more advanced discussions in the environmental social sciences to grasp the
world as “real, material and discursive” (Latour, 1993).
12 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Material, Cultural and Political Ecologies

We live, then, in an entangled world. Let us introduce one last proposition into
the discussion. It is our sense that some of the best work being done in the
critical environmental social sciences seeks to demonstrate that we are not only
entangled but that these socio-ecological entanglements are profoundly medi-
ated by power relations. What do we mean by power, though?
The question of what power is and where it is located has generated a very
long and complicated set of debates in the social sciences across the last 100
years. Perhaps this is not surprising. The nature of power, its sources and how
it operates in specific historical societies changes as social institutions, cul-
tures, technologies, political projects and historical contexts change. Let us
think about power in the context of how it has been seen to operate in the
worlds of capitalist modernity. Sociologists of power have generally suggested
that two broad traditions can be outlined in power studies. There is a domi-
nant tradition of political sociology that has largely viewed power in negative
terms, focused on conditions when some have power over others. Then there
are rather different traditions of power that see it more as a positive resource
and focused on the power to do things.
The negative view of “power” at its most simple level is the capacity of A
to get B to do things B would not otherwise do (Dahl, 1957). Power in this
sense can be seen in the negative sense of legitimate coercion, as Max Weber
would understand it. Power from this perspective is zero-sum in nature; it is
held by some over others. It is also located in certain spaces and institutions –
the state, amongst capitalists, bureaucrats, army officers, etc – and absent from
other spaces and institutions (where the powerless are located). Advocates of
this negative view of power (see Lukes, 1974/1986) have further suggested it
can be wielded in different ways. It can be wielded in direct material ways –
you must do this now – “get off this land, I own it.” It can be wielded in more
subtle ways in terms of “agenda setting” – here are your options and I have
decided this in advance. (Think of the ways in which the idea that conventional
economic growth is good is an established preset agenda item of most politi-
cal debates in contemporary liberal democracies.) It can also be wielded in
terms of the subtle shaping of cultural and political worldviews and indeed the
unconscious shaping of desires. (Think of the way that advertising works to
manufacture desires that you did not know you had!) This view of power has
many virtues. This view of power highlights how the actions of social subjects
are often shaped by social forces beyond themselves. A focus on power spe-
cifically located in dominant political and economic institutions and not other
spaces and places provides a clear focus for empirical research. But such an
approach to power has some important drawbacks.
A rather different view of power, as a positive capacity, can be found in
the writings of a variety of thinkers from Michel Foucault to Talcott Parsons,
Hannah Arendt to Zygmunt Bauman. For Foucault, the failing of zero-sum
 Introduction 13

views of power are that they do not capture how power circulates through
the capillary system of society. Power circulates through the state to be sure,
but Foucault persistently stressed that power moves through all manner of
further mundane social practices, discourses and micro institutions: from the
family to the prison, from normalizing discourse on sexuality to discourses
on deviance. For Foucault, power literally constitutes us as social agents and
it is ubiquitous. A slightly less functionalist and more centered view of power
is articulated by Hannah Arendt in On Violence (1970). Arendt argues, like
Foucault, that one major problem with the zero-sum view of power is that it
tends to reduce the diversity and complexity of political life to simple relations
of command and obedience centered around the state. Drawing from civic
republican traditions of understanding politics and power, she suggests more
forcefully than Foucault that power as collective empowerment needs to be
accented. As she argues:

Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in con-
cert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and
remains in existence as long as the group keeps together. (Arendt, 1970:44)

Power in this Arendtian sense can be a positive force in that it is necessary to

get anything done. It is located in institutions, cultural practices and ways of
thinking, to be sure, which seek to order and shape behavior, thinking, bodies
and emotions. However, Arendt also wants to suggest that power can quickly
leak from these institutions and re-emerge as human beings become political
agents and re-emerges in collective acts of refusal, resistance, revolution and
reconstruction. She ultimately believed that real empowerment would require
a public sphere where these political agents as informed citizens engaged in
free, open and deliberative politics in a public sphere. Arendt’s positive view of
power comes closer to the idea of empowerment. This view of power is useful
in that it reminds us that whether we are dealing with poor peasant farm-
ers protecting their land, indigenous people fighting toxic dumping or urban
working-class communities highlighting environmental injustices, some of the
most dispossessed peoples can find ways of forming collectivities, grasping
power and using it productively.
Now, the positive and the negative view of power can be seen as antag-
onistic. In this book, though, we want to suggest that if we view power as
moving through this historical moment in decidedly liquid ways (Bauman
and Haugaard, 2008), we can grant insights to each of the major traditions
of power. It is our view that power moves through our entangled material,
cultural and ecological worlds, but it consolidates, or perhaps better coagu-
lates, in certain spaces and places. Power coagulates because certain groups,
capitalists, bureaucrats, state officials, institutions, culture makers, centers of
knowledge production and dissemination and so on are very good at designing
systems and institutions that attempt to capture power (in both its material
14 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

and semiotic ways). Such institutions, actors, discourses and institutions are
very effective at establishing what the Italian social theorist Antonio Gramsci
referred to as “hegemony,” articulating certain particular views of the world as
common sense (see Loftus, 2012). But social life is historical, dynamic, uncer-
tain and constantly shifting, as are socio-ecological relations more broadly.
Many forces, from systemic crises to the unexpected disruption (riots, rebel-
lions, revolutions), can unsettle how power in its liquid form coagulates and
dissipates. Moreover, if we see social actors as not just cultural dupes but
always potentially political agents, and particularly if they cluster together in
counter networks, they can affect how power coagulates. If we think of power
in a more liquid form, we can see that it coagulates and dissipates, it is visible
and it is hidden. How it coagulates and dissipates, whether it is made visible
or remains in the shadows, depends on events, crises and how diverse political
agents play the political game of politics.

Power and Socio-Ecological Entanglements

How do any of these abstract conversations about power have anything to

do with socio-environmental entanglements? Let’s start with where you are
now. Consider the context in which you are reading this text. Perhaps you are
reading this text in a book, on a laptop or some other kind of electronic read-
ing device. This object has come to you through a global commodity supply
chain that is itself part of a complex global network. You are probably not fully
aware of the specifics of how your book or electronic device was constructed,
but you are broadly aware that it is the product of social labor (many different
kind of workers in many different places across the globe) metabolizing with
different natures, environments, nonhumans, communities, infrastructures and
technologies. This is what we might term a socionatural object (it is a hybrid
or amalgam of social and natural elements). It has moved through elaborate
processes of extraction of raw materials, refining, processing, manufacturing,
design, packaging, distribution, display, purchase and use. Bruno Latour sug-
gested that a productive way to start thinking about these socionatural and
sociotechnological relations is to recognize that they necessarily involve the
stable “enrollment” or assembling of all kinds of objects, people, technologies,
ecologies, nonhumans, forms of measurement, legislation and so on to make
this object, its production and consumption, possible. You are probably also
aware that the social and ecological impact of these networks – whether at the
mine, the forest, the sweatshop, the processing plant or the retail store – have
most likely not been borne by you.
In fact, look around you, at the clothes you are wearing, the objects sur-
rounding you, the food you had for lunch. We can safely say that the social and
ecological costs of the socio-environmental networks that have produced all
these goods have most likely been borne by some other people and communities
 Introduction 15

in other places. These social, material, ecological and technological networks

are clearly pervaded by all manner of complicated power relations that are also
cultural and material and bound up in class and gender relations, ethnicity,
sexuality, proximity to political, managerial and bureaucratic power and so on.
The hardworking, smart people who devised your e-reader in Silicon Valley,
California, we can surmise, do not live next to or anywhere near the equally
smart, hardworking and resourceful teenagers whose livelihoods entail the dan-
gerous work of extracting coltan from mining operations in the Congo. We can
also surmise that your book, laptop or e-reader will be heading to a landfill at
some time in the not too distant future, with other impacts on other peoples (for
excellent accounts of these relationships see Pellow, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007).
So, it is not too difficult to see how power relations pervade the socio-­
ecological relations that we exist within. Let’s move from your immediate sur-
roundings. Let’s imagine you are a citizen of the United States just about to
celebrate the 4th of July in the traditional manner of barbecue, burger, bun and
beer. Let’s now consider the material impacts of these forms. Industrial agricul-
ture may well present its final meat products in nicely framed forms, but it is
estimated that it takes one gallon of oil to produce two pounds of meat from
an industrial feedlot (Langmuir and Broecker, 2012:575), and it can take up
to 300,000 gallons of water to produce 100 bushels of grain (Langmuir and
Broecker, 2012:581). The ecological economists Robert Ayers and A.V. Kneese
estimate that, for each person in the US, over 10 tons of “active mass raw mate-
rials” are extracted every year. Only 6% of this ends up as durable products
that are used. The rest becomes waste (see Ayers and Kneese, 1989; Lappé,
2012). Now reconsider burger, bun and shiny new barbecue grill in the light
of this information. Consider the amount of cultural work that is involved in
obscuring and hiding the material impacts of these products or the suffering of
animals. Whole industries exist in packaging, advertising, marketing, display
and culture more broadly that obscure basic features of how power operates
through our socio-environmental relations. At each point in these entangled
material, culture, semiotic and ecological relations, though, there are diverse
humans (workers, farmers, trade unionists, activists), nonhumans, ecologies
and material forces that may or may not cooperate with this network and are
sometimes actively recalcitrant and resist or contest the forms of these socio-
ecological relations. It is in this sense that our present socio-ecological worlds
are made worlds, and given different circumstances, they can be unmade or
remade as well.

Conclusion

Let us conclude then by restating the five key points we have attempted to get
across in this chapter. (1) It is productive to see the social and the ecological as
entangled. (2) Socio-ecological entanglements have both material and cultural
16 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

components. (3) Power relations play a huge role in how we are impacted by
these socio-ecological entanglements, which socio-environmental problems we
experience and our broader attitudes towards environmental hazards and risk.
(4) If it is useful to think of these entangled worlds in terms of networks, it has
to be emphasized that some networks are better able to define some problems,
hazards and risks as real threats than others. Some networks are more able to
move institutions that generate policy programs to address those problems as
defined by those groups – and they are able to disaggregate and disorganize
others. (5) Socio-ecological relations are not set in stone. Material forces, social
actors, humans and nonhumans, events, contingencies, sometimes uncoopera-
tive ecologies and the skills brought to play the game of politics all contribute
to the composition of the entangled socio-ecological worlds we reside within.
Things are as they are. But things can change as well.
 1
Unnatural Social Theory? The
Problem of Nature in Classic
Social Theory

We hope that thus far we have begun to convince our reader that, in principle,
the “socio-ecological” imagination has much to offer environmental debates.
We must now confront something of a paradox. While it may be the case
that environmental discussions can profit from more direct engagements with
social theory and the critical social sciences, many influential traditions of
mainstream social theory have struggled or actively resisted incorporating eco-
logical and environmental questions into social analysis. Indeed, in this chap-
ter we demonstrate that many currents of social thought have swung rather
violently between two equally problematic forms of reductionism over the last
century and more. Naturalistic or biophysical reductionism can be understood
as the tendency to grant determinate authority to environmental, ecological
or biological forces in the shaping of social life or the tendency to assume the
insights of the life sciences can be applied in an unmediated way to social life.
In contrast, sociological reductionism can be understood as the tendency to
underplay the importance of material forces on society, the assumption that
“culture,” “history,” “society” or “discourse” trumps everything.
In this chapter we consider why this state of polarization has existed and we
present Malthus and Durkheim as archetypal representatives of the different
camps. Following this, we outline four alternative traditions of social thought
that have been reclaimed by different contemporary currents as providing new
ways forward. We briefly explore here the writing of Marx and Engels; the
anarchist, regionalist and mutualist thinkers; Tarde and Whitehead; and human
ecology. We conclude this chapter by sketching out how key contemporary
thinkers such as William Catton and Riley Dunlap, Ted Benton and, finally,
Donna Haraway have negotiated these legacies. We will see in this chapter that

17
18 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

nature and the environment have generated genuinely vexing issues for the
project of developing the social and historical sciences. Social reductionism is a
problem for the social sciences. But we will also see that there is a long history
of critics overcompensating for this problem by tumbling right back into new
forms of naturalistic reductionism.

Enlightenment and Social Theory

Let us begin by briefly sketching out the historical conditions in which modern
social theory emerges. If you pick up a contemporary introductory textbook
on modern social theory, you will invariably read that this is a way of seeing
the world that emerges from discussions percolating out in large part from the
urban centers of Germany, France, Britain and the United States in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. It is an attempt to understand the enormous
social, technological, political and cultural transformations that mark the rise
of modernity, capitalism and European imperialism. Classic social thought is
certainly influenced by the intellectual optimism unleashed by the scientific
revolutions that began in Europe in the 17th century. It is a body of conversa-
tions that is grappling with the critical commitments of the Enlightenment,
notably: to the primacy of reason tempered by experimentation as the way in
which we organize knowledge (as opposed to relying on tradition, superstition
or scripture), to science as providing the central method to gain knowledge
of the world, a belief in universalism, that in principle science could produce
general laws across contexts and that all these elements could inform an idea
of progress (that history has some directionality moving forward as opposed to
history being a story of cyclical return) (see Hamilton, 1992). Many social the-
orists that we will look at in this chapter have had a complicated relationship
to the Enlightenment, being products of but also often highly critical of this
moment. We will see that many key social theorists have sought to acknowl-
edge more ambivalent reactions to the Enlightenment and, indeed, capitalism
that emerged in the 19th century among various romantic, conservative, uto-
pian, socialist and colonial critics.
This thumbnail sketch provides a very basic sense of the origins of social
theory. It is also important to note that this “textbook account” of the origins
of social theory outlines a conversation that is deeply preoccupied with under-
standing the dynamics, trajectory, pathologies and possibilities of society, social
life and social change, not natural change much less social ecological change.
Many introductory textbooks in sociology to this day continue to omit environ-
mental issues or present them as secondary issues that can be dealt with under
demographics, social movements or urbanization. Within the  social sciences
more generally, sociology is far from unique in this respect. Economics has had
a long history of theorizing about market activity without any reference what-
soever to the environment, simply reducing it to “an externality.” Anthropology
 Unnatural Social Theory? 19

has often been divided quite sharply between c­ ultural and biological anthro-
pology. Even the field of geography, a discipline that probably more than any
other social science has placed the environment as its core concern, has been
marked by deep divisions between human or cultural geographers and physical
geographers. This tension has been particularly acute in sociology, though since
as Bruno Latour (2000) has noted, in contrast to geography or anthropology,
sociology has never had a “physical sociology” to negotiate with and challenge
its inclinations toward social and cultural reductionism.
In such a context then, it can be fairly said that the modern social sciences
have long found “the matter of nature” to be a difficult topic to address.
Dualism runs deep in Western thinking and this has often been augmented
by the ways in which many currents of the social sciences have looked to the
natural sciences as the model for understanding the world (scientism). Such
models have tended to promote the kinds of instrumental modes of thinking
we alluded to in the last chapter. And these instrumental tendencies have ulti-
mately affirmed the view that the natural world should be seen primarily as a
tool for human ends.
For example, if we step back for a moment to the 1600s and the rise of the
Scientific Revolution (that is itself a central precursor to Enlightenment), we
can see such instrumental assumptions incubating in the thinking of Francis
Bacon (1561–1626), father of modern science. Bacon famously inscribed the
“domination of nature” as central to the project of modern rational science
and human progress (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1988 [1944]; Leiss, 1972;
Merchant, 1982). In The Discourse on Method, Descartes (1596–1650)
equally famously argued the “general good of mankind” was best obtained
not through speculative philosophy but by obtaining knowledge that is use-
ful in life to “render ourselves the masters and possessor of nature.” From
figures such as Voltaire taking up the mantle of scientific rationalism, to classic
political economy in the fashion of Locke, Hume and Adam Smith, to liberal
philosophers such as Kant and Utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill, one can
identify a belief that the new world brought into being through the rise of
modernity marks a profound and potential break from a world subordinated
to the yoke of nature.
The idea that human well-being is necessarily fused to an instrumental
or even antagonistic relationship with something called “nature” has long
struck many other thinkers and traditions as deeply problematic. The roman-
tic reaction to the Enlightenment, for example, explicitly sought to resist
the scientific rationalization of nature, bodies, emotions and sentiment. We
can hardly do justice here to the diversity and complexity of romanticism, a
body of thought that can legitimately sweep up in its midst radicals such as
Shelley and Rousseau, anarchist and utopian socialists such as John Ruskin
and William Morris, to nationalists such as Herder, conservatives such as
Edmund Burke as well as currents of protofascist thinking such as de Maistre.
Nevertheless, from the cult of the primitive championed by Rousseau to the
20 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

cult of ­sublime and wild nature championed by Burke, the nature poets and
transcendentalists to the defense of craft present in William Morris, we can see
all kinds of attempts to push back against instrumentalism. Many currents of
20th-century critical theory, from the Frankfurt School to ecofeminism to
assorted Heideggerians and radical ecologists, have continued to explore ten-
sions embedded in Enlightenment instrumentalism. Notably, all these currents
have observed that if “we” humans have to be acknowledged in some senses
as a part of nature, or if some of us in particular – women, nonwhites, non-­
Europeans, indigenous peoples – are to be constructed as “more natural” than
people of the West, it begs the question: in what sense are modern societies
focused on the domination of nature ultimately going to associate this with
the management, control and domination of human nature (Horkheimer and
Adorno, 1988 [1944]; Leiss, 1972; Bookchin, 1982; Plumwood, 1993), or
indeed with certain kinds of lesser, “more natural” humans? Let us leave this
question for the next chapter and focus for the moment on Thomas Malthus,
a thinker who sought to confront, refute and unravel the optimism of the
Enlightenment head on, from a rather different basis.

Naturalistic Reductionism in Social Theory: Malthus, Spencer and

Social Darwinism

In An Essay on the Principles of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus (1766–

1864) directly challenged the optimism of the Enlightenment, providing a sus-
tained critique of one of its central and most ebullient advocates, the social
anarchist William Godwin (1756–1856). During the French Revolution,
Godwin proclaimed in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) that the
Revolution clearly demonstrated that humankind’s fate was not fixed for all
time by immutable laws of nature (such as the divine right of kings or the great
chain of being). Rather, the Revolution demonstrated, by toppling the ancien
régime of Louis XVI, that social institutions are malleable and that intentional
social reorganization could generate a world without suffering, injustice or
authoritarianism.
Malthus rejected Godwin’s position out of hand. Rather, he argued that
that since (i) food is central to the existence of man, (ii) the passions between
the sexes are “necessary and constant” and (iii) we live in a world of finite
resources, human life remained subject to natural laws. Malthus also insisted
that food production could grow only arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 …), but
human population naturally grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 …). Under
these conditions, then, Malthus found an inevitable and inescapable natural
tendency toward overpopulation, disease, famine, war and death. The Essay on
the Principles of Population concludes from this “natural law” that Godwin’s
optimist view of the future is wrong, that social reform cannot overcome
natural laws, and, by extension, that the provision of welfare for the poor
 Unnatural Social Theory? 21

will merely increase human misery. Welfare, as Malthus saw it, results in an
increase in the numbers of the poor and thereby contributes to greater poverty
and ultimately starvation. He states: “I see no way by which man can escape
the weight of this law which pervades all inanimate nature. No fantasy equal-
ity, no agrarian regulation in their uttermost extent, could remove the pressure
of it even for a single century.”
Malthus moderated his position in later editions of his Essay on the
Principles of Population, accepting that the death and despair produced by
overpopulation could perhaps be avoided by voluntary fertility control or that
the “noble exertions” of human genius might contribute to reducing popula-
tion growth rates. Nevertheless, his basic conviction, that a fixed nature sets
upper limits on human endeavors and that certain immutable features of the
human condition made this so, never changed.
Now it has long been accepted that the Essay on the Principles of Population
is useful for understanding ecosystem dynamics. Darwin was indeed was influ-
enced by Malthus, and Malthus’s views of population increase helped to develop
Darwin’s thinking on evolution through natural selection. The critical debate
around Malthus has focused more on the question of whether Malthus’s basic
premises can be extrapolated from the natural world to the social world, and
particularly on whether Malthus is a trustworthy guide for understanding the
dynamics of population growth and resource depletion in capitalist modernity.
The economist and sociologist Henry C. Cary (1858), for example, argued that
increased population density can give rise to better political organizations and
better infrastructures. Henry George suggested that increased social capital,
better social organization, increases in technology, and higher levels of human
capital derive from greater population density. Both Marx and Engels saw
Malthus as providing a highly rationalized justification for keeping the poor in
poverty and powerless. For Marx and Engels, ideologies premised on natural
limits were invariably a form of class politics. This can be seen by the way in
which Malthus maintained that the reproductive activities of poor and ­working
people required strict regulation but believed no such strictures were necessary
for the upper classes who had learned to regulate their reproductive habits by
moral commitments and material prudence (see Harvey, 1974; Ross, 1998).
Malthus, nevertheless, had many supporters. Classical economists, such
as John Stuart Mill, believed there was value to Malthus’s insights for social
analysis, and Malthusian ideas laid out foundational public policy assump-
tions behind a great deal of British and Irish politics in the mid-19th century.
His focus on irreducible limits and scarcity were used to bolster the position of
English landlords and land owners against their Irish tenants, and his ideas went
on to provide the rationale for coercive and restrictive welfare arrangements in
Britain, such as the Poor Laws and the development of the workhouse. After
the Irish Famine of 1844–1846, Malthusian arguments were widely used by
British administrators to distract attention from the role that British adminis-
trative incompetence and willful neglect had played in exacerbating the famine.
22 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

There are affinities between Malthusianism and “Social Darwinism,” a body

of thought that became quite influential in the early-20th-century social theory
and was championed by Herbert Spencer (1820–1902). Spencer’s functionalist
perspective famously sought to place sociology on a scientific footing by incor-
porating evolutionary theory into the field. Comparing society to a living organ-
ism, Spencer argued that social change was best understood as an evolutionary
sequence where natural selection occurred according to “the survival of the fit-
test” – Spencer’s phrase subsequently incorporated by Darwin. While the extent
to which Spencer was politically committed to Social Darwinism is a matter of
contestation, there is no evidence that Darwin was sympathetic to such a pro-
gram. However, there is no doubt that social evolutionism coupled with Social
Darwinist and Malthusian agendas have long informed a wide range of political
programs and movements. In particular, eugenicist movements in the early to
mid-20th century sought to breed “inferior” characteristics from humanity by
killing, sterilizing or otherwise limiting the reproduction of “inferior” people.
Similarly, ideas of the “white man’s burden” clearly owe a debt to Malthus
in their legitimation of European colonialism and imperialism. Most impor-
tantly, it was widely believed in establishment European and North American
circles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that “nature,” revealed as “red in
tooth and claw,” generated the social processes by which the most “advanced”
individuals in the most “advanced” societies were naturally the victors in the
“competition” to see who “survived” and who was “fittest.” Most dramatically,
of course, the “racial sciences” of the Nazis synthesized Malthusian, Social
Darwinist and eugenicist principles at the heart of their political project.

Social Reductionism: Durkheim

If Malthus, Social Darwinism and Spencer provide one trajectory in the devel-
opment of sociology and social theory, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) maps
out a dramatically different path. Durkheim’s project can be summed up quite
simply: to identify society as a free-standing aspect of reality, legitimately an
object of scientific investigation, external to individuals and nature but shaping
and impacting them in powerful ways (see Catton and Dunlap, 1978; Dunlap
and Catton, 1979). Durkheim sought to demonstrate that the emerging dis-
ciplines of biology and psychology were simply not able to understand the
unique qualities of society, social facts or social dynamics. He reasoned that
the objective existence of clear social trends – e.g., suicide rates, unemployment
rates, family breakdown or crime rates – showed that social phenomena could
not be explained by the biological or psychological characteristics of individu-
als. What was required was a theoretical and empirical discipline investigating
the structural social forces that shape social behavior. The discipline would
collect and analyze social statistics in the fashioning of “a science of the social.”
Durkheim believed that sociology would ultimately discover new social facts
 Unnatural Social Theory? 23

and objective social laws, facts and laws wholly discrete from their natural
cousins. Explanations for social pathologies would emerge and they could be
used to inform social policies for healing the social body.
It is important to note that Durkheim did not entirely exclude biophysical
forces from social explanation (see Gross, 2001). His work is critical of, but
in debt to, Spencer. Durkheim, like Spencer, persistently makes use of organic
analogies, likening the health of society to the health of the human body. The
account he provides in The Division of Labor (1893) of the changes from
traditional societies with mechanically enforced norms of similarity to modern
societies grounded in organically enforced norms celebrating difference, for
example, draws from naturalized ideas of population growth, occupational
differentiation, and social networks rooted in a human tendency toward
flight rather than fighting to explain social change and progress. Nevertheless,
Durkheim treats these naturalistic moments as primarily historical, largely
having come to an end with the rise of organic society. The general tenor
of Durkheim’s maneuver is to undercut naturalistic forms of explanation,
using theoretical reflection, comparative historical sociology, anthropological
analysis and statistical methods to delineate the ways dominant social
­structures, productive roles and cultural norms contribute to the generation of
complex and controversial social phenomena (Catton, 2002).
It has to be acknowledged that Durkheim’s project – for all its limitations –
constitutes a significant intellectual achievement (see Benton, 1993:30).
Durkheim was writing in an intellectual context where all manners of natu-
ralistic reductionism were being entertained as bases for the emerging social
sciences. We have already noted the influence of Malthusian, Social Darwinist
and eugenic currents; others included the precursors to psychology in the
­“science” of phrenology – where crime and deviance were seen to be rooted in
the skull size and shape of criminals. Forms of geographical and climate reduc-
tionism were also widely held in early geography. Friedrich Ratzel, Ellen Semple
and Ellsworth Huntington all introduced ancient Greek ideas that climate and
geography were not only significant but largely determined the national char-
acter, mental capacities, virtues and failings of different “races” (see Castree,
2005; Hulme, 2009). The Durkheimian push back against ethnocentric and
racist forms of biological, psychological and environmental reductionism was
and is critically important. Yet, it is a maneuver that comes with costs as well.
Durkheim is the critical figure in establishing mainstream sociology and
there is no doubt that his work has been interpreted as a license for some
­varieties of strongly society-centric and ethnocentric modes of analysis. Not
only did he  treat the relationship between the social and the biological too
­simplistically, but it can be observed that some of the most influential ­traditions
of 20th-century social theory followed this society-centric path. Whether
­mainstream or critical, sociological reductionism was further reinforced within
the field by the collective revulsion felt toward the naturalistic arguments of
European fascism, white supremacists, Nazi race science, and sexist arguments
24 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

for women’s subordination to men. In this vein Weber, DuBois, Simmel and
Marx were all read for most of the 20th century through a Durkheimian lens
ensuring that mainstream social theory de-emphasized the ways these thinkers
engaged with ecological processes, built environments and material objects.
Such restrictive readings became stronger as structural functionalism became
a dominant paradigm within postwar sociological research. It is also strik-
ing how dominant mid-20th-century critical social theories – whether rooted
in the Humanist Marxism of Georg Lukacs, the existential Marxism of John
Paul Sartre, or the Structural Marxisms of Althusser and Poulantzas – were all
marked by a similar disinclination to deal with “the matter of nature.”

Looking Beyond Mainstream Traditions in Social Theory

To sum up our discussion so far, the most influential moments in mainstream

social theory over the last 150 years have been heavily invested in dualist ways
of seeing the world. Does this exhaust our conversation? Does it suggest that
the classic canon writ large can be disregarded as narrowly anthropocentric
and largely irrelevant to addressing contemporary environmental concerns? Up
until the 1990s, many environmentally concerned scholars had adopted such a
position, believing nothing less than a new paradigm was required before envi-
ronmentally conscious social theories could be developed (Catton and Dunlap,
1978; Dunlap and Catton, 1979). Since the mid-1990s, however, a “neoclas-
sical” renaissance has occurred. Marginalized texts and the conventionally
subordinated socio-ecological insights of Marx (Dickens, 1992, 1996; Foster,
1999), Weber (Murphy, 1994; Foster and Holleman, 2012) and Simmel (Gross,
2001) have reemerged as classic works that have been mined and reappraised
for their “environmental insights.” Additionally, social theorists once viewed
as secondary or marginal figures, from Engels (Benton, 1996) to Reclus (Clark
and Martin, 2013), Kropotkin (Gould, 1997) to Tarde (Latour, 2012), have
found new champions as contemporary ecological Marxists, social ecologists
and actor network theorists have sought to locate, recover, discover or invent
new roots. Let us consider here the ways in which the socio-ecological insights
of four significant traditions have been recovered and reconsidered of late.

Marx and Engels on Ecology and Environmental Questions

The writings of Marx (1818–1883) and Engels (1820–1895) are sufficiently rich
and expansive that rather different readings of their understanding of socio-
environmental relations have been extracted from their work at different points
in time. There is certainly enough material in Marx to sustain the view that
aspects of his thought are inflected by Victorian Prometheanism, instrumentalism
and productivism (see variously: Bookchin, 1980, 1982; Benton, 1989, 1996;
Harvey, 1996). The older Marx had little time for contemplative romanticism
 Unnatural Social Theory? 25

(Grundmann, 1991) and we have already noted that Marx and Engels were
­profoundly hostile to Malthus. The horrendous environmental record of “actual
existing socialism” in the USSR indeed almost permanently foreclosed discussions
of the socio-ecological insights of Marx’s thinking in many circles. However, times
change and a growing body of research has engaged Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts,
Capital and Grundrisse, along with Engels’s Conditions of the Working Class in
England, and uncovered an apparent aspiration to develop a historical ecoma-
terialism that might serve as a starting point for thinking about contemporary
socio-ecological problems (see Smith, 1984, 1990, 1996; O’Connor, 1988, 1998;
Benton, 1989, 1996; Salleh, 1991; Castree, 1995; Harvey, 1996; Swyngedouw,
1996; Foster, 1999, 2000; Clark and Foster, 2009; Loftus, 2012).
Marx’s historical materialism has been seen as particularly promising for a
number of reasons. Firstly, as a student of Hegel, Marx’s initial move is to think
about reality as historical, dynamic and in process. From this dialectical view:

It is not the unity of living and active humanity with the natural, inorganic
conditions of their metabolic exchange with nature, and hence their appro-
priation of nature, which requires explanation, … but rather the separation
between these inorganic conditions of human existence and this active exist-
ence, a separation which is completely posited only in the relations of wage
labor and capital. (Marx, 1973[1858]:489)

Marx goes on to place socionatural metabolism – an alternative view of labor

processes – as the foundation of history (see Foster, 2000; Swyngedouw, 2009).
As Marx outlined in the 1844 Manuscripts, “men” work, socially, on nature
through labor to survive, and in doing so they transform nature and them-
selves. Arising out of various historical metabolisms between society and
nature are specific social institutions, social relations and social ideologies that
make up a mode of production. Marx’s materialist conception of history, then,
clearly recognizes social relations and social institutions as embedded within
and involving dynamic relationships with ecological conditions and environ-
mental contexts. From the excavation of these insights has arisen a fruitful
convergence between Marx’s writing and environmental history and historical
geography (see Cronon, 1993; Harvey, 1996). It is important to additionally
note that Engels’s Conditions of the Working Class in England (2009[1887])
has also been reread and is increasingly seen as a critical early precursor to urban
political ecology and the sociology of environmental justice (see Chapter 7
and Loftus, 2012). Writing, for instance, on the nascent urban conditions of
the working poor in England, Engels observed:

In the country, it may be comparatively innoxious to keep a dung-heap

adjoining one’s dwelling … but in the midst of a large town … the case
is different. All putrefying vegetable and animal substances give off gases
decidedly injurious to health, and if these gases have no free way of escape,
they inevitably poison the atmosphere. (Engels, 2009[1887]:122)
26 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

In Conditions, Engels also laments that the poor are:

Relegated to districts which … are worse ventilated that any others …

deprived of all means of cleanliness … of water itself … the rivers so pol-
luted … they are obliged to throw all offal and garbage, all dirty water,
often all disgusting drainage and excrement into the street, thus compelled
to infect the region of their own dwellings. (Engels, 2009[1887]:122)

Even if it could be said that Marx’s own substantive social theory does not
fully work through the socio-ecological implications of his historical materi-
alist premises (Rudy, 2002), as we shall see in forthcoming chapters, a huge
range of critical approaches to socio-environmental questions over the last few
decades – from the treadmill of production and metabolic rift schools in US
sociology to traditions of critical feminism, to discussions of political ecology
and the production of nature in geography, and to discussions of hybridity
in science studies – have found Marx’s historical materialism and his critical
political economy of capitalism indispensable (see Chapters, 2, 3, 5, and 7).
At the same time, Marx and Engel’s characteristic reticence about articulating
the contours of a postcapitalist society does mean that there is rather less in
their writings that can directly inform how we might envisage the institutional
and economic contours of an ecological society. This accounts perhaps for the
enduring influence of the anarchist, regionalist, mutualist and utopian tradi-
tions in so much critical environmental thinking.

Social Anarchism, Mutualism and Regionalism

Traditions of social anarchism, utopian socialism, regionalism and mutualism

have rarely occupied central place in mainstream social theory. Nevertheless,
Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), Elise Reclus (1830–1905), Ebenezer Howard
(1850–1928), Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) and Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
have all had an enormous impact on environmental thinking in urban and
regional studies, geography, political science and in environmental movement
circles more generally. Let’s focus here on Kropotkin.
Kropotkin was a geographer, an ecologist, an anarcho-communist and a
revolutionary social theorist whose work was deeply concerned with under-
standing relations between the social and the natural. He is interesting because,
as an anarchist ally of William Godwin, he firmly rejects Malthus’s claim that
“natural limits” caused by overpopulation would provide a “natural check”
on progressive projects. Kropotkin argued that the stock of energy in nature
was “potentially infinite” and that the social and technological reorganiza-
tion of food cultivation around more egalitarian and decentralized forms of
market gardening could significantly improve food production and circumvent
 Unnatural Social Theory? 27

population pressures (see Marshall, 1992:331). He also sought to push back

strongly against Social Darwinism.
As an evolutionary theorist, in Mutual Aid (1903), Kropotkin famously con-
tested Social Darwinist misappropriations of evolutionary theory, particularly
the buttressing provided to laissez-faire capitalism by the ideology of “the sur-
vival of the fittest.” Kropotkin acknowledged that there is competition and
struggle in nature but, following Darwin, distinguished between (i) competi-
tion between organisms of the same species for limited resources and (ii) organ-
isms struggling against the environment, which often leads to cooperation (see
Gould, 2002:12). Mutual Aid stressed the conventional underemphasis in
Darwin’s writings – and, more so, in conventional readings of Darwin – on the
cooperative elements in evolution. The book then follows up with the sugges-
tion that legacies of altruism and cooperation represent a clear thread running
through social history in the form of free associations, communes and cities.
While Kropotkin’s view of evolution is rather dated – from the perspective
of late-20th- and early-21st-century biology – where mutualist and competi-
tive relations are understood in more complex ways than those expressed by
Kropotkin (see Boucher, 1996), Stephen Jay Gould nevertheless demonstrated
how aspects of Kropotkin’s thinking continue to have merit. As he notes, “If
Kropotkin overemphasized mutual aid, most Darwinians in Western Europe
had exaggerated competition just as strongly” (Gould, 2002:12). If Kropotkin’s
approach offers more of a grab bag of interesting insights rather than a fully
developed social ecological theory, the reconstructive vision underpinning
Kropotkin’s thinking has been extraordinarily influential. His voice has served
as creative muse to numerous ecological thinkers from Mumford and Howard
to Bookchin. His vision of “village democracy” has inspired thinkers as various
as Gandhi, Mao and a range of revolutionary peasant movements around the
world. The common vision, in these traditions, is one where the good “eco-
logical society” (Bookchin) is a decentralized, largely self-organizing terrain
comprised of free cities, towns and villages (Kropotkin) redesigned as “Garden
Cities” (Howard) and city gardens (Kropotkin) carefully tailored to meet the
contours of their broader regional ecologies (Mumford) and shaped by directly
democratic forms of local to regional planning politically confederated across
local, regional and global levels.
There are limitations to these reconstructive visions; most obviously (with
the exception of Howard and Mumford) the state is inadequately engaged or
viewed as a potential terrain of struggle (we will discuss this further in our
final chapter). Additionally, as social theory, all these traditions are informed
by forms of organic ethical naturalism that are difficult to reconcile with the
contingent, historical and hybrid view of socio-ecological relations we outlined
in the previous chapter. Ultimately the social organicism of the anarchist and
mutualist traditions represent G.E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy (the ultimately
futile attempt according to Moore to associate “the good” with “the natural”).
28 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

What is of enduring value about this tradition (as we shall see in future
­chapters) is the call for a reconstructive project that links the politics of the
natural environment with a reworking of built environments, working condi-
tions, artistic sensibilities and day-to-day social relations.

A.N. Whitehead, Gabriel Tarde and the Sociology of Associations

One way or another, all the traditions we have looked at thus far have sought
to move beyond the classic dualisms of Western thought while still demonstrat-
ing a commitment to the idea that “society” and “nature” are distinct domains
of reality. The writings of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde and those of
the process philosopher A.N. Whitehead shared the view that moving beyond
while holding on to the dualism was not enough. Tarde was a contemporary
of Durkheim’s and at one point a more prominent figure. But as Durkheim’s
reputation rose, Tarde was gradually shunted aside, and his work has remained
something of a curio until recently, as he has been recovered and championed
by Bruno Latour. Latour’s reading of Tarde makes the striking argument that
sociology should proceed not by extracting the structure of the social from the
mess of the natural but by rejecting the social/natural split as merely a conven-
tion. Tarde argues that a true materialism should begin with the assumption
that we live with conjoined society-natures, and he inverts Durkheim’s view by
seeking to understand how “societies” can be found in widespread, rather than
only in separate, moments of material reality. Tarde suggests that “societies”
as complex associations can be found in all manner of material phenomena
from subatomic particles to bacteria to animal and human groups. The aim
then of Tardean sociology is not to extract a purified social realm from every-
thing else but to explore these complex associations between human, techni-
cal and ecological phenomena. In recent decades, the process philosophy of
A.N. Whitehead has also been reintroduced by theorists such as Latour and
Haraway who are looking to move beyond dualistic societies and natures. Like
Tarde, Whitehead begins with an ontology of creative material effervescence
where all is conjoined in intertwined socio-ecological processes. As Michael
Carolyn has observed, Whitehead’s starting point assumes a “smeared ontol-
ogy, where delineations between subjects, objects and the world are muddled
and fluid” (Carolan, 2009:318). It is only in and through these ontological
commitments that we can begin to explore the entanglements so clearly associ-
ated with social ecological problems.
For some, Tarde and Whitehead border on the idiosyncratic and imprac-
tical. Tarde in particular can come dangerously close to embracing a form
of individualist reductionism that wholly dissolves the distinctiveness of the
social. Yet, there are clear resonances between Whitehead and Marx (see
Harvey, 1996) in terms of their processual and relational approach to under-
standing socionatural relations and the coproduction of the world we live in.
 Unnatural Social Theory? 29

As we shall see at the end of this chapter, these two thinkers from the first half
of the 20th century provide important inspiration for the hybrid thinking of
Donna Haraway.

Human Ecology

Let us turn though to consider a final moment of early-20th-century sociology –

one that probably more than any other current we have looked at thus far
opened up a conversation within the mainstream of sociology between
­sociology and ecology. Sociologists at the University of Chicago in the 1920s
onward developed traditions of “human ecology” in direct association with
natural scientific researchers working in the Indiana Dunes southeast of the
university. In the earliest manifestations of human ecology, Chicago School
researchers drew on the functionalism of Durkheim and Simmel to generate
progressive models of society that ran parallel to the functionalist and devel-
opmentalist versions  of climax ecology, particularly the variety championed
by Frederick Clements. A central concern informing the rise of human ecology
was to develop ways of understanding cities that would contribute to policies
that could remediate urban social problems.
Drawing on Clements, early human ecologists interpreted urban demo-
graphic trends as consecutive rounds of in-migration to the urban core leading
to integration and gradual ethnic/racial movement outwards. This perspective
mirrored what ecologists had seen in the dunes as disturbed ecologies received
in-migrations of new species serially replaced by “more complex” and “higher
order” species as the ecology moved toward stable, climax equilibrium. Urban
worlds were thus seen to tend toward integration and stability as new groups
gradually established their “proper niches” in the broader urban ecology. As
with Spencer’s social evolutionism, Chicago School human ecology believed
natural scientific conceptualization could be imported directly into the social
sciences and applied to social phenomena without difficulty.
Human ecology fell out of favor in most areas of urban sociology and
geography from the 1960s onward. Emerging currents of neo-Marxist urban
theory, from the mid-1960s onward, explicitly argued that older theories of
human ecologists simply failed to grasp that cities, their citizens and deci-
sions about migration and immigration did not run parallel to natural systems
but were rather the product of multiple power relations. Within the Chicago
School itself, the idea that evolutionary and ecological models could be applied
directly to explain urban life became viewed as too reductionist and simplistic,
obscuring the central role that human subjectivity plays in the experience and
shaping of urban forms. The very model of ecology drawn from human ecol-
ogy became outdated in the 1980s and 1990s as the view that ecosystem can be
understood in asocial and ahistorical ways ultimately heading toward a stable
equilibrium became much more contested within the science of ecology as well.
30 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

It is interesting to note though that despite the decline of human ecology as a

perspective in urban studies, it has provided a significant point of inspiration
for the rise of environmental sociology in North America.
How have these currents informed contemporary discussions? In the chap-
ters ahead, we will return again and again to some of the issues and dilemmas
raised by subordinate traditions of social theory. Let us conclude this chap-
ter though by considering how three highly influential contemporary currents
have sought to articulate the basis for an environmental social theory.

Catton and Dunlap – Contesting Human Exemptionalism

The writings of William Catton and Riley Dunlap have provided some of the
most influential attempts to formulate an ontological basis for environmen-
tal sociology in North America (see Catton and Dunlap, 1978; Dunlap and
Catton, 1979; Catton, 1980). Informed by the wave of environmental concerns
that swept the US in the 1970s, rural sociological variants of human ecol-
ogy, the reemergence of romantic environmental sensibilities, and the Limits
to Growth report (1972), Dunlap and Catton embarked on a pioneering and
pointed internal critique of mainstream sociology in the late 1970s and early
1980s. A range of articles in this period argue that conventional sociological
theory is best characterized as sharing a common worldview, one referred to as
the “Human Exemptionalist Paradigm” (HEP). The core assumptions of this
worldview are identified by Catton and Dunlap in the following fashion:

(1) Humans have a cultural heritage in addition to (and distinct from) their
genetic inheritance and thus are quite unlike all other animal species.
(2) Social and cultural factors (including technology) are the major determi-
nates of human affairs.
(3) Social and cultural environments are the crucial context for human
affairs, and the biophysical environment is largely irrelevant.
(4) Culture is cumulative; thus technological and social progress can con-
tinue indefinitely, making all social problems ultimately solvable. (Catton
and Dunlap 1980:34)

In contrast to these commitments, Catton and Dunlap argued a “New

Ecological Paradigm” (NEP) was both necessary and emergent, and identifi-
able by the following three views:

(1) Human beings are only one species among the many that are interde-
pendently involved in the biotic communities that shape social life;
(2) Intricate linkages of cause, effect and feedback in the web of nature pro-
duce many unintended consequences that are different from purposive
human action;
 Unnatural Social Theory? 31

(3) The world is finite, so there are potent physical and biological limits
constraining economic growth, social progress and other societal phe-
nomena. (Catton and Dunlap 1980:34)

Catton’s Overshoot (1980) can be seen as an elaboration of this basic agenda.

It seeks to ground environmental sociology in some of the basic assumptions of
human ecology while combining this with the resources limits literatures of the
1970s and with a defense of the continued insight of Malthus and Malthusian
demography for the environmental social sciences (see Catton, 1980, 1998,
2000). Overshoot at one level marks a sharp break from Durkheimian sociol-
ogy in suggesting that sociology needs to move beyond Durkheim’s taboo and
recognize the biophysical as well as social variables on social structure. At
another level this text maintains the strongly Durkheimian division of intel-
lectual labor between the social and natural sciences. The assumption under-
pinning Overshoot is that a Durkheimian and functionalist mode of ecological
social science can draw upon, integrate and render more coherent resurgent
currents of Malthusian population ecology. In Overshoot, a range of sociopo-
litical phenomena, from tensions over immigration to broader social conflicts
around race, are explained by Catton as ultimately expressions of underly-
ing biophysical tensions and irreducible scarcities (see Catton, 1980:133). It
might be said then that a problem that emerges with Catton’s application of
the NEP to formulating an environmental sociology is that the desire to move
beyond sociological reductionism is only achieved by a return to naturalistic
reductionism.

Ted Benton – Rejecting Human Exceptionalism but Defending the

Specificity of the Ecologically Embedded Social Agent

The sociologist and biologist Ted Benton (1989, 1991, 1993, 1994) has
acknowledged the pioneering quality of Catton and Dunlap’s call for a NEP.
Benton affirms the importance of a realist and naturalist approach to social
ecological and socio-environmental relations. As he notes: “We can and should
continue to view humans as a species of living organism, comparable in many
important respects with other social species, as bound together with other
social species and their biophysical conditions of existence in immensely com-
plicated webs of interdependence, and as united by a common evolutionary
ancestry” (Benton, 1994:40). Such a position recognizes the relevance and
importance of ecology, physiology, genetics, evolutionary theory and so on to
our self-understanding. However, in contrast to Catton’s Overshoot, Benton
argues that the central features of our socio-environmental relations cannot be
taken from scientific ecology or other natural sciences in an unmodified way.
The life sciences are “insufficient of themselves for an understanding of human
personal and social life” (Benton, 1994:40). Why is this?
32 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Benton argues human beings have evolved “emergent powers” that demand
new and distinct modes of analysis from the natural sciences. Specifically, he
argues humanity is marked by a unique flexibility in social coordination associ-
ated with our use of symbolic communication. While our primate cousins are
capable of linguistic exchanges, Benton’s focus is not on simple linguistics but
on “the place of symbolic communication in the co-ordination of social practice
as a key feature of our natural history” (Benton, 1994:41). Interlinked with this
is our “individual capacity for moral agency” – that is “to regulate (or refuse
to regulate) our activities in accordance with normative rules and principles”
(Benton, 1994:41). It is these features of human social life, Benton observes,
that give humans the capacity for “collective learning and reflexive monitor-
ing” that “render them susceptible to intentional modification and conscious
adaptation in a way that is quite unique to our species” (Benton, 1994:41).
What follows from this in terms of society–environment relations? Benton is
not a simple-minded advocate of human exceptionalism, but he clearly rejects
naturalistic reductionism, particularly those currents excessively influential in
popular versions of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. He lays out
three critical observations against naturalistic reductionism in social theory
(Benton, 1994:42–43).
First, while we are “ecologically embodied and embedded” creatures, Benton
argues that symbolic communication and normative regulation are not simply
a set of human capacities but represent a distinctly “human need.” Our sense
of personal well-being and identity is bound up with social and ecological
interdependencies of cultural and material forms. “Humans are, therefore, vul-
nerable to environmental degradation and dislocation in a multitude of ways,
some of them quite peculiar to the species. Specifically, cultural, identity, self-
realization and aesthetic needs interact with and complement organic needs for
food and shelter in way in which figure less, if at all, in the ecological require-
ments of other species” (Benton, 1994:42).
Second, related to our capacities for symbolic communication and norma-
tive ordering is our capacity for extending our sensory and motor powers by
way of “tools and weapons, cognitive ‘mapping’, domestication of other spe-
cies, and large scale social co-ordination of activities.” This “human inventive-
ness” in terms of our “powers of intentional modification of our environment”
is part of the unique human “capacity to enhance the carrying capacity of
their environments for populations of their own species (or incidentally for
other species if they so chose)” (Benton, 1994:42). He thus suggests (in sharp
contrast to the work of William Catton) that this inventiveness and flexibility
“renders quite illegitimate any attempt to read off from a specification of the
bio-physical environment what its carrying capacity” might be for human pop-
ulations. The concepts of ecology in their application to the human case must
be crucially qualified “to take account of the cultural and historical variability
of human social practices of environmental regulation and transformation”
(Benton, 1994:43).
 Unnatural Social Theory? 33

None of this, however, leads to an unbounded Prometheanism. Benton,

in fact, affirms O’Connor’s (1998) view that capitalism is a contradictory,
­crisis-ridden and crisis-dependent system profoundly prone to the generation of
social and environmental crises. However, he suggests thinking carefully about
these crisis tendencies; we need to think about limits and affordances in socio-
logical, historical and ecological terms. Humans have “no instinctive mode of
life” but an “indefinitely variable range of material cultures.” Rather than talk
about natural limits and apply them to all human societies (as neo-­Malthusian
environmental sociology is prone to do), we need to think about how
“[e]ach mode of society available for anthropological study is characterized
by its own specific constellation of limits, affordances and vulnerabilities to
ecologically unintended consequences” (Benton, 1994:43). In short, Benton’s
vision of an environmental social theory suggests that such a project may in
fact involve rethinking “the human,” “the social” and “the natural” and care-
fully investigating points of commonality and points of differentiation rather
than leveling all.

Haraway: A Relational View of Nature-Cultures

Let us move on by very briefly sketching a third approach to human/nonhuman

nature/society relations that we will discuss further in Chapter 6. The writings
of Donna Haraway share with Catton, Dunlap and Benton the view that a cen-
tral task of social theory is to move beyond “the great divide” that the Western
tradition has so strongly established. Haraway argues (see Haraway, 1985,
1991, 2007, 2008) that “human exceptionalism” has been undermined by
Copernicus removing “man” from the center of the universe, by Darwin predi-
cating the evolution of Homo sapiens on the evolution of other creatures, by
Freud’s claim that unconscious impulses play a powerful and possibly greater
role in shaping human behavior than the conscious mind, and, finally (as we
shall see later), by the ways modern technological cultures blur all manner of
boundaries between nature, humanity and technology (Haraway, 1985, 1991).
Rather than assume the stability of a priori ontological distinctions between
realms of reality such as “the social” and “the natural,” the “material” and
the “human,” Haraway evokes Tarde and Whitehead (and in some respects
dialectical readings of Marx we articulated earlier) when she argues that
these distinctions are produced out of multiple material interactions between
interdependent and active discursive, cultural, social, technological and ecolog-
ical phenomena. In claiming that relations, processes and interactions precede
material entities and categories like “human,”“animal,”“technical” or “natural,”
Haraway stresses that our categories and materializations are produced by
webs of interaction (Haraway, 2007). More generally, Haraway argues that
not only are the boundaries delineated by Benton already breached but that
humans and nonhumans are in a constant state of dynamic becoming and
34 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

world making. Our nature-cultures for Haraway do not preexist their making.
They are a negotiated achievement. But these porous relationships between
humans, nonhumans and technologies are dynamic and ongoing encounters.

Negotiating Hybrid Worlds

What can be made of Haraway’s porous view of socio-natural relations? The

advantage of the broad ontological maneuver that Haraway recommends is
that we come very close now to a set of ontological premises that has fully
transcended dualism. As we shall see later on in this book, her work has
inspired a whole generation of hybrid environmental social theories that have
sought to grasp the many ways in which the social, the ecological and the tech-
nological are entangled in our contemporary worlds. We can see “the human”
as emerging out of such historical, ecological, social and technological entan-
glements and that the nature of this “human” has taken on many different
understandings at different historical points in time. Simply put then, it might
be said that Haraway wants to see us “human” as leaky and porous, rela-
tionally constituted by culture, history and many other life forms. However,
while Haraway has her insights, it is our sense that Benton’s defense of the
continued importance of the project of the social sciences, his emphasis that
it has generated specific and valuable kinds of knowledge about “the social”
and “the human” that cannot be produced by the natural sciences, and his call
that we reinterpret this knowledge in the context of a nonreductive environ-
mental social theory are also valuable observations that need to be heeded.
Recognizing hybrid entanglements is important. But the very coherence of the
idea of “environmental problems,” as Kate Soper observes, requires thinking
about points of demarcation as well. As she notes:

Unless human beings are differentiated from other organic and inorganic
forms of being, they can be made no more liable for the effects of their
occupancy of the eco-system than can any other species, and it would make
no more sense to call upon them to desist from “destroying” nature than to
call upon cats to stop killing birds. (Soper, 1995:160)

It is our sense in this book that Haraway posthumanism and Benton demar-
cation of the specificities (not exceptionality) of the ecologically embedded
(human) social subject that is necessary for social science to be possible both
have insights for dealing with these issues. Yes, we do live in worlds marked
by porous boundaries and border crossings. Yes, relations, processes and inter-
actions precede material entities, but these material entities go on to become
sticky and obdurate. Yes, we need to think carefully about human and nonhu-
man continuities. At the same time though this book will argue that the project
of the social sciences does involve thinking in carefully and considered ways
 Unnatural Social Theory? 35

about human and nonhuman differences as well. As Leslie Head and Chris
Gibson have insightfully observed, perhaps the way forward is:

to work out where and under what circumstances the human difference is
relevant, and where and under what conditions the privileging of the human
is problematic or fanciful. (Head and Gibson, 2012:9)

Without the capacity to think through human/non-human points of continu-

ity and difference, we have no social science, nor do we have any capacity to
coherently respond ethically and politically to the socio-environmental dilem-
mas of our time.

Conclusion

Let us summarize the key points of this chapter. (1) This chapter has demon-
strated that attempts to grasp our socio-ecological world have thrown up a
range of genuinely vexing issues for social theory and for the social sciences
over the last 100 years and more. Major currents of modernist thinking since
the Enlightenment have often embraced sharply dualistic visions of socio-
ecological relations. (2) We have also seen though that critics from Malthus
to the Social Darwinists to the human ecologists have often “resolved” this
problem by embracing naturalistic reductionisms that collapse “society” back
into “nature.” (3) As we have seen, from our discussions of key contemporary
thinkers, Catton, Dunlap, Benton and Haraway are all more or less in agree-
ment that a Durkheimian view of “society” as sui generis cannot be sustained.
However, as Benton warns, the dilemma that exists is that the problem of dual-
ism is too often “resolved” time and again by overcompensating approaches
that collapse back into new forms of reductionism. As such, the difficulties
faced by the social sciences are resolved by almost completely ceding all ground
once again to (selective) insights of (selective) natural sciences. (4) Finally, we
have clearly indicted there is no simple “quick fix” available for the social
sciences to resolve this issue. Rather, we have suggested that the central chal-
lenge for the socio-ecological imagination is to skillfully and carefully grasp
socio-ecological entanglements and human and non-human continuities and
differences. Let us turn now to consider how thinking about socio-ecological
relations as systematically historical might move this project forward.
 2
Hybrid Histories: Historical
Socio-Ecologies in the Age of
“the Anthropocene”

Is all of environmental history a history of crimes, the story of how human

beings have raped virgin nature? We have long known from ecology that
the idea of untouched nature is a phantom … An impartial environmental
history does not recount how humanity has violated pure nature; rather it
recounts the process of organization, self-organization and decay in hybrid
human-nature combinations.
Joachim Radkau (2008:4)

When we think about the relations between “society” and “nature,” it should
be clear to readers now that we are not simply bringing together for analy-
sis two ahistorical static boxes marked “social system” and “ecosystem.”
Rather, the challenge is to grasp diverse interrelationships that have occurred
between dynamic social histories and dynamic natural histories at multiple
spatial scales across time and space. Many classic and contemporary currents
of Western social theory have nevertheless made use of quite specific historical
narratives to inform their particular understanding of historical socio-ecologi-
cal relations. The dominant narrative of the Enlightenment – in its liberal and
Marxist versions – presents a savage and stingy nature as progressively tamed
by a modernity defined by the progressive “domination of nature.” A second
response is what the historian Martin Melosi (2010) has identified as the clas-
sic “declensionist” or romantic counternarrative of modernity. This works out
from the domination of nature narrative but mourns the unraveling of “pure
humans” and “pure nature” from some kind of original state of balance or
innocence. A third response presents human cultures as largely reactive forces
to broader biophysical, geographical or climatic conditions.

36
 Hybrid Histories 37

In this chapter, we review a broad range of recent empirical and theoretical

research on the histories of socio-ecological relations. We suggest from this there
are good reasons to believe that all three of these dominant historical narra-
tives have their insights but also come with significant drawbacks. A great deal
of historical research has drawn attention to the extent to which ecosystems,
landscapes, nonhumans and broader environmental and climatic ­conditions
have clearly played a vitally important role in human history. However, we
will also argue that a body of research emerging out of paleoanthropology
and archeology, to historical geography and historical ecology, suggests diverse
human societies have been actively involved in transforming ecosystems at
scales quite beyond anything anticipated by many traditional romantic nar-
ratives. Historical research on socio-environmental relations can point to
environmental disasters to be sure, but it can also point to many moments
where human societies have demonstrated remarkable capacities for social and
ecological resilience, successful gardening, adaptation and innovation.
How can we think about the environmental implications of the rise of
capitalism? We will suggest in this chapter that the rise of capitalism unques-
tionably marks a dramatic change in the scale of the social transformation of
ecologies, environments and, indeed, the earth’s climate. This is witnessed by
contemporary discussions of the rise of the “anthropocene,” the “global pro-
duction of nature,” the capitalocene and global climate change. However, we
will also argue that this should not cause us to lose sight of the fact that human
societies have long had dynamic socio-ecological relations in hybrid worlds.

Noble/Ignoble Savages and Postcolonial Histories

Let us begin though with the thorny issues of the kinds of historical and socio­
logical generalizations we can make about society–nature relations across
historical time. Thus far in this book, we have seen that the relationship
between “society” and “nature” has generated intense debates within Western
social theory. We must now explore the observation that we introduced in
the last chapter in our brief discussions of Marx, Whitehead, Tarde and
Haraway, notably, that the very idea that “society” or “culture” and “nature”
stand as two relatively clear and distinct domains of reality is by no means
a cultural universal. The anthropologist Philippe Descola (1996), for exam-
ple, has argued that many non-Western people have either not recognized
the very distinction between “culture” and “nature” or they have deployed
very different terminology and models to make these distinctions. Indeed,
it has been observed by postcolonial and feminist thinkers, from Edward
Said (1978) and Stuart Hall (1992) to Donna Haraway (1991), the ques-
tion of who should locate the domain of culture and who should locate the
domain of nature has never been a simple empirical question. It has always
been a deeply political question, which in particular became of p ­ rofound
38 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

i­nterest to Europeans with the rise of the West, European Imperialism and
the ­formation of modernity.
Both Said and Hall have argued that the very idea of “the West” emerges
from a process of differentiation from others (Said, 1978; Hall, 1992). The cult
of the “noble/ignoble savage” is one instance of this conversation. As European
nations such as Spain, Portugal, Britain and France entered a new period of
transoceanic exploration and conquest from the 16th century onward (the “age
of discovery” for some, which became “the age of enslavement and darkness”
for others), encounters with the diverse peoples that inhabited the Americas
generated intensive debate within Europe about the status of such people and
particularly their relationship to “culture” and “nature.”
It was widely assumed by most of the early philosophers of modernity, from
Hobbes and Locke to Rousseau, de Tocqueville and Adam Smith, that the
newly encountered peoples of the Americas could be clustered into general
categories of “primitives,” and that these people told Europeans something
about “natural man” in a pure state of nature (see Hall, 1992). Some of the key
early philosophers of modernity differed over the “essential nature” of these
people. We can identify a tradition of thinking about the “ignoble savage”
that runs from Thomas Hobbes to Edmund Burke and Charles Dickens (to
name some of its most influential proponents), who keenly emphasized the
savagery of non-European peoples, or “primitives,” and from this, deduced
that life for early humans was most probably “nasty, brutish and short,” to cite
Thomas Hobbes. In contrast, Lord Shaftesbury, Kropotkin and others sought
to emphasize the innocent, gentle and communal features of non-European
peoples as most likely living relatively generous lives in a state of primitive
communism.
Now, it is interesting to note that whether viewed as “noble” or “ignoble” it
was widely believed by some of the key theorists of modernity that “primitives”
made modest imprints on the land and circumstances only changed with the
rise of modernity. Some of the most influential traditions in 19th-century social
theory, indeed, were deeply shaped by these earlier discussions of the noble/
ignoble savage. Thinkers as varied as Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer and Emile
Durkheim believed that early humans lived in relatively similar ­“primitive soci-
eties” and that different kinds of human societies could be placed in an evo-
lutionary sequence of stages running from “primitive ­societies” to ­capitalism.
Ideas of the ignoble savage and the related idea of “primitive society” have
continued to have an extraordinary cultural salience in Western societies. They
inform all manner of contemporary narratives that run through environmen-
tal thinking from wildlife conservation to anarcho-primitivism. They are ideas
embraced by countercultural forces in the 1960s, and new age currents and
such ideas have been translated in popular culture through Hollywood films
such as Avatar. Interestingly enough, though, more and more research emerg-
ing out of anthropology and archeology would suggest that these backdrop
narratives now are deeply problematic.
 Hybrid Histories 39

The anthropologist Adam Kuper observes that the very idea that there are
singular things as “primitive societies” is now increasingly recognized as prob-
lematic. Such a conceptualization does not take into account the huge diversi-
ties that exist amidst contemporary small-scale societies, let alone diversities
that have been found between peoples of small-scale societies across history and
geography (see Kuper, 1988). The idea that we can evidence information about
the social and cultural mores of early humans from encounters in the modern
era with peoples that sustain their means of existence through hunting and
gathering and/or pastoral practices in the present has also run into a thicket of
methodological problems and disputes. Kuper observes that these assumptions
are clearly problematic at a general level for their “orientalism,” premised as
they are on dichotomy of dynamic historical Europeans versus the static other,
the West versus “the people without history” (see Wolf, 1982; Kuper, 1988).
Roy Ellen notes that treating contemporary hunter–gatherers as ­ “isolated
primitives” can obscure the growing research that suggests that many peoples
from small-scale communities have been part of wider systems of exchange,
often involved in global systems of exchange for millennia (see Ellen, 1986:9).
Such approaches have also been found faulty for failing to recognize the extent
to which isolated small-scale societies have in certain cases been survivors of
larger settled societies destroyed by epidemics (Mann, 2005) or descendants of
agricultural/pastoral peoples that have been pushed to the margins (Wilmsen,
1989). Indeed, it has been argued that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest
that many contemporary hunter–gatherer peoples have actually moved between
foraging and agricultural modes of production depending on weather patterns,
climate, opportunity structures and so on for millennia (Wilmsen, 1989).

Environmental Histories of Small-Scale, Agricultural and Feudal

Societies

If the attempt to utilize people living outside the West as examples of humans
living in a state of nature has largely fallen by the wayside, what can historical
research tell us about the history of social ecological relations? A certain mod-
esty needs to be exercised in opening up this subject, simply because historical
records are remarkably incomplete. Nevertheless, over the last two decades
archeological excavations, the reconstruction of past histories of landscape
and climate change through the analysis of peat and pollen data, the analysis
of lake sediment, ice core samples and so on have added greatly to our knowl-
edge of this subject. Perhaps the most striking inference that can be made from
the bulk of this research is that anthropogenic transformation of landscape
and the environment more generally – even at the atmospheric level – is by no
means a recent process.
For example, research on historical hunter–gatherer societies up until the
1980s tended to assume that early humans had minimal environmental impacts.
40 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

There has been a steady shift in such assumptions of late. Certainly, there are
many examples of hunter–gatherer societies living very lightly on the land, but
growing bodies of research also suggest that many historical hunter–gather
societies and small-scale societies more generally were “capable of creating
localized permanent environmental changes” (Phillips and Mighall, 2000:35).
Well-studied sites of Mesolithic hunter–gather sites around Dartmouth in the
UK suggest that use of fire, possibly as a land management strategy, played
an important role in altering woodland and vegetation (Phillips and Mighall,
2000). Stiner and Feeley-Harnik observe that while practices such as overhunt-
ing “probably only had an effect on Pleistocene ecosystems toward the end of
the period,” it is most likely the case that toward the end of the Pleistocene,
rippling extinctions “owed something to human expansion and hunting”
(Stiner and Feeley-Harnik, 2011:81). Evidence from the settling of islands that
remained isolated from humanity until 1,000 to 2,000 years ago (such as New
Zealand, Madagascar and the Hawaiian Islands) suggests that when humans
arrived, extinction of large animals and even substantial deforestation fol-
lowed (see Cassels, 1984; Olson and James, 1984; Grayson and Meltzer, 2003;
Diamond, 2005). Cassels (1984) notes that the disappearance of the Moa
occurred within a few hundred years of human beings occupying the island.
Olson and James (1984) similarly suggest that Polynesian settlers may have
been responsible for the extinction of over half of the endemic bird population.
It would seem to be much more incontrovertibly the case that agricultural
societies have generated extensive anthropogenic impacts. In considering
the early environmental history of the British Isles, Oliver Rackham argues
that Neolithic people had quite an extraordinary impact on the countryside
(Rackham, 1987:71‑73). Rackham argues that prior to the early Iron Age,
the British Isles were largely covered by deciduous woodland. However, with
the spread of Neolithic communities, almost half of England quite quickly
ceased to be wild wood. Commenting on this development, David Samways
suggests that this “probably represents the greatest single ecological change
in the British Isles since the last Ice Age” (Samways, 1996:60). Perhaps one of
the most striking examples of environmental impacts of human settlements
in the classical era has come from studies of Greenland ice core samples (see
Hong et al., 1994; Tainter, 2000). Research suggests that metalworking, and
specifically lead smelting, in the classical world “introduced so much lead
into the atmosphere that it circulated throughout the Northern hemisphere”
(see Tainter, 2000:335). It has been speculated that much of this activity was
focused on using lead to produce silver for currency. In times of crisis, the
Roman Empire was producing 2.7 million coins per day (Tainter, 2000:335).
Tainter observes that lead levels after the first century declined, but during the
first century they were “so high that they were not matched until the industrial
revolution” (Tainter, 2000:335 but additionally see Hong et al., 1994). In simi-
lar terms, Stiner and Feeley-Harnik observe that 3,000 years ago on the island
of Crete “ironworking generated environmental impacts ranging from the slag
 Hybrid Histories 41

heaps that still dot the island to airborne pollution that deposited lead in the
Greenland icecap” (Stiner and Feeley-Harnik, 2011:79).
Studies exploring the historical geography and environmental history of
classical and feudal societies also suggests that we can point to many societies
that experienced self-generated ecological problems, even where they espoused
benign ideologies of nature (see Hughes and Thirgood, 1983; Goudie, 1986;
Worster, 1988; Turner et al., 1990; Crumley, 1993; Harvey, 1996; Samways,
1996; Phillips and Mighall, 2000; Hughes, 2002). Donald Hughes and V.J.
Thirgood, for example, have argued environmental deterioration was at least
one contributing factor in the decline of Classical Greek and Roman civiliza-
tions. This was despite the fact that “their traditional religions taught them to
stand in awe of nature and interfere as little as possible in natural processes”
(Hughes and Thirgood, 1983:206). Rather than stressing ideological factors
producing this occurrence, stress is simply placed on the lack of ecological
insight of Greeks and Romans that “due to the advance of research in modern
times, we take for granted” (Hughes and Thirgood, 1983:207). Along similar
lines, Hoffman (2001), in a review of the literature on social ecological rela-
tions in medieval Europe, argues that “medieval Europeans did cause large
scale ecological change and environmental destruction, sometimes with intent,
sometimes unaware” (Hoffman, 2001:148). The list of world-systems scholars
who have made similar discoveries about ancient civilizations is long indeed
(cf. Chew, 2001, 2007; Hornborg et al., 2007; Hornborg and Crumley, 2007).

Collapse, Overshoot or Social and Ecological Resilience?

Clearly it would seem to be the case that a diverse range of human societies
have long been involved in the transformation of their environments. However,
a certain care needs to be taken in how we interpret the environmental histori-
cal record and the degree of emphasis we give these events in attempting to
understand the broad scale of human–nature relations across time. Let us take
here one very influential contemporary frame that has heavily shaped popu-
lar understandings of socio-ecological relations – Jared Diamond’s Collapse
(2005). In Collapse, Diamond provides a readable account of a range of exam-
ples of civilizational collapse running across human history, which he suggests
provides a historical record of “unintended ecological suicide” (Diamond,
2005:6). Diverse human societies, from the Norse Greenland settlements to
the Anasazi and Cahokian peoples that once lived in the boundaries of what
is now the USA, and from Rapi Nui/Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean to the
Mayan Cities in Central America, are reviewed by Diamond. He suggests that
they all provide striking examples of societies unraveling in part by environ-
mental decline often driven partly by population growth.
Diamond’s arguments, often qualified and specific, have been taken up in
much broader ways by many environmental social scientists. His arguments in
42 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

many respects are anticipated by William Catton’s Overshoot (1980), a foun-

dational text for US environmental sociology. Diamond’s historical interpre-
tations have been picked up by sociologists such as John Urry (2011), who
has suggested an environmentally sensitive “resource sociology” informed
by the possibility of climate catastrophe in contemporary times can be use-
fully informed by past discussions of social collapse. How productive it is to
generalize the imagery of “collapse” as a general metaphor for understanding
socio-ecological histories. Some reservations might be outlined here given that
a good deal of research following Diamond has sought to emphasize that the
lines of causation between environmental degradation and social problems are
possibly much more complex and much less generalizable than popular appro-
priations of collapse arguments allow.
Joseph Tainter (2000) observes that patterns of environmental degradation
do not in all cases generate sociopolitical failure in some neat line of causation.
If we consider the case of the Roman Empire, Tainter observes that it would
appear to be the case that the Western Roman Empire experienced reforesta-
tion at a time when it was going into decline (Tainter, 2000:336). He refers,
also, to the work of Richard Wilkinson (1973), who argues that deforestation
in late and early-modern England, rather than leading to collapse, may have
spurred economic and technological modes of innovation that, in part, were
responsible for the industrial revolution. As he observes:

Major increases in population, in around 1300, 1600, and the late 18th
century, led to intensification in agriculture and industry. As forests were
cut to provide land and fuel for a growing population, England’s heat-
ing, cooking, and manufacturing needs could no longer be met by burning
wood. Coal came to be increasingly important, although it was adopted
reluctantly: Coal was costlier to obtain than wood, and its sources were
limited. It required new costly distribution systems (canals and railroads).
As coal gained importance in the economy, the most accessible deposits
were depleted. Mines had to be sunk even deeper, until groundwater came
to be a problem. Ultimately the steam engine was used to pump water
from mines. With the development of a coal based economy, distribution
systems and the steam engine, several of the most important elements of
the industrial revolution were in place. Industrialism … resulted in part
from steps taken to counteract the consequences of resource depletion.
(Tainter, 2000:336)

We might say here then that there is at least some basis for inference; that in cer-
tain conditions, to repeat the old adage, necessity can be the mother of invention.
McAnany and Yoffee (2010) and their colleagues have similarly emphasized
that cases of environmental problems leading to “overshoot” and outright
“collapse” are actually fairly rare. While acknowledging the evidence that
human societies have a long history of “interacting assertively with their
 Hybrid Histories 43

environment” (McAnany and Yoffee, 2010:7), they argue that attention needs
also to be given to human and ecological resilience in the face of environmen-
tal change. For example, even if we focus on some of the worst examples of
collapse we can observe that:

• Even under conditions of deforestation, land clearances for farming and the
introduction of exotic species, Rapa Nui/Easter Island society “remained
populous and vital” before European incursions (McAnany and Yoffee,
2010:11).
• The Norse settlement of Greenland has been declared a “failure,” yet it
lasted 500 years – much longer than the United States has existed as a pol-
ity (Berglund in McAnany and Yoffee, 2010:54).
• Many peoples who experienced extreme climate conditions or hostile
neighbors (Medieval Norse settlers, Native Americans of the South West)
simply abandoned their settlements and moved. This can be viewed as
a successful long-term “strategy of coping with a harsh environment”
(McAnany and Yoffee, 2010:11). Berglund talks of a “gradual and lei-
surely depopulation” (in McAnany and Yoffee, 2010:54) of the Norse
Greenland settlements (not the panic and social unrest Diamond imagines
in Collapse).
• Additionally, Grayson and Meltzer (2003) observed that we need to take
care in generalizing too much from the experience of massive environmen-
tal disruptions that have occurred as small-island ecosystems have been
settled by humans. They argued that we need to recognize that such eco-
systems are actually atypical, as small-island vertebrates have vulnerabili-
ties that are often unique to their unique settings, and their vulnerabilities
cannot be generalized to continental settlings.

Part of the difficulty with using a very limited number of societies that have
experienced forms of socio-ecological collapse as the basis for a reading of
future environmental trends is that it can end up oversimplifying the histori-
cal record and underplaying research that has stressed the adaptive capacities
of diverse social groups to live in a range of different environments and cope
with socio-ecological change. McAnany and Yoffee, for example, draw rather
different conclusions from Diamond in their review of the same case studies.
They suggest: “the overriding human story is one of survival and regeneration.
Certainly crises existed, and landscapes were altered, but rarely did societies
collapse in an absolute and apocalyptic sense.” Interestingly enough, it has
been noted that even despite the now unchallenged history of human transfor-
mations of landscape and ecologies, “human resilience is the rule rather than
the exception” (McAnany and Yoffee, 2010:11). Research conducted over the
last few decades by archeologists and historical geographers on the American
hemisphere prior to large-scale European settlement provides some fascinating
examples of the complex issues at stake here.
44 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Understanding the Landscape of the Pre-Columbian Americas: A

Pristine World or a Worked and Populated Hybrid Landscape?

The recent work of archeologists and historical ecologists such as William

Denevan and Clark Erikson, and the work of environmental historians such as
William Cronon and Albert Crosby, has explored the state of human–nature
relations in the American hemisphere prior to the first consequential European
settlements (research that was popularized and brought to a broader audience
in the works 1491 and 1493 by the journalist Charles C. Mann). This body of
work offers further provocative challenges to how we think about historical
socio-ecological relations, and it has important implications for social theory.
The Americas that Europeans encountered from Columbus onward have long
been presented within conventional histories as largely empty, wild, untrammeled
by human impact, lightly populated, virtually untouched by human hands and
containing pristine ecologies defined by a natural “balance of nature.” Drawing
from archeological and anthropological evidence as well as more historical and
dynamic understandings of the history and functioning of ecosystems, Denevan,
Erikson, Cronon and others increasingly suggest that what Europeans encoun-
tered in both hemispheres of the Americas following Columbus was a world
that had much larger populations than has been previously acknowledged.
Moreover, these were worlds that contained not just hunter–gatherers but also
many developed and settled agricultural populations, complex urban civiliza-
tions and differential modes of social stratification with sophisticated scientific
knowledge. This was a world marked by dynamic ecologies and landscapes,
many of which had been systematically altered by peoples in intentional and in
unintentional ways for millennia (cf. Mann, 2005). In short, the Americas that
Europeans encountered, romanticized, and then went on to occupy and trans-
form was itself already in some very large part a humanized landscape.
Let’s consider here some of the rather stunning examples produced by this
research. For example:

• William Denevan has argued that by 1492, diverse American Indian socie-
ties had “modified forest extent and composition, created and expanded
grasslands, and rearranged microreliefs via countless artificial earthworks.
Agricultural fields were common as were houses and towns and roads and
trails. All these had local impacts on soil, microclimate, hydrology and
wildlife” (Denevan, 1992:370).
• Many scholars believe there was anywhere from 40 million to 100 million
people living in the pre-Columbian Americas prior to the settlement and
colonization of the Americas via the European colonial empires. Denevan
has settled for a number around 53.9 million (see Denevan, 1992:370).
• Evidence suggests that the eastern forests of North America were disturbed
to varying degrees by indigenous peoples prior to European occupation.
Fire burning as a land clearance strategy in North America has been found
 Hybrid Histories 45

as far apart as the sub-Artic to the Sonora Desert in Arizona (Denevan,

1992:372). Moreover, it is important to emphasize that it would be quite
wrong to see such activities as simple examples of environmental degrada-
tion, because “burning in North America not only maintained open forest
and small meadows but also encouraged fire tolerant and sun loving spe-
cies” (Denevan, 1992:372). In short, many of the forests that have been
constructed through American Romanticism as classic examples of
“wilderness” can be understood as shaped in part by anthropogenic activi-
ties (see additionally Botkin, 1990; Cronon, 1993).
• There are also good reasons to believe that the large savannas and grass-
lands of the New World were probably of anthropogenic rather than cli-
matic origins (Cronon, 1991, 1992; Denevan, 1992:372–373).
• Denevan has suggested that with the demise of the indigenous population,
the landscape of the Americas in 1750 was probably less humanized than
it was in 1492 (Denevan, 1992:370). In short, parts of the landscape of
the Americas experienced a temporary reversion to wilderness between the
decline of indigenous peoples to epidemics and the subsequent resettlement
by Europeans.
• Europeans came across many flourishing cities in “the New World” such
as Tenochtilán, Quito, Cuzco and numerous ruined cities such as Cahokia,
Teotihuacan, Tikal, Chan Chan and Tiwanaku. Denevan observes that
all these cities probably contained more than 50,000 people (Denevan,
1992:376). Tenochtilán, the Aztec capital, probably had a larger popula-
tion than most European cities.

Clark Erikson, William Balée and Denevan have argued additionally that
there is growing evidence to suggest large parts of the Amazon were gardened
extensively for millennia, and that the current Amazon in many regions is
partly the product of human transformations of nature. As Erikson notes:

Historical ecologists working in the Neotropics argue that the present

natural environment is a historical product of human intentionality and
ingenuity, a creation that is imposed, built, managed and maintained by
the collective multigenerational knowledge and experience of Native
Americans. In the past 12,000 years, indigenous peoples transformed the
environment, creating what we now recognize as the rich ecological mosaic
of the Neotropics. (Erikson, 2000:190; but additionally see Botkin, 1990;
Denevan, 1992; Cronon, 1995; Heckenberger and Neves, 2009)

Mobile Nonhuman Histories: Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism

Recent research clearly requires an acknowledgement of the role dynamic

humans have played in our sociohistorical relations; it is also interesting
to note how growing bodies of historical scholarship have also sought to
46 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

e­mphasize the equally active role that nonhumans and the properties of
­ecosystems have played in constituting socio-ecological histories. The work
of the environmental historian Albert Crosby, who has sought to map the
ecological as well as social consequences of what happened when Europeans
started to come in large numbers to the Americas from the 1600s onward,
is of great value here. Crosby’s historical writings in Ecological Imperialism
(1986) in particular are interesting for the ways in which his research dem-
onstrates that the social metabolism with nature did not simply transform
ecosystems in place, but this metabolism contributed to the ways in which
“nature itself” became mobile. What Crosby calls “the Columbian Exchange”
had profound implications for socio-ecological relations and, indeed, power
relations across the globe. The history of “mobile nature” of course precedes
European expansion into the new world, and of course it is not simply by any
means primarily a human-generated phenomenon. However, Crosby notes
that the history of intentional and unintentional modifications of ­ecosystems
by human societies would seem to have generated some remarkable move-
ments of species, plants, animals and so on across large distances of space
and time. Such transformations though received a jolt of global historic sig-
nificance with development of European empires in the “new world,” which
generated the most remarkable further movement of ecosystems across
the planet. If it is the case that human societies have long been involved in
dynamic and diverse transformations of natures, Crosby wants to draw
our attention to the further role that plants, animals, bacteria, viruses and
­transformations of broader ecosystems may have played in these historical,
geographical and social processes.

The Rise of “the Anthropocene”?

What kind of sociological generalizations can we make about the rela-

tions between society and nature, and modernity and the environment in
light of all this recent anthropological and historical research? We can cer-
tainly acknowledge the following. The societies situated around the North
Atlantic rim of Europe, who first experienced the scientific revolution and
the enlightenment, and were convulsed by further forces of industrializa-
tion, urbanization and capitalist social relations, are quite unusual in human
history in terms of how they conceptualized socio-ecological relations.
From the Renaissance and, certainly, from the Scientific Revolution and the
Enlightenment onward there is clearly a move in such societies to increas-
ingly separate “society” and “nature” into distinct and clearly demarcated
spheres (see Latour, 1993; Descola and Pálsson, 1996) that associate human
betterment with “the domination of nature.” We can also say with some
certainty that the emergence and subsequent spread of capitalist moder-
nity through trade, slavery and imperialism, technology and colonialism
 Hybrid Histories 47

has given rise to quantitative and qualitative transformations in the scope

and depth of human activity on the natural world (Harvey, 2000; McNeil,
2000; Moore, 2000; Ellis et al., 2010; Ellis, 2012). Simply in terms of the
scale of the material intensity of the social transformation of nature and the
environment, a range of indicators suggest that the sheer scale of the socio-
ecological transformations of the last 300 years has dramatically scaled up
with a great acceleration occurring in particular over the last 100 years (see
Figure 2.1). Consider the following evidence:

• The last 300 years has seen a tenfold increase in human population and at
least a tenfold increase in urbanization.
• The rise of capitalism has been marked by dramatic increases in energy
use; McNeill, for example, estimates that we have used up more energy in
the last 100 years than was used at any point previously in human history;
Crutzen (2002) argues that energy use has grown 16-fold during the 20th
century, causing 160 million tons of atmospheric sulphur dioxide emis-
sions per year, more than twice the sum of its natural emissions.
• In terms of land use, recent estimates by Ellis et al. (2010) suggest that
around the year 1700 roughly half the biosphere was without human set-
tlements or human land use. It is argued that over the last 300 years, over
39% of the Earth’s total ice-free surface was transformed into agricultural
land and settlement, and an additional 37% of this land was embedded
within agricultural and settled enthrones.
• Crutzen argues that more nitrogen fertilizer is applied in agriculture than
is fixed naturally in all terrestrial ecosystems. He also observes (2002) that
the methane-producing cattle population has risen to 1.4 billion, and that
fisheries remove more than 25% of the primary production in upwelling
ocean regions and 35% in the temperate continental shelf.
• The rise of modern capitalism has seen a profound increase in natural
resource extraction and the material intensity of modern societies. To view
these developments across a single year, it has been calculated that over
55  billion tons of materials flowed through the global economy and its
ecologies in 2002, with construction and metals accounting for 22.9 billion
tons, biomass 15.6 billion tons, fossil fuels 10.6 billion tons and metal ores
5.8 billion tons (OECD, 2008). Clearly, capitalist modernity is centrally
dependent on these material flows – particularly fossil fuels – for its basic
maintenance and reproduction.
• Steffen, Cruzan and McNeill have observed that levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere have gone from a preindustrial value of 270‑275 ppm
to 380 ppm since 1950, “with about half of the total rise since the pre-
industrial era occurring in just the last 30 years.”

The impact of society on the global environment has undoubtedly “grown

relentlessly” (Stiner and Feeley-Harnik, 2011:80). It is striking here how this
48 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

recognition has seen a range of different disciplines across the social and natu-
ral sciences attempt to capture these changes by a range of different metaphors,
all of which are suffused with hybrid imaginaries. Perhaps most striking, and
the concept with most public salience, has been Crutzen and Stoermer (2000)
coining the term “the anthropocene.” In a nutshell, this striking concept sug-
gests we should mark the vast biophysical transformations wrought by moder-
nity by acknowledging we are now in a new geological era. The Holocene has
come to a close and here now stands the anthropocene.

Foreign
Population Total Real GDP Direct Investment
1990 International

7 45 700

1998 US Dollars
People (billion)

Dollars (1012)

6 600
5 500

(billion)
30
4 400
3 300
2 15 200
1 100
0 0 0
50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00
17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20
Year Year Year

Fertiliser
Damming of Rivers Water use Consumption
Tonnes of Nutrients
Dams (thousand)

28 6000 350
24 300
20 250
Km3 yr–1

(million)

4000
16 200
12 150
8 2000 100
4 50
0 0 0
50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00
17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20
Year Year Year

McDonald’s
Urban Population Paper Consumption Restaurants
Number (thousands)

10 250 35
People (billion)

Tons (million)

8 200 30
25
6 150 20
4 100 15
10
2 50 5
0 0 0
50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00
17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

Year Year Year

Transport: Communication:
Arrivals: Million People

Motor Vehicles Telephones International Tourism

800 800 800
Number (million)

Number (million)

600 600 600

400 400 400
200 200 200
0 0 0
50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00

50

00
17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

17

18

18

19

19

20

Year Year Year

Figure 2.1  The Great Acceleration. Adapted from Steffen et al., Global
Change and the Earth System, 2004. Reprinted with permission.
 Hybrid Histories 49

Anthropocene, Capitalocene or the Global Production of Multiple

Socionatures?

If all societies “produce” nature at one scale or another, capitalist society

has for the first time achieved this feat on a global scale. (Smith, 1996:50)

The idea of the anthropocene would seem deeply attractive for many in the
environmental social sciences frustrated with environmentally determinist
traditions of thinking that have left active agents out of environmental his-
tory. It also has some attraction in that it would explicitly seem to mark that
the idea of hybridity is now being seriously embraced as common sense by
the hardest of the natural sciences. It is a concept which is not without critics
as well. The historical sociologist Jason W. Moore (2014a and 2014b), for
example, has insightfully suggested that while the material transformations
the anthropocene names are clearly important, we should also be wary of
how this concept can merely naturalize the historical geography of capital-
ism. Moore argues that many forms of “anthropocene” talk have already
facilitated resource-centric and technocentric historical narratives where
much goes missing. Notably, “the anthropocene” as a vision of an Earth
transformed by a “generalized humanity” can scientize and naturalize mate-
rial and ecological forces and disentangle these forces from social and politi-
cal processes. Presenting humanity as a “geological force” is an “easy story”
because:

it does not challenge the naturalized inequalities, alienation, and violence

inscribed in modernity’s strategic relations of power and production. It is
an easy story to tell because it does not ask us to think about these rela-
tions at all. The mosaic of human activity in the web of life is reduced to
an abstract humanity as homogenous acting unit. Inequality, commodifica-
tion, imperialism, patriarchy, and much more. At best, these relations are
acknowledged, but as after-the-fact supplements to the framing of the prob-
lem. This framing unfolds from an eminently commonsensical, yet I think
also profoundly misleading, narrative. (Moore, 2014a:3)

For Moore, we are in fact dealing with the capitalocene. In many respects, the
writings of the late Marxist geographer Neil Smith anticipate Moore’s think-
ing here, with Smith’s startling observation that the history of socio-ecological
relations is best grasped by the view that human societies have long been
involved in the dynamic “production” of very real material natures (Smith,
1984, 1996, 1998). This argument was first made in 1984 in Smith’s now clas-
sic text Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space.
Smith suggests that human societies, and more specifically capitalism, have
long been involved in “making” natures through labor, the technologies that
50 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

emerge from this and the broader processes of accumulation that capitalism
has unleashed. As he observes:

The transformation of received nature into history is general to all societies

but the scale, rigor and destructiveness with which nature is historicized are
an especial hallmark of capitalism. (Smith, 1998:277)

Smith’s work is interesting at a further level for suggesting that if we accept

the production of nature has been integral to all human societies, it becomes
evident that it is not particularly useful for an environmental social theory
to conceptualize these spatially varied “social natures” as ahistorical external
forces “out there” that press up against us (as neo-Malthusians and roman-
tics tend to argue) or stand as some pictorial, static, untouched landscape.
The point here is not the claim that environmental conditions can be simply
reduced to “text,” discourse or construction. Environmental conditions are
real, material and active, recalcitrant and surprising (see Smith, 1998:276).
Smith and the radical geographers that have followed him (see Castree, 1995,
2001; Harvey, 1996; Swyngedouw, 1996, 2004; Kaika, 2005; Bakker, 2010;
Head and Gibson, 2012; Loftus, 2012; Head, 2014) suggest we are not deal-
ing with a singular anthropocene or even perhaps a singular “capitalocene,”
but rather we are seeing the increasingly rapid production, or more accurately
co-production, of diverse and varied social natures produced through capital-
ist social relations, state institutions and other kinds of resistances produced
by social movements. It can be said that such social natures offer not only
affordances but also real constraints on human activities at any one moment
in time (see Bakker, 2010). These socio-natural constraints and enablements
are also historical, dynamic and persistently entangled with human societies.
As such, current landscapes and conservation areas, forests and prairies do not
just sit outside history, but they have their own shifting historical dynamics
and they are the product of past rounds of the production of nature by humans
and nonhumans alike.

Conclusion

In this chapter (1) we have attempted to engage with and scrutinize some of
the central historical discourses that inform various understandings of socio-
environmental relations, ranging from liberal triumphantism to ecological
romanticism to resurgent currents of environmental determinism. The chapter
has appraised the validity of these discourses, drawing from a broad range
of research in archeology, anthropology, historical ecology and environmental
history and suggested they all have limitations. (2) In contrast to such per-
spectives, the chapter has suggested that a more dynamic and discontinuous
view of socio-environmental relations recommends itself. Notably, we have
 Hybrid Histories 51

suggested that we certainly need to acknowledge that “nature,” nonhumans

and ecologies have long been mixed up in very real, consequential ways with
real, material social relations. But we also need to grasp the range of ways in
which diverse human societies have dynamically shaped and transformed their
socio-ecological and socio-technological relations as well as been shaped by
these forces. (3) This complex dialectical view of socio-ecological and socio-
environmental entanglements suggests that complexity and resilience as well
as disaster and collapse are all part of the story. As such, it is important to
avoid turning historical ecology into some simplistic morality tale of “Eden
and the fall” or “the progressive domination of nature.” (4) Finally, we have
seen that current debates erupting around the anthropocene at least have the
advantage of bringing the full forces of these entangled socio-ecological rela-
tions into view. The limitation, though, of many anthropocene narratives, as
Jason Moore observes, is that entanglements are acknowledged, but politics
and choice over our possible socio-ecological futures is then taken out of
the discussion.
 3
Limits/No Limits?
Neo-Malthusians, Prometheans
and Beyond

If present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution,

food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to
growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred
years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable
decline in both population and industrial capacity.
Donella Meadows et al. (1974:26)

We have in our hands now – actually in our libraries – the technology to

feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next
7 billion years.
Julian Simon (1995:26)

Much of the modern environmental debate has been defined by where one
stands on the question of limits (see Dobson, 1990). If you pick up virtually
any textbook in the environmental sciences or environmental social sciences, it
will be observed that the matter of limits is central. You will then invariably be
presented with two contrasting positions in this discussion and encouraged to
either accept or reject various limits: limits to population, limits to resources,
limits to growth, planetary boundaries and the like. In the following two chap-
ters, we seek to give an account and evaluate the classic “two-dimensional”
reading of the environmental debate.
As we shall see in this chapter, the two-dimensional debate is invariably
framed in terms of a zero-sum clash between neo-Malthusian pessimists and
free market “Prometheans” or optimists. We will suggest that while this clas-
sic two-dimensional view has its insights, it is also a framing of the discussion

52
 Limits/No Limits? 53

where much goes missing as well. This chapter will suggest that one problem
with the two-dimensional view is that it invariably skates over the fact that
the debate between limit environmentalism and Prometheans has been charac-
terized by rather more fluidity than is generally recognized. It has often gone
unacknowledged that critical figures on both sides have changed their posi-
tions in light of new circumstances. In the following chapter we will also see
that a variety of social environmentalists, critical feminists and political ecolo-
gists have long suggested that there may well be third, fourth and even fifth
dimensions to this discussion that have been systematically obscured by the
dominant two-dimensional frame.

The Rise of the Neo-Malthusians

In Chapter 1 we outlined how at the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas

Malthus provided an influential account of the nature and origins of poverty
as resting in excessive population growth. While the academic respectability
of Malthus’s initial propositions waxed and waned for much of the late 19th
and early 20th century (see Ross, 1998), the postwar period saw a remarkable
revival of neo-Malthusianism in the United States and latterly across the Global
North, particularly focused on environmental questions. A range of theoretical
and empirical studies of local, national and global environmental degrada-
tion gained popular attention (see Osborn, 1948; Vogt, 1948). Following this,
broader arguments began to circulate that the sheer scale of human population
growth alongside the growth of “industrialism” more generally was now giving
rise to environmental impacts at a planetary scale.
Perhaps the most (in)famous salvo in initial exchanges came from the popu-
lation biologist Paul Ehrlich. In The Population Bomb (1968), Ehrlich observes
that it took 10,000 years for the human population to grow from around
5  million in 8000 BC to 500 million in 1650 AD. In essence, the human popu-
lation doubled every 1,000 years. However, it is observed in The Population
Bomb that modern times have seen a remarkable reduction in doubling time, to
35 years and less. Writing when the global population had reached 3.3 billion
and would double again at the turn of the century, Ehrlich suggested that this
statistical fact required us to focus on certain critical truths. The Population
Bomb argues: (i) the expansion in human population cannot continue indefi-
nitely, (ii) we face an “inevitable” population food crisis in the chronically
overpopulated and “underdeveloped” world with “mass starvation” across the
South now inevitable (Ehrlich, 1968:3), but we can also anticipate (iii) a loom-
ing population/natural resources crisis. Ehrlich argued in 1968 that even if
the global population did not rise above 3.3 billion people, levels of demand
would deplete the global stock of lead in 1983, platinum in 1984, uranium
in 1990 and oil in 2000 (Ehrlich, 1968). Ehrlich additionally suggested that:
“In the long view the progressive deterioration of our environment may cause
54 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

more death and misery than any conceivable food-population gap.” In terms
of understanding the causal agents for such outcomes, Ehrlich was again une-
quivocal: “Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much
pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little
water, too much carbon dioxide – all can be traced easily to too many people.”
Garrett Hardin’s hugely influential article, “The Tragedy of the Commons”
(1968), published in the same year as The Population Bomb, underlined the
point. Drawing from game theory and historical analogies, Hardin claimed to
“scientifically demonstrate” certain fundamental tensions and environmental
dilemmas that can be provoked by rational people pursuing their rational self-
interest within the context of common property resources. “The Tragedy of
the Commons” focuses in particular on a dilemma emerging in the use and
misuse of common land by medieval cattle herders. In systems where there are
no defined private property rights such as common land, it is reasoned there
are natural incentives for individual farmers to pursue their own individual
self-interest by grazing as many animals on the commons as they can get away
with. The problem here, Hardin maintains, is that what is rational behavior
at an individual level becomes collectively irrational when one is dealing with
finite resources. When all farmers are following this mentality, shared limited
resources inevitably become degraded and the commons collapses. Hardin
makes a simple extension of this argument to the biosphere, noting that vast
areas of the Earth’s ecosystems can be conceptualized as the commons, and he
suggests that a powerful mix of privatization and “mutual restraint mutually
agreed upon” are the only ways to preclude ecological collapse.

The Global Environmentalism of Limits and the Problem of

Exponential Growth in a Finite System

In 1972, the Club of Rome released the first edition of The Limits to Growth
report, four years after Ehrlich’s and Hardin’s writings. The Limits to Growth
in some senses can be seen as a break from Ehrlich’s and Hardin’s Malthusian
population determinism in that it explores the environmental impacts of
“five major trends of global concern”: (i) accelerating industrialization,
(ii) rapid population growth, (iii) food production, (iv) depletion of nonrenew-
able resources and (v) a deteriorating environment – expressed as pollution
(Meadows et al., 1972:21). Using computer models developed by Jay Forrester
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the outcome of the mod-
eling exercise posits a number of bleak future scenarios. Most critically, the
report claims that all five variables are on exponential growth trajectories,
and if these trajectories continued “the limits to growth on this planet will be
reached sometime within the next hundred years. The most probable result
will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and
industrial capacity” (Meadows et al., 1972:23). The Limits to Growth argues
 Limits/No Limits? 55

that it is not simply population growth that is the problem but the manner in
which industrialism is premised on limitless economic growth in general. The
report further emphasizes that all the variables explored were interlinked and
characterized by complex feedback loops. The ecological complexities of social
and ecological systems thus ensured that resolution of problems with one vari-
able alone would not be adequate for resolving the broad issue of growth
limitations. Such an outcome though was not seen as inevitable. The Limits
to Growth certainly argues that “it is possible to alter these growth trends”
(Meadows et al., 1972:24) and a sustainable state could be envisaged, but this
would require a great transition beyond growth.
It is worth emphasizing that the primary issue that emerges as the central
concern for neo-Malthusian thinkers such as Ehrlich and Hardin as well as
the Limits to Growth tradition of environmentalism is the exponential nature
of all the trends under observation. Why so? If a trend follows a pattern of
exponential growth, it is experiencing a geometric or doubling growth rate
of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. as opposed to following a linear growth rate of
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Part of the basic concern that neo-Malthusians and global
limits environmentalists have continually stressed is that linear growth rates
generate forms of environmental change that can be problematic but at least
can also be predicted and anticipated. A central problem that emerges with
environmentally impactful activities that follow exponential growth rates is
these growth trajectories, by definition, are characterized by repeated dou-
blings. As such, environmental problems – already deeply complex and not
easy to understand – can quickly get radically worse. Thus, it is reasoned if
the central lesson that can be drawn from the science of ecology is that the
Earth is a finite system, then it can be demonstrated that societies premised on
the need for exponential growth in a finite system will inevitably lead us all to
“overshoot” and then collapse.
To illustrate the kinds of problems posed by exponential growth rates, let us
consider the vivid metaphor of The Twenty Ninth Day, as developed by Lester
Brown (1978). Brown asks us to imagine a pond that has lily pads on it that
double in size every day. If on the 30th day the pond is completely covered with
lily pads, he asks on what day does the lily pad cover half the pond? Intuitively,
it might be reasoned that the answer is after 15 days. However, this is incorrect.
The answer is in fact on the 29th day. The observation that Brown is making
is that exponential growth in human population, pollution and resource usage
can all appear to be containable issues on the 28th day, when it appears that we
have plenty of time to deal with the problem. Yet, in contexts of exponential
growth, change for the worse, dramatic shifts or “tipping points,” can occur
very rapidly.
Brown’s writings have gone on to argue that overpopulation alongside
industrialism more generally has been a key force driving growing food scar-
city and agricultural decline. More recent work has suggested that desertifi-
cation, climate change and ocean acidification are all conditions that come
56 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

together with overpopulation and are going to lead to food shortages and
long-term environmental decline over the next decades.
There is no doubt that the work of Hardin and Ehrlich and the Club of
Rome’s publications quickly achieved an extraordinary public saliency in the
Global North. The broad public reception for these interventions was prepared
by the seminal earlier work of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). These
foundational texts marked the beginning of a torrent of further publications
that either affirmed the harder neo-Malthusian views of Ehrlich and Hardin –
such as The Blueprint for Survival (1972); William Ophuls’ Ecology and the
Politics of Scarcity (1975); William Catton’s Overshoot (1980) – or supported
the more multi-dimensional analyses of Carson and the Limits to Growth
report – notably, The Global 2000 Report to the President, the publications
of the Worldwatch Institute and the numerous sequels to the first Limits to
Growth report (See Meadows et al., 1991; von Weizsäcker et al., 1998).
If Malthus and The Limits to Growth can be seen as marking the first and
second phases of the limits discussion, Tim Jackson has suggested that the rise
of concerns over climate change and “peak oil” can be viewed as marking a
“third phase” in the debate (Jackson, 2009:6). Contemporary limits-orientated
environmentalists acknowledge to greater or lesser degrees limitations in the
predictive elements of earlier studies (as we will see later). From Ehrlich to
the Club of Rome, such currents have nevertheless continued to argue that
a dispassionate appraisal of the science underpinning our understandings
of global environmental change affirms that almost all the most significant
global environmental indicators are heading in the wrong direction, and that
these trends can be causally explained by human population growth, related
forms of consumption and industrialism more generally. As such, whatever
problems one might identify in certain predictions made in the literature, it is
­variously noted:

• UN projections (2006) suggest that human population growth will con-

tinue its dramatic upward trajectory. It is now estimated that the global
population will be between 7.8 and 10.8 billion by 2050, with a median
figure of 9.2 billion people. As has now been widely observed, if such pro-
jections prove correct, we will have effectively added two Chinas to the
world’s population in 40 years. More recent population projection by the
UN (2011) again revise all the numbers upward.
• Beyond the environmental problems generated by the Global North, it
is argued by limits-orientated environmentalists that we are now addi-
tionally facing historically unprecedented further environmental impacts
produced by the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the Global
South. Specifically, the rise of the BRICs countries (Brazil, Russia,
India and China) and the NICs (the newly industrialized countries),
with ongoing material pressures exerted by the affluent world, is gen-
erating historically unprecedented demands for resource consumption.
 Limits/No Limits? 57

Worldwide, the OECD reports that use “of virtually every significant
material” is ­growing (OECD, 2008). Natural resource and energy use
are presently at historically unprecedented levels, as is the production of
greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2013).
• Most of the central resources fueling the globalization of urbanism and
industrialism are finite, premised on fossil fuel production and usage. It
is argued that there are good geological reasons to believe that critically
important materials such as oil are close to peak production levels that will
soon rather dramatically fall off (Jackson, 2009).
• While Green Revolution agricultural technologies have dramatically raised
yields and increased food supply (corn production, for example, in the US
grew 346% per acre from 1910 to 1983), the energy used to achieve these
gains grew at 810% during the same period (Zehner, 2012:70). As such,
we have every reason to believe that petrochemical-based fertilizers will be
impacted by resource constraints in fossil fuels as well as rising expense. It
is argued that nitrogen-rich fertilizers have created numerous side effects
such as oxygen-depleted dead zones across the globe (Zehner, 2012:70).
• Lester R. Brown has further argued in Plan B that global warming is going
to reduce crop yields of many staple foods. More generally, he argues the
world is seriously overpumping its fresh water aquifers to inefficiently
grow grains and supply cities, which he anticipates will lead to water scar-
city and dry river beds, will reduce staple crop harvests, and will increase
prices, hunger and possibly wars. These conditions are exacerbated by loss
of topsoil from wind and water erosion, advancing deserts and farmland
being paved over for road, residency and urban development. Furthermore,
topsoil loss, water scarcity and declining crop yields are expected to be
made worse by rising temperatures, rising seas, melting ice caps and more
extreme weather events. Brown suggests that moving agriculture north-
ward to cooler temperatures will fail because soils are of generally lower
quality for agriculture and all the water issues associated with climate
change will immediately impinge on those regions.
• Future projections for the growth of the global economy suggest we will
continue to see an expansion of its size that has no historical precedent.
Tim Jackson has observed that if global economic expansion follows
20th-century patterns, the world economy will be 80 times bigger in 2100
than it was in 1950. As he notes, “This ramping up of global economic
activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific
knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we
depend for survival” (Jackson, 2009:13).

If we focus on the general matter of the impact of human societies on the

planet, limits-orientated environmentalists are certainly correct to highlight
the extent to which virtually all indicators over the last century or more con-
firm that the scale of anthropogenic impacts on the planet has dramatically
58 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

increased. As our discussions in the last chapter confirm, few informed com-
mentators would now dispute the empirical observation that we live in human-
dominated ecosystems to a historically unprecedented degree. However, the
social, economic and cultural drivers of these impacts and the extent to which
we should view these material changes as problems have been subject to exten-
sive debate for nearly four decades. The direction of these trends, and the extent
to which these material changes can be viewed as unsustainable or subject to
a future natural limit, has generated further extensive debate between environ-
mentalists and their critics. Indeed, even within environmentalist circles, as we
shall see, the fact of global environmental change has nevertheless prompted
extended and often-contentious discussions regarding the people for whom
these changes create problems, and who should count as objects of concern.
Let’s turn here then to some challenges that have been posed to the arguments
of the classic limits-orientated environmentalisms.

Epistemological Skepticism of Global Modeling

In Chapter 1 we illustrated how Malthus provoked a full range of liberal,

socialist, conservative and empirical critics across the 19th and early-20th
­century. It should be of little surprise then that critics of neo-Malthusian argu-
ments and different forms of “limits” environmentalism have been equally
numerous and come from many different intellectual traditions. It was the
socialist ecologist Barry Commoner (whose thinking we will review in the next
chapter) who observed, as far back as 1971, that “extensions from past data
to future trends – the process of extrapolation – has many pitfalls. The most
serious difficulty is that any such numerical extension necessarily assumes that
future processes will be governed by the same mechanisms that have controlled
past events” (Commoner, 1971:218). This is a theme taken up by numerous
critics of The Limits to Growth that focused on the epistemological limita-
tions of using computer modeling to understand the interplay between social
and natural systems at a planetary level. Critics of the first Limits to Growth
report argued that the models did not adequately take into account feedback
processes and the effects of human decision-making on resource scarcity and
population concerns (Cole et al., 1973). In particular, it was argued that the
strategy of projecting exponential growth rates into the future while keeping
rates of technological innovation fixed offers very limited insight into future
possibilities. Norman Macrae of The Economist, for example, observes that
if we projected trends of the 1880s across a further four decades, it would
show cities buried under horse manure by the mid-1920s! (cited in Sandbach,
1978:499).
Concerns about the limits to global modeling and forecasting socio-­
environmental futures have continued to inform politically diverse types
of ongoing epistemological critiques of global environmental science.
 Limits/No Limits? 59

Contemporary attempts to model global climate futures, such as the General

Circulation Models (GCMs) used in climate change are, of course, infinitely
more sophisticated and complex that anything attempted by The Limits to
Growth report. Nevertheless, the range of uncertainty that exists in such exer-
cises in global modeling has continued to attract their epistemological critics.
From the Left, ecologists such as Peter J. Taylor, Yrjo Haila and geographers
such as Mike Hulme and David Demeritt (see Taylor and Buttel, 1992; Haila
and Taylor, 1998; Demeritt, 2005; Hulme 2009) have suggested that exercises
in “planetary science” which are premised on aggregating up, modeling and
extrapolating local understandings of environmental change to the global level
can, in doing so, present quite undifferentiated accounts of global environmen-
tal change that end up viewing ecosystems as more unified and uniform than
they are. The concern that has been raised here is that such work can decon-
textualize quite specific forces driving environmental degradation at the local
level. We will see in forthcoming chapters that the subdiscipline of political
ecology has in part emerged out of the claim that global Malthusian narratives
provide a poor guide for capturing who is driving ecological degradation at
the local and regional levels. Political ecologists have persistently argued that
neo-Malthusian-inspired global environmental science can flatten interpretive
disputes occurring at the local level over what constitutes ecological segrega-
tion (see Leach and Mearns, 1996; Forsyth, 2003; Robbins, 2008).
There is the additional concern here that exercises in mass modeling plan-
etary dynamics tend toward technocratic perspectives which give rise in
turn to managerial solutions (see Luke, 2000). If left-leaning epistemological
skepticism of global environmental science is mostly informed by social
constructionist impulses, it is interesting to note how market liberals and
conservatives have turned to figures like F.A. Hayek to make rather different
epistemological critiques.
Hayek’s critique of socialism is premised on the notion that the attempt to
replace market mechanisms with central planning will always fail. This is so
because, Hayek argues, central planners have no access to the full range of
subtle information that market prices convey (“price signals”). They will as
a consequence increasingly act in arbitrary ways and therein lies the “road
to serfdom” (Hayek, 1944). Similar forms of Hayekian-informed skepticism
have also been applied to all manner of global environmental issues: from
climate change to biodiversity studies forecasting that is premised on mod-
eling. Thus, Robinson (2008:47) argues: “On a Hayekian view, the apocalyptic
forecaster/planner who believes he or she can see a long way into the future
and has the answer to the world’s problems, substituting for and surpassing
the problem-solving capabilities of markets, has been misled into the ‘pretense
of knowledge’, if not into a ‘fatal conceit’”. Whether the epistemological cri-
tique of modeling comes from the Left or the Right, all global environmental
­discussions face questions over the politics of prediction and the nature of
future knowledge.
60 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

The Free Market Promethean Cornucopian Response

The Promethean or cornucopian response to neo-Malthusianism has sought

over the last three decades to challenge and refute the basic propositions of
Malthusian thinking and “limits environmentalism” more broadly in a num-
ber of ways. Such currents can certainly draw from the Hayekian version of
the epistemological critique of The Limits to Growth. However, in contrast
to the ecological focus on “finitude” and “limits,” Prometheans and cornu-
copian thinkers have sought to emphasize the central role that free markets,
“market led innovation” and technological innovations more generally can
play in transcending natural limits. Prometheus, after all, was the legendary
figure in Greek mythology who sought to steal fire from the Gods, and the
Horn of Cornucopia is the horn of Greek legend that provided an endless sup-
ply of goods to its bearer. Let us consider here the work of the patron saint of
Promethean thinking – Julian Simon.
In The Ultimate Resource (1981), Julian Simon rejects out of hand the idea
of a population problem or a natural resource squeeze. On population, Simon
argues that “more people” can generate more problems, yet “there will also
be more people to solve these problems” (Simon, 1981:345). On the resources
question, Simon similarly maintains that the relevant measure of scarcity is
not any physical measure of its calculated reserves but “the cost or price of a
resource” (Simon, 1981:346). It is argued in The Ultimate Resource that since
the prices of all goods have fallen in the long run, by all measures it is clearly
the case that price data tells us resources have become less scarce up to the pre-
sent, not more. Physical elements become resources through being combined
with human knowledge, and it is reasoned that as our knowledge grows we
understand how to better use these resources and find new, better ones. As a
result, he argues, “there is no meaningful physical limit – even the commonly
mentioned weight of the Earth – to our capacity to keep growing forever”
(Simon, 1981:346). The Ultimate Resource suggests that across virtually all
indicators we can see improvements compared to earlier centuries. On food,
it is noted that famine had progressively diminished over the last century and
per capita food growth and access to agricultural land has been expanding. On
pollution and environmental problems more generally, he asserts, “we live in a
less dirty and more healthy environment” and that this is clearly demonstrated
given that life expectancy (probably the best measure of pollution) is increas-
ing. Indeed, even on energy he declares, “Finiteness is no problem here either.
And the long run impact of additional people is likely to speed the develop-
ment of a cheap energy supply that is almost inexhaustible” (Simon, 1981:6).
A core theme pursued in The Ultimate Resource is that neo-Malthusian
analysis persistently underestimates the roles that scientific and technologi-
cal innovation plays in further expanding the realm of known resources, and
the manner in which price increases in one resource can make new, or pre-
viously uncompetitive, resources worthy of development and exploitation.
 Limits/No Limits? 61

For ­example, English society in the 16th century was significantly dependent

on wood for energy, which ultimately led to massive deforestation. However,
the end result was not social collapse but, rather, as wood became more expen-
sive and difficult to obtain, coal was increasingly substituted until it became
the primary energy source. Rather than being static objects, Simons argues that
resources expand to meet demand. Resources, in short, are infinitely substitut-
able. It is further argued that the very idea that growing numbers of people
are themselves a “problem” is nothing more than an antihumanist prejudice.
“People,” Simon argues, are problem-solvers and the greater the density of
people, the greater the capacity for problem-solving, adaptation and techno-
logical innovation to transcend what neo-Malthusians call “natural limits.”
Human ingenuity, for Simon, is the ultimate resource.
Many of Simon’s positions have been restated and updated by Bjorn Lomborg
in The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001, which we will discuss later) and Matt
Ridley in The Rational Optimist (2010). The central claim that Ridley makes
is that if we look at a range of contemporary indicators, most obviously for
life expectancy, income, child mortality, disease, etc. contra “the pessimists” –
all talk of ecological crisis aside – we can see that life is getting better and at an
accelerating rate. The average citizen of the affluent world is living a life that
is in quantitative and qualitative measures profoundly more expansive than
even the most indulged and wealthiest lives lived in past centuries. Moreover,
rapid catch-up is accruing most obviously in Asia but also in Africa. Ridley
argues that looming problems on the horizon from biodiversity loss to climate
change are mostly exaggerated or issues that are best dealt with through the
flourishing of more economic growth, more free market capitalism and hence
more prosperity. Ridley couches such contemporary reflections in a broader
historical-cum-social theoretical argument that searches for a kind of master
key to history in exchange. He argues that exchange of goods and ideas has
played a central role in social development. Forms of exchange facilitated spe-
cialization, an increasingly advanced division of labor that in turn provided a
motor for prosperity. As communities, localities and regions start to specialize
in what they do best and trade with others for what they cannot do, you start
to see, in the fashion of Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage, further
social and cultural development. Societies that have been open to such mixings
have seen prosperity rise. Societies that have either had long periods of social
isolation and/or self-sufficiency have not seen such rises in prosperity, and even
in some cases (e.g., Tasmania) have seen a catastrophic loss of social learning.

The Bet

Julian Simon was so confident of his cornucopian predictions of natural

resource abundance that he entered into a bet with Paul Ehrlich in 1980.
Based on the assumption that if resources were becoming scarcer, their prices
62 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

should rise, Simon challenged Ehrlich to select a range of resources to bet on

whether their market prices would go up or down over a decade. Ehrlich and
his colleagues selected five metals – chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten –
with a view to review the price of such items in ten years. Simon bet that prices
would go down (demonstrating his belief that technological innovation would
expand resources). Ehrlich bet otherwise. During the decade that followed,
human population went up by 800 million – its largest increase in history –
and yet as Simon predicted, commodity prices went down. Ehrlich conceded
defeat and mailed Simon a check for $576.07. Ehrlich nevertheless defended
his position by suggesting that while he may have been wrong in relation to
resources, the declining state of broader ecological indicators suggested that
Simon is “like the guy who jumps off the Empire State Building and says how
great things are going so far as he passes the 10th floor” (see Tierney, 1990).
Commodity prices are of course subject to constant flux, and recent market
pressures on commodities as a result of vast new resource demands being
made by India and China in particular have transformed conditions again.
Rising commodity prices led The Economist magazine to observe in October
2011 that “If Messrs Simon and Ehrlich had ended their bet today, instead of
in 1990, Mr Ehrlich would have won.” Committed cornucopians have never-
theless countered by suggesting that such price rises once again may merely be
a “blip,” and that for every moment of limits declared by neo-Malthusians, we
seem to come across new resources. For example, vast new reserves of oil have
been discovered off the coast of Brazil, in Canadian oil shale, off the coast
of China (China discovered over 1 billion tons of crude oil in 2013 alone)
and in Pennsylvania, USA. Cornucopians have additionally suggested that the
retreating ice sheets in Greenland, Canada and Russia potentially open up new
opportunities for the recovery of new resources. Such new “opportunities”
may well come with mixed blessings though. Even if we set aside the multi-
ple problems that can be anticipated through global climate change, from tar
sands to deep ocean drilling, we are now locking ourselves into extracting
energy resources from some of the most unstable, dirty and expensive sources
on the planet.

A Zero-Sum Debate or Shifting Positions in the Light of Changing

Circumstances?
Revisions and Reversals in the Environmentalism of Limits
Debates between neo-Malthusians, limits-orientated environmentalists and
Prometheans/cornucopians around “limits,” growth and sustainability are
clearly ongoing, as we will see throughout the rest of this book. A superfi-
cial reading of the literature that merely engages with the polemical end of
this discussion could certainly conclude that discussion remains remark-
ably polarized. It is true that Malthusian catastrophism continues to make
 Limits/No Limits? 63

regular ­reappearances in the environmental debate, as does high Promethean

­complacency. However, it is interesting how an attentive reading of the litera-
ture also reveals that the question of limits has been dealt with more carefully
at times by critical voices in the debate and indeed key players and critical
­currents have actually shifted positions.
To take one example, probably the most influential framing of the environ-
mental question was produced by the United Nations, which in effect launched
the idea of “sustainable development.” “Our Common Future,” otherwise
known as the Brundtland Report (1987), produced by the World Commission
on Environment and Development, took a view on the matter of limits that is
rather different to Ehrlich or Simon. As it is noted in the report:

The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute

limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social
organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere
to absorb the effects of human activities. But technology and social organi-
zation can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of
economic growth. (WCED, 1987:8)

It is also worth noting that the later writings of Paul and Anne Ehrlich con-
ceded a rather large amount of ground to their critics. For example, Ehrlich
and Ehrlich in Betrayal of Science and Reason (1996) acknowledge that their
more apocalyptic projections of demographic catastrophe made in the late
1960s and early 1970s were overstated:

Since people in both industrialized and middle income nations are almost all
better fed and paying less in relation to incomes for food than they were in
1968, our projects were inaccurate. (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1996:34)

The neo-Malthusian assertion that human population growth is the central

driver of environmental problems is now almost universally acknowledged
as simplistic and incorrect. Most contemporary limits-orientated environ-
mentalists stress multiple factors driving environmental problems. The work
of Nobel Prize – winning political scientist Elinor Ostrom would similarly
seem to suggest that the outcomes predicted by Garrett Hardin’s “The
Tragedy of the Commons” is not borne out by empirical research. Ostrom’s
research suggests that many societies are well able to develop collective and
diverse institutional arrangements from the bottom up to facilitate stable
resource management of common property resources such as water, irriga-
tion systems, land for grazing and so on. It is notable that many thinkers
emerging out of the Limits to Growth tradition have additionally acknowl-
edged (with the notable exception of fossil fuel and oil) that the resource
scarcities fears of the 1970s were probably overstated. On the Limits to
Growth study, the Ehrlichs note “this study may have under-rated (and we
64 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

once did) the amount of technological innovation and substitution that can
be called forth in the short term by prices driven up by scarcity” (Ehrlich and
Ehrlich, 1996:95). If we turn to later publications of the Club of Rome, such
as Factor Four, a report made to the Club of Rome in 1998, this is explicitly
acknowledged:

Resource specialists were able to show that mineral resources, including gas
and oil, were far more abundant than the Limits authors were assuming.
Indeed, The Limits to Growth was based on a deliberately simple model,
and the results were also very simple. Some of the input data proved wrong.
And technology can indeed do wonderful things….And many analysts
say that it’s not so much scarce resources but the absorbency capacities of
the Earth for all the pollution and waste that is limiting further growth of
resource consumption. (von Weizsäcker et al., 1998:257–258)

However, the acknowledgement of the gains of technological innovation is

still qualified. As Hawken et al. observe with regard to the “price” of metals
(1999:3):

While technology keeps ahead of depletion, providing what appear to be

ever-cheaper metals, they only appear cheap, because the stripped rainfor-
est and the mountain of toxic tailings spilling into rivers, the impoverished
villages and eroded indigenous cultures – all the consequences they leave in
their wake – are not factored into the cost of production.

Indeed, Beyond the Limits, the 1992 “sequel” to the original Limits to Growth
report, repositions the original discussion. For example, it runs a variety of
reworked computer simulations to project future possibilities that are rather
more generous in their views of potential outcomes than the original Limits
report. It is argued in a decidedly cornucopian fashion that if pollution control,
land erosion and resource-use technologies were adopted across the board, a
sustainable planet could be achieved that could support 7.7 billion people at a
Western European standard of living. On the matter of growth, there are some
striking revisions to the argument. Beyond the Limits cites Aurelio Peccei,
founder of the Club of Rome, approvingly when he states:

All those who helped to shatter the myth of growth … were ridiculed and
figuratively hung, drawn and quartered by the loyal defenders of the sacred
cow of growth. Some of those … accuse the [Limits to Growth] report … of
advocating ZERO growth. Clearly some people have not understood any-
thing, either about the Club of Rome, or about growth. The notion of zero
growth is so primitive – as, for that matter, is that of infinite growth – and
so imprecise, that it is conceptually nonsense to talk of it in a living dynamic
society. (cited in Meadows et al., 1991:210)
 Limits/No Limits? 65

As Donella Meadows and colleagues follow up:

A sustainable society would be interested in qualitative development, not

physical expansion. It would use material growth as a considered tool, not
as a perpetual mandate. It would be neither for nor against growth, rather
it would begin to discriminate kinds of growth and purposes for growth.
Before this society would decide on any specific growth proposal, it would
ask what the growth is for and who would benefit, and what it would cost
and how long it would last, and whether it could be accommodated by the
sources and sinks of the planet. A sustainable society would apply its values
and its best knowledge of the Earth’s limits to choose only those kinds of
growth that would actually serve social goals and enhance sustainability.
And when any physical growth had accomplished its purposes, it would be
brought to a stop. (Meadows et al., 1991:210)

A similar, more qualified view of the critique of growth can be found in the
thinking of Jonathan Porritt. For much of the 1970s and 1980s, Porritt’s work
largely affirmed the earlier antigrowth views of the Limits to Growth report.
However, by 2007 he had concluded, “Today’s critique of growth is no zero
growth or anti-growth diatribe. Economic growth can be great and billions
of people all around the world still need a lot more of it. But what kind of
growth, for whom?” (Porritt, 2007:54) Responding to Malthus, Porritt argues
in Capitalism – As if the World Matters, “people have always tended to under-
estimate both the resilience of biophysical systems in accommodating the
expansion of the human species and the sheer genius of the human species in
finding new resources and in increasing the efficiency of resource use through
market forces” (Porritt, 2007:56).
Perhaps the most striking transformation that has occurred within the
“limits­” traditions of environmentalism since the 1970s (represented by the
reports to the Club of Rome and the reports to the Worldwatch Institute) has
been the dramatic embrace of ecotechnological innovation and, indeed, mar-
ket mechanisms as means to sustainability (see von Weizsäcker et al., 1998;
Hawken et al., 1999; McDonough and Braungart, 2002, 2013; Porritt, 2007).

Revisions and Reversals from the Promethean/Cornucopian Worldview

Promethean/cornucopian literatures have continued to be bullishly confident
that general improvements in human well-being – measured in terms of life
expectancy, etc. – have all continued their upward curves. In terms of “peak
oil” concerns, Prometheans have continued to emphasize the importance of
new discoveries (such as large new oil fields discovered off the coast of Africa,
Brazil, and China, as well as oil shale in Canada). Nevertheless, in terms of
broader global ecological concerns, the simple and overwhelming body of sci-
entific evidence documenting anthropogenic climate change, mass biodiversity
66 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

loss, profound air and water pollution problems has unsettled many who have
previously argued, following Julian Simon, that all resources are infinitely sub-
stitutable. Indeed, the idea that certain transformations of natural capital (to
use the terms of ecological economics) are perhaps best seen as irreversible and
possibly non-substitutable has become much more common (e.g., loss of bio-
diversity, climate change). Thus, prominent contemporary Prometheans such
as Ron Bailey have observed: “Details like sea level rise will continue to be
debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is con-
tributing to global warming wasn’t over before, it is now. The question of what
to do about it will be front and center in policy debates for the next couple of
decades. How strongly humanity may want to mitigate future climate change
and at what cost depends on how likely the worst-case projections turn out to
be. … as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is
no longer looking very tenable” (Bailey, 2007).
Lomborg’s much heralded text The Skeptical Environmentalist is probably
the most influential contrarian text since Simon’s The Ultimate Resource. While
the sales pitch surrounding this text claimed that it demonstrated things are
getting “better and better,” in many respects, far from bolstering the views of
extreme contrarians, in its more sober moments The Skeptical Environmentalist
actually marked a significant repositioning and moderating of the contrarian
case. For example, even if we take Lomborg’s empirical data on its own terms,
it actually demonstrates that we presently have some extremely worrying prob-
lems and are storing up real trouble for the future. Thus, on climate change,
Lomborg accepts the reality of man-made global warming (2001:259) and
believes the dramatic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a seri-
ous problem. While contesting the scale of deforestation and biodiversity loss
claimed by some environmental NGOs, Lomborg’s own conservative revisions
still concede that tropical deforestation (home to the largest mass of plants and
animals on the planet) is running at 0.5% per year (Lomborg, 2001:159) and
biodiversity loss is running at a rate “about 1,500 times higher than the natural
background extinction” (2001:235). Air pollution through small particles is
estimated to kill over three times the number of people killed in road accidents
in the US. Lomborg notes that Beijing, New Delhi and Mexico City all have
estimated particle pollution levels eight times that of the US. In terms of topsoil
loss, Lomborg estimates that the US lost 12 tons per hectare in 1974 (p. 105).
He agrees with UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) figures that
argue over 17% of land is degraded to some extent, and, regarding overfishing,
it is conceded that a third of fish species are taken from stocks showing decline
(p. 107).
If we turn to the question of long-term solutions to such problems, Lomborg
largely agrees with arguments that certain environmentalists have been mak-
ing for the last four decades. The potential for ecotechnologies and renew-
able energy is recognized to be possibly enormous, and over the long term,
a transition from fossil fuels to a solar/hydrogen economy is necessary and
 Limits/No Limits? 67

desirable. More recently, ebullient “Rational Optimists” such as Matt Ridley

state that levels of species extinction may well be overstated but are still
“terrible” (Ridley, 2010:293) and that on balance “the human race probably
did itself and its environment a favor by banning chlorofluorocarbons” (Ridley,
2010:296). Of course, Ridley maintains – following Simon – that whatever
problems we do have are unlikely to be as bad as the “environmental doomsay-
ers” proclaim and will be dealt with in any case through deregulation, competi-
tion, economic growth and the further spread of free markets, innovation and
entrepreneurs. In short, it is still maintained one way or the other by modern-
day Prometheans and contrarians that free market capitalism unleashed and
unregulated will save us.

“Big State” Promethean Politics – Defending the Future or Protecting

the Past?

In the next chapter we will go on to explore a critique of Malthusian thinking

that comes from rather different angles than Promethean currents. Let us return
now to explore some final tensions that linger in the outcomes of Promethean
thinking. In this chapter we have seen that a great deal of Promethean discourse
is essentially underpinned by market libertarian assumptions. Promethean
thinkers such as Simon, Lomborg and Ridley view free market economies as
optimal, and they rule out of court the proposition that capitalism may have
systemic macro tendencies to generate chronic environmental degradation (on
this see the next two chapters). We have also seen in this chapter that where
environmental problems are acknowledged, Prometheans see technological
innovation driven by ingenious free-standing “individuals,” “markets,” “entre-
preneurs” and “corporations” as the forces that will resolve these problems.
From this, it is believed the less regulation, the better. Let us explore here five
issues that may generate some tensions for classic Promethean arguments.
First, we have seen in our survey of Promethean thinking that one of the
central ways in which Prometheans have countered limits-orientated environ-
mentalists is to proclaim the possibilities of infinite substitutability through
innovation and ingenuity. Ingenuity is about individuals and, moreover, it is
argued by Simon, the state should get out of the way of the innovation process.
Now, it is interesting to compare these arguments with the work of sociologists
and economists who, influenced by thinkers such as John Maynard Keynes,
Schumpeter and Karl Polayni, have studied innovation processes in the US,
China, Japan and Western Europe. Economic sociologists such as Block and
Keller (2011) and Mazzucato (2011) have argued in striking contrast to Simon
and Ridley that the social and institutional contexts that have facilitated the
most important innovation regimes in the 20th century have rarely resembled
market libertarian narratives. These researchers suggest that contemporary
fields of innovation – from information technology and bio-medical research to
68 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

sustainable technological innovation – have all been “prime pumped,” under-

pinned and enabled by vast “big” state spending. Innovation in all these fields
has occurred thanks to decades of public funding for “blue skies” research and
development in public universities, the interventions of government agencies
such as DARPA, ARPA-e and the National Institute of Health in the US, MITI
in Japan and state development banks in China and Brazil (to take some of the
best known examples). Following this, it is argued by such thinkers that facing
up to new challenges such as climate change will require similar modes of large
scale state-driven innovation policy. Markets on their own will not deliver.
A second, rather more radical, critique of Promethean arguments can be
drawn from critical design theorists such as Cameron Tonkinwise (2011a,
2011b, 2014), environmental sociologists such as David Hess (2012, 2014),
and critical thinkers such as Hilary Wainwright (1994). All these thinkers have
suggested that a narrow focus on market- and state-led innovation can obscure
the important role that diverse actors beyond the market have played in trans-
forming society. For example, at the most minimal level, environmental social
movements – such as protests against pollution or certain energy sources –
have frequently played a critically important role in demanding regulations to
protect against market failure (see in addition Broadbent, 1998; Broadbent and
Brockman, 2011) or even facilitating new waves of innovation (see variously:
von Weizsäcker et al., 1998; Hawken et al., 1999; McDonough and Braungart,
2002, 2013, Hess, 2012; 2014). Green Chemistry, industrial ecology, plug-in
hybrids and other vehicle technologies, contemporary forms of wind, wave and
solar energy systems, intercropping, adaptive reuse, urban ecological retrofit-
ting and all the other environmental innovations that have emerged out of the
academy in the last three decades have in part been spurred by environmental
protests and environmental campaigns.
Third, it is interesting to note how a great deal of Promethean discourse is
discursively framed around a defense of human ingenuity, choice and innova-
tion in the face of Malthusian pessimism (see Furedi, 1997; Heartfield, 2008;
Ridley, 2010); a great deal of the political practice of Promethean politics
could reasonably be interpreted as attempting to derail new modes of social
and environmental innovation. For example, Promethean discourse located
within free market think tanks across the affluent world have been very active
over the last three decades in blocking, at every turn, legislative attempts to
develop post–fossil fuel energy technologies, energy efficiency programs, fuel
efficiency standards, green industrial revolution technologies, public transpor-
tation, urban strategies to facilitate smart growth and densification of urban
neighborhoods. Indeed, even beyond this, Promethean arguments are increas-
ingly deployed in countries such as the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere
to unravel public funding of scientific research (on climate or other issues) or
even undercut adaptive strategies to build resilience against climate change. It
has done this while simultaneously demanding continued publicly funded sub-
sidies to maintain fossil fuel companies, old carbon-intensive energy consortia
 Limits/No Limits? 69

and the whole infrastructure that supports urban sprawl. We might observe
then that a rather selective antistatism seems to operate in much Promethean
discourse. Prometheans are against state subsidies for green technologies. Yet
they are largely in favor of state subsidies for fossil fuel companies – subsidies
which a recent IMF report estimated run somewhere close to 5.3 trillion US
dollars per year globally or $10 million per minute (see Coady et al. 2015)!
Again, we can see Promethean discourse both proclaims the possibility of “infi-
nite substitutability” of resources but also seems happy to undercut attempts to
maximize the adaptive capacities of public forces to respond to forms of social
and environmental change.
Fourth, let us dig a little further into the conceptualization of “freedom”
that informs the anti-environmentalism of much Promethean thinking. Many
contemporary Promethean currents have both contested the empirical accu-
racy of global environmental science as a product of irrational fear (see Furedi,
1997) and pushed back against its perceived technocratic and managerial ambi-
tions. The claim is often made that global environmentalism is nothing more
than a hubristic attempt to facilitate “global governance” by “planetary man-
agers.” Prometheans thinkers and free market Promethean think tanks have
simultaneously been at the forefront of advocating, planning and constructing
highly technocratic global free market environmental management regimes to
regulate all manner of environmental goods, people, nonhumans and services.
These constructed market regimes have sought to do nothing less than turn
global atmospheres, global oceans, global fisheries and the like into vast new
markets for commodification, speculation, financialization and, ultimately, pri-
vate annexation and control. As such, states and super-state entities (such as
the European Union) are lobbied and then enrolled into projects to construct
“free markets” in carbon emissions or debt-for-nature swaps that assorted
Prometheans, contrarians and Green Hayekians can then profit from all in the
name of “progress.” The question thus has to be asked: are these market liber-
tarian forces against environmental regulations because they are “technocratic”
or because they may limit the capacity of private capital to accumulate?
This leads to a final question that has increasingly been investigated by US
environmental sociologists such as Dunlap and McCright (2010) and Robert
Brulle (2014): should we read Promethean arguments as currents that are
defending “science,” “reason” and “humanity” against an irrational “cul-
ture of fear” promoted by antihuman environmentalists (see Furedi, 1997)?
Alternatively, are they more accurately seen as arguments primarily promoted
and defended by a “conservative counter-movement” to environmentalism that
is supported by the largest and most powerful industrial capitalist forces on the
planet (notably, coalition of fossil fuel industries, free market think tanks and
their allies)? Are they arguments made in good faith or arguments that emerge
from those forces that have gained the most from existing arrangements and
have the most to lose from the successful implementation of environmental leg-
islation or the move to a more sustainable, democratic and egalitarian ­society?
70 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Research conducted into the funding of 118 climate denial organizations by

the Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle (2014) has found that by far
the largest consistent funders for these organizations have been conservative
foundations focused on promoting radical free market ideas.

Conclusion

Let us draw the threads of this chapter together. (1) This chapter has dem-
onstrated that various manifestations of limits environmentalism, from the
late 1960s onward, have raised important concerns about the health of our
global ecologies. We have seen that some elements of the early neo-Malthusian
alarms have not always turned out to be very accurate. However, from climate
change to biodiversity loss, from ongoing concerns about air pollution to food
production, the science of global environmental change would seem to con-
firm we face real problems now and are heading for a crunch in the future.
(2) We have also seen that some Promethean arguments can act as important
counters to the pessimism and misanthropy that can underpin neo-Malthusian
thinking. The historical record does suggest we are an ingenious species that
has managed to get ourselves out of many dangerous scrapes and dead ends
(see DeFreis, 2012). Scientific and technological changes alongside social reor-
ganization can make significant differences to our capacity to adapt. There
are indeed some merits to Julian Simon’s observation that the human capacity
to invent and adapt is our ultimate resource. However, (3) we have also sug-
gested that there are also contradictions in the libertarian-contrarian synthesis
of modern Promethean thinking. Notably, it is a body of thought that simulta-
neously champions the adaptive capacities of human societies to deal with any
and all environmental threats but at the same time seems to advocate for poli-
cies that could reasonably be viewed as undermining the capacities for social
and ecological innovation and transformation. It is here that perhaps we can
identify a central concern that hovers over modern-day Promethean discourse.
There is, in many respects, much to admire about the Greek legendary figure of
Prometheus in that he audaciously stole fire from the Gods to give it to human-
ity. A great deal of contemporary libertarian Promethean thinkers, however,
would seem to only associate “fire” with the mid-20th-century technological
settlement. Moreover, and more worrying is the unsettling sense that they seek
to “steal fire” simply “to give it to themselves” (Ungar, 2014:31).
 4
Social Environmentalism
and Political Ecology: The
Missing Third, Fourth and
Fifth Dimensions of the
Environmental Debate

The debate between neo-Malthusians/limits environmentalists and their

Promethean critics provides one of the most influential optics to view the
modern environmental debate. In this chapter, we seek to probe the limits
of this particular framing of the debate by suggesting that there have long
been third, fourth and even fifth dimensions to the discussion that have never
agreed with either side. We will see that a considerable cluster of interventions
ranging from the seminal early writings of Murray Bookchin (which signifi-
cantly predate the writings of Ehrlich and Julian Simon) to socialist ecologists
such as Barry Commoner, critical feminists and food justice campaigners such
as Frances Moore Lappé, to the voices of Southern environmentalists such as
Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, have long sought to push back against both
sides of the mainstream debate. Social environmentalists are in agreement with
“limits environmentalists” that we need to take the reality of the environ-
mental crisis extremely seriously. They see the dynamics and trajectories of
contemporary capitalism as deeply problematic. At the same time though, a
defining feature of all the thinkers we survey in this chapter is a desire to push
back against population determinism and naturalistic reductionism. All sug-
gest that if the market fundamentalism of Prometheans is wrong headed, as
great a danger lies with the fatalism, misanthropy and conceptual confusions
about scarcity and limits that often underpin first world austerity-orientated

71
72 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

environmentalisms. Many social environmentalists, indeed, have observed that

the politics of scarcity that underpin various forms of “limits environmen-
talism” fails to grapple with the vast irrational waste generation qualities of
capitalism and ignores how capitalism itself can quite happily embrace politi-
cal projects to impose austerity and scarcity on specific populations by others.
Finally, we shall see that many social environmentalists have long argued that
deep transformations of our social, cultural, political, economic, technologi-
cal and institutional arrangements in a future ecological society might allow
us to move from a paradigm of “more” to better. In short, an ecological soci-
ety might open up new possibilities for qualitative improvement and, indeed,
ecologies of abundance.

Murray Bookchin’s Social Ecology

Nearly all our present ecological problems arise from deep-seated social
problems. Conversely, present ecological problems cannot be clearly under-
stood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems within
society. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and
gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious
ecological dislocations we face today – apart, to be sure, from those that are
produced by natural catastrophes. (Bookchin, 1993:462)

The writings of Murray Bookchin are contemporaneous with some of the very
earliest moments of the postwar revival of neo-Malthusian thinking. Indeed,
Bookchin’s attempt to foreground the reality of a looming “ecological cri-
sis” significantly predates the writings of Ehrlich, Simon and The Limits to
Growth report (see Bookchin, 1952, 1962, 1965, 1971). Yet, in contrast to all
these figures, Bookchin explicitly brings the insights of critical social theory
to ecological questions. His intellectual project can be summarized in three
ways. First, his corpus is an attempt to draw the insights of environmental
science and ecology into dialogue with critical theory (from Hegel and Marx
to the Frankfurt School), critical regionalists and anarchist traditions (from
Kropotkin to Mumford), and finally, civic republican visions of politics (such
as those defended by Hannah Arendt and others introduced early on in this
book). The aim here then is to argue ultimately for a radically democratic
ecology. Second, Bookchin’s work can also be seen as a very early attempt to
explore an entangled understanding of socio-ecological relations. His writings
argue that socio-ecological processes have to be understood as dynamic and
dialectical, that we need a social ecology that can capture the entanglements
of society and nature (see Bookchin, 1982, 1990). Finally, Bookchin’s social
ecology is distinguished by his explicit attempt to push back firmly against neo-
Malthusian thinking and Promethean market liberalism. Bookchin argues that
a postcapitalist transformation of social and political relations, technological
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 73

forms and cultural attitudes could allow us to envisage an ecological society

marked by a world of potential abundance for all.
Let us consider then how some of these arguments unfold in Bookchin’s
writings. As early as the mid-1960s, Bookchin was one of the first voices in
the US who identified with emerging environmental movements but, neverthe-
less, aggressively suggested that neo-Malthusian thinking provided a poor basis
to understand socio-ecological issues. Bookchin argues that neo-­ Malthusian
demography is inadequate for a number of reasons (see Bookchin, 1971, 1980).
Notably, he suggests it is a worldview that does not engage with the reality that
contemporary capitalism is defined by profound social inequalities, social hierar-
chies and various modes of social domination. As such, population demography
cannot grasp how different social groups and institutions impact the environment
in widely different ways. Bookchin also argues that neo-Malthusian approaches
elide consideration of the complex cultural, political and historical factors that
have been involved in producing population booms, hunger and famine, and
they fail to explore the relationship between declarations of overpopulation, rac-
ism and imperialism. Concerning the energy and resource depletion arguments
of Ehrlich and The Limits to Growth, Bookchin adopts a somewhat skeptical
position to such arguments as well (1980:305). He argues that, historically, even
the most extravagant estimates of petroleum reserves and mineral resources have
proved to be hugely underestimated. It is suggested instead that many resource
“shortages” are the outcome of commercially created interests and oligopolistic
market manipulation – rather than being statements of the (unknown) realities
of the oil or other resources of the world. Such arguments and fears of shortage,
more generally, “serve the interests of price fixing operations, not to mention
crassly imperialist policies” (1980:306). The central point made here – against
any simple endorsement of the Limits to Growth thesis – is that “‘scarcity’ is a
social and political problem not merely a ‘natural’ one” (1980:306).
Rejecting the prospect that we face an imminent resource crunch or
Malthusian understandings of “overpopulation,” it is quite a different series
of interlinked social, ecological, urban and political problems that are pre-
sented as the central components of “ecological crisis” in Bookchin’s social
ecology. Notably, from 1952 to 1965, when Bookchin’s work is devoted spe-
cifically to analyzing ecological problems, we can see concerns raised with:
(i) excessive use of pesticides and insecticides in farming; (ii) water and air
pollution; (iii)  the proliferation of toxic chemicals, radioactive isotopes and
lead; (iv)  industrial pollution; (v) waste generation; and (vi) the debilitating
lifestyles that accompany a sedentary, congested, stressful, urbanized world.
It is additionally speculated in the 1964 essay Ecology and Revolutionary
Thought that a longer-term problem may result from the changing proportion
of carbon dioxide to other atmospheric gases through the burning of fossil
fuels (Bookchin, 1952, 1962, 1964, 1965). Later writings are marked by a
growing stress on the declining health of “basic planetary cycles” necessary
for maintaining a healthy environment that humans and other creatures could
74 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

flourish within. Bookchin’s major concerns here are identified as: (i) increase
in the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen in the atmosphere, (ii) widespread
­deforestation and soil erosion, (iii) the role that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
played in depleting the stratospheric ozone layer (which protects life on earth
from harmful ultraviolet radiation) and (iv) simplification of wildlife and plant
biodiversity (Bookchin, 1982, 1990).
How then should we understand these environmental problems that are
clearly recognized as being severe in scope and scale? Bookchin argues that all
these problems need to be conceptualized as socio-ecological problems because
all these environmental issues are intimately intertwined and entangled with
broader social crises and pathologies. At root, Bookchin has argued that the
association of progress with the domination of nature is intimately related to
the existence of social hierarchies and modes of social domination in human
societies. In the contemporary instance, though, Bookchin maintains this pro-
ject of domination is expressed in its most ecologically destructive forms in the
irrational “grow or die” dynamics of the capitalist economy. This is further
made manifest in many other areas of our lives, from the gigantism of urban
life to its social alienation and from disastrous forms of urban sprawl that
have increasingly engulfed the city and the countryside, to a profound crisis
of democracy where an empowered active citizenry has been undercut by the
market and the bureaucratic state (see Bookchin, 1962, 1965, 1974, 1993).
Bookchin’s social ecology does draw from the concept of “crisis” and ideas
of “limits.” In contrast to neo-Malthusian concerns, however, it is suggested
“the greatest danger” that the type of issues that limits to growth raises is
“not depletion but simplification.” That is, “the limits to capitalist expan-
sion are ecological not geological” (Bookchin, 1980:306). In a further twist
to the discussion, Bookchin argues that in order to resolve the dilemmas we
face, we cannot simply reduce human beings to “environmental despoilers,”
as neo-Malthusians and assorted other antihumanist environmentalist are
prone to do. On the contrary, Bookchin’s postcapitalist vision of the future is
underpinned by a radical ecological humanist claim that the human subject
has been “actively constituted” to intervene in “first nature” or the natural
world. Human beings have long worked on “first nature” to produce, in effect,
a “second nature.” And now the challenge is to envisage how a qualitative
shift in our horizons can occur, so that we can construct a “free nature” that
would open up the broadest range of freedom for all beings on the planet.
Institutionally, it is argued this sustainable ecological society would require a
commitment to implementing new directly democratic institutions, new libera-
tory ecotechnologies, a renewed commitment to the city, urban ecologies and
a broader recognition that we must actively garden the biosphere much more
creatively. What is required then to move toward a “rational society” marked
by a ­democratic and egalitarian stewardship of our socio-ecological relations
is a reclaiming of the view of human beings not as isolated individuals, not
primarily as ­
­ consumers, not simply “mouths to feed,” but in Aristotelean
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 75

fashion, as zoon politikon, citizens capable of collectively and democratically

governing their social, ecological and technological affairs in a new polis.

Barry Commoner: Socialist Ecology

The writings of the environmental scientist, political activist and democratic

socialist Barry Commoner (1971, 1990) make for another interesting early dis-
ruptive voice in the environmental debate. Commoner directly and publicly criti-
cized Paul Ehrlich and neo-Malthusian environmentalism from the early 1970s
onwards. Why? He argued, in both The Closing Circle (1971) and Making Peace
with the Planet (1990), that neither “population,” “affluence” nor even a generic
“humanity” offers much for causally explaining the forces driving environmental
deterioration. Commoner suggests that population growth in itself does not nec-
essarily correlate with rising consumption of more environmentally damaging
goods. He also suggests (contra Bookchin) that even “growth” in general terms
cannot be seen as a simple causal driver of environmental impacts. Growth can
lead to growth of pollution, but this does not mean “any increase in economic
activity automatically means more pollution.” Rather, “what happens to the
environment depends on how this growth is achieved” (Commoner 1971:141).
Commoner’s empirical work (which is focused almost exclusively on the
US) suggests that the critical issue that has emerged in the postwar United
States is the massive expansion of new “productive technologies” such as radi-
oactive elements, DDT, detergents, synthetic plastics and polymers and CFCs.
These man-made substances have been generated on a mass scale for cost-
savings reasons. They are indeed the product of inventive tendencies within
capitalism to find substitutes for past resources, as Julian Simon stresses. It
is observed, nevertheless, that many of these substitutes are often completely
“absent from the realm of living things” (1971:132), “unprecedented in their
power” and “sweeping in their novelty” (1971:133). As a result, Commoner
argues we now have a whole gamut of much more environmentally impactful
goods. Synthetic fibers like nylon and man-made polymers like plastics are pro-
duced at enormous rates and discarded almost immediately, but, Commoner
notes, unlike the products they replaced – cotton, glass, soap – many of these
products cannot naturally break down. Some of these substances are subject
to microbial decay, some are not. Some of these processes find themselves clut-
tering ­ecosystems – for example, plastic beer-can packing materials choking
wildlife – and some, which are biochemically active, can affect other ecosystem
processes in unexpected ways, such as mercury poisoning, ozone depletion,
endocrine disruption in wildlife and so on.
To illustrate how a change of productive technology, which offers no addi-
tional utility, is not correlated with population growth and merely lowers
costs to the manufacturer yet unnecessarily increases environmental impacts,
Commoner turns to consider the beer bottle.
76 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Both throwaway beer bottles and returnable beer bottles (likely to be used
40 times before broken) contain 12 ounces of beer. However, there is a 40-fold
increase in the environmental impacts of disposable beer bottles to return-
able beer bottles. Commoner (1971:148) notes that in the US, data shows that
between 1950 and 1967:

• the number of beer bottles produced increased by 593%

• the population of the US increased by 30%
• per capita beer consumption rose by 5%
• the number of bottles used per unit of beer shipped increased by 408%

In short, the problem that existed was not with population growth or even
affluence. It was the change that occurred in productive technology, largely
generated by a narrow concern with profit margins in postwar capitalism.
Commoner argues that similar patterns can be found in a broader range of
post-1950s productive technologies, from synthetic pesticides and phosphate
use to nitrogen oxides produced by cars (See Commoner, 1990:150–151).
What follows from this view then? From this, Commoner concludes:

The issue we face then is not how to facilitate environmental quality by

limiting economic development and population growth but how to create
a system of production that can grow and develop in harmony with the
environment. The question is whether we can produce bountiful harvests,
productive machinery, rapid transportation, and decent human dwellings
sufficient to support the world population without despoiling the environ-
ment. (Commoner, 1990:148)

He suggests that to do this would involve “massively redesigning the major

industrial, agricultural, energy and transportation systems” and in doing so,
moving beyond the “short term profit maximizing goals that now govern
investment decisions” (Commoner, 1990:193).
It is interesting to note then that Commoner’s latter writings (Commoner,
1990) actually anticipate aspects of what we will see in Chapter 5 has come to
be known as ecological modernization. However, in contrast to most contem-
porary ecological modernizers, Commoner argues that the state will have to
play a much bigger role in ecological modernization to ensure that ecological
restructuring is both efficient and socially just.

Feminist Political Ecology and Demographic Transition Theory

If the writings of leftist social environmentalists present one notable disrup-

tion to the largely two-dimensional view of the environmental debate, femi-
nist activists, natural scientists and social scientists such as Francis Moore
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 77

Lappé, Ynestra King, Betsy Hartmann, H. Patricia Hynes and Catriona

Sandilands, as well as many other voices from the Global South, including
Ramachandra Guha, Anil Agarwal, Sunita Narain and Enrique Leff, present
another. This alternative view also contests the basic terms of the Malthusian/
Promethean debate. Such currents have long argued that the mainstream or
“malestream” Northern-based “limits to growth” debate simply does not
grasp how deeply embedded gender, class, colonialism, imperialism and other
forms of ­ecological and social domination and difference are embedded in the
environmental debate.
Feminist political ecologists have persistently sought to draw attention to
the fact that women as childbearers, as workers in the field and as homework-
ers frequently carry a disproportionate burden of environmental toxins, par-
ticularly in the Global South. As the subjects of multiple forms of patriarchal
rule, it is women across the world who are often the first to suffer when states
of scarcity and limits are imposed, and first to suffer when modes of coer-
cive conservation and involuntary population control measures are presented
as environmental solutions. For example, the writings of the environmental-
ist and feminist food justice campaigner Frances Moore Lappé have played a
critical role over the last four decades in arguing that both neo-Malthusian and
market liberal explanations of malnutrition, hunger and environmental despo-
liation are inadequate. Lappé and her collaborators have argued that the per-
sistent claim by limits-oriented environmentalists that we face looming states
of “natural scarcity” almost invariably serves to reinforce naturalistic explana-
tions for famine across the globe and thereby obscures the critical social and
political basis of much malnutrition. Lappé attempts to implode “the myth of
scarcity” by drawing attention to the ways in which malnutrition frequently
occurs in the context of plenty, in conditions where food is being exported
out of the countries, and often in conditions where rural people have been
forced off their land. Much of Lappé’s work anticipates Amartya Sen’s semi-
nal (and Nobel Prize–winning) analysis that famine in modern times is rarely
the product of natural scarcity in resources, but rather malnourished people
lack the purchasing power to obtain goods in the marketplace (see Lappé and
Schurman, 1990; Lappé, 2012).
The writings of the feminist political ecologist H. Patricia Hynes have
sought to take aim at one of the central tenets of neo-Malthusian ecology, in
the famous “IPAT” equation. Paul Ehrlich, with John Holden, systematized
a widely influential neo-Malthusian formula for thinking about environmen-
tal impacts through the IPAT equation. IPAT proposes that I (impacts) can
be understood as a product of P (human population) multiplied by A (afflu-
ence, or wealth), multiplied by T (technology). Using this equation, Ehrlich
and many other population biologists have argued that however limited the
predictive claims of neo-Malthusian thinking in the 1970s may have been,
a scientific approach to the subject can more precisely demonstrate how the
growth in human population continues to be a major driver, or even the major
78 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

driver, of environmental impacts. The IPAT equation has been adopted by most
mainstream environmental organizations in the industrialized North to scien-
tifically demonstrate the problem of “overpopulation.” It has also provided the
basis for various United Nations policy documents that set the terms of global
negotiations over global governance. We have already seen that Commoner’s
writings have long posed central problems to the IPAT equation, in maintain-
ing that the lines of causation claimed between population, affluence and tech-
nology by neo-Malthusian thinkers do not correlate with how resources have
been used in the postwar period in the US.
Hynes argues that the appeal of IPAT exists in its physical simplicity and
seeming arithmetic integrity. The equation is based on an atomistic view of
human beings that outlines that all people “use resources and create waste”
and they then have children that do the same. Hynes suggests, though, that the
use of such generic categories ensures that social and political analyses identi-
fying “who amongst the universal ‘P’ is responsible for what, and the how, and
the why behind much pollution – such as the military, trade imbalances and
debt, and female subordination – are outside the formula” (Hynes, 1999:40).
In short, IPAT can frequently inform policy decisions that obscure huge differ-
ences in power and decision-making. As such, she notes:

The P of most concern for fertility control … are institutionally power-

less yet collectively resilient women who have large numbers of children
for complex reasons that range from immediate survival and necessity to
lack of appropriate health services to coercion by a male partner, patri-
archal religion or the state. The T of concern, the highest polluting indus-
trial processes that provide consumer goods for the wealthiest fifth of
humanity, belong almost entirely to men in the most powerful interlock-
ing institutions, including multinational oil and gas corporations, govern-
ments, and industrial giants like car makers and chemical and weapons
manufacturers, whose goal is maximizing economic growth and profit.
The A of concern are the 1.1 billion would consume 85% of all wood
products and 75% of all energy and resources; they generate almost
90% of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and two thirds of
carbon dioxide emissions. (Hynes, 1999:44)

Many social environmental thinkers, drawing inspiration from demographic

transition theory, have argued that the experience of the affluent countries
following the industrial revolution suggests that industrialization, urbaniza-
tion, improvements in child mortality and increases in wealth can facilitate
a transition from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low
fertility. They note that birth rates indeed have been dropping across the world
(without coercion or enforced family planning, as was sometimes advocated
by neo-Malthusians). The world population may well still be growing but the
rate of increase is slowing (see Dorling, 2013). While the reasons underlying
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 79

demographic transitions are multiple and contested, there would seem to be

growing evidence that a fortuitous relationship can be unidentified between
wealth, the emancipation of women and declining populations. In short, the
broader range of possibilities that women in particular have for social mobil-
ity, education, employment and cultural enrichment, coupled with control over
their reproduction, would seem to be a significant factor in generating declin-
ing birth rates. Dorling (2013) has further observed it is certainly the case
that exponential trends can ensure that small initial changes can have large
long-term effects. But these can work both ways. Declines in fertility can also
potentially spread quickly. Dorling argues that there are strong tendencies in
UN statistics to simply discount how low fertility scenarios of the kind that
are currently experienced by Germany, Japan and Hong Kong may possibly
spread quicker than is thought. But the basic issue that he raises is that human
population growth in the present moment is not just slowing but will probably
stabilize. Thus, Dorling suggests “it’s not how many of us there are but how we
live that will matter most” (Dorling, 2013:2).

Southern Critiques of the “Northern” Environmental Debate

Academics, activists and government groups situated in, or working on, the
“Global South” are rarely highlighted in the limits debate. And in some respects,
to speak of the “Global South” in such monolithic ways is, of course, misleading.
The term is often used to stretch from the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
to small island nations, to emerging economies (Kartha, 2011). As we shall
see in Chapter 8, it combines many forces that are often in direct antagonism
with each other. Nevertheless, something like a recognizable “Southern” set
of critiques of “Northern” discussions of environmental limits has surfaced at
critical moments in the discussion.
The notion, for example, emerging from the early limits to growth approach
that a “no-growth” or “zero growth” economics should be aspired to was
widely viewed across many constituencies in the South as insensitive to the
need for poverty alleviation and as meddling with the sovereign rights of
Southern nations to choose their own paths of development. The Chinese
delegation at The Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972 flatly
rejected the very premise of impending material scarcity that Limits arguments
have been premised on. A team of Latin American social scientists, emerging
from the Bariloche Foundation in Argentina, argued in rather different terms
that “the deterioration of the physical environment” was “not an inevitable
consequence of human Progress,” but “the result of social organizations based
largely on destructive values.” (Herrera et al., 1976:16). The Bariloche Group
argued that all forms of global modeling had to be acknowledged as prem-
ised on empirical, normative and political assumptions. As such, they went
about building an alternative mathematical model to the Limits to Growth, the
80 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

so-called “The Bariloche Model.” This model explicitly tried to think about
world resources, pollution and development problems in relation to broader
questions of justice and equity. This model suggested that a global system
focused on human well-being and that addressed “the uneven distribution of
power, both between nations and within nations” (Herrera at al., 1976:16)
would have a much greater chance of resolving the main drivers of environ-
mental problems.
Indian environmentalists, scholars and scientists such as Anil Agarwal and
Sunita Narain at the New Delhi–based Centre for Science and Environment
(Agarwal and Narain, 1991), Vandana Shiva (1988; 1991) and Ramachandra
Guha (2000) have also offered particularly sharp criticisms of the “Northern
agendas” that often subconsciously float through global environmental poli-
tics and international environmental summits. Agarwal and Narain have
argued that such summits can continue to be sites where eco-imperialism
and ecocolonialism rub up against high-minded talk of “saving the planet.”
Neo-Malthusian arguments have long been used to direct attention to the
“problems” of Southern “overpopulation,” “resource consumption,” loss
of biodiversity and the “rights of future generations.” Such thinkers argued
that official representatives of the affluent North countries at global summits
have been noticeably less interested in discussing the welfare and environ-
mental rights of existing generations or the socio-environmental concerns of
the global poor and indigenous peoples. As such, it is argued that some of
the central socio-environmental concerns of these groups, such as wood fuel
pollution, food and water shortages, lack of land tenure or energy poverty,
rarely receive the attention they deserve in “global” environmental discus-
sions. Shiva (1988, 1991) has similarly suggested that issues such as biopiracy,
notably the attempts by multinational corporations to appropriate and patent
the knowledges and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communi-
ties or the use of the Global South as environmental dumping grounds for
the wastes of the North, do not receive the attention they deserve. Indeed,
providing one of the earliest “Southern” critiques of global environmental
negotiations, Agarwal and Narain (1991) argued a basic reluctance to dis-
tinguish greenhouse gases produced by the “survival activities” of the global
poor as opposed to the “luxury emissions” of much fossil fuel usage in the
North undermines the whole attempt to reach an international agreement
over greenhouse gas emissions (Agarwal and Narain, 1991:5). This is all
merely indicative of a broader refusal of the countries of the affluent Global
North to address “Northern waste generation,” “Northern overconsump-
tion,” “Northern overproduction” and legacies of dependency and servitude
generated by centuries of imperialism, colonialism and uneven development
(see Guha, 2000; Martinez-Alier, 1995).
Ramachandra Guha has further observed that “limits” can mean very differ-
ent things to different people on the planet. For example, the “limits” focused
on by Northern environmental imaginaries may well be seen as ­necessary to
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 81

“save Northern lifestyles” and the existing unequal division of power. However,
they have often given rise to conservation proposals whereby people in the
Global South have their hunting or herding lands annexed or their means of
livelihoods undermined by forms of coercive conservation that has declared,
in Malthusian fashion, the global poor “surplus to requirements” (cf. Peluso,
1994; Peluso and Watts, 2001; see Chapter 6).

The Political Ecology of Land and Resources

Much work in the field of political ecology over the last four decades has
affirmed the views of many Southern environmentalists that it is the people
of the Global South who are persistently exposed to some of the worst socio-
environmental conditions in the world, and that this is often directly related
to the ways in which the South is subordinate to the North through develop-
ment on Northern terms (see Forsyth, 2003; Robbins, 2010; Peet, Robbins and
Watts, 2011 for excellent reviews of the field). Extensive research in this field
has also suggested that neo-Malthusian thinking, with its persistent focus on
absolute scarcities, provides a very poor guide for understanding most of the
central environmental problems that people in the South have to deal with.
We will examine different aspects of political ecology in subsequent chapters,
looking at the poststructuralist turn in political ecology and concepts of eco-
logically uneven exchange in Chapter 5, and we will consider the rise of urban
political ecology in Chapter 7. For the moment though, let us briefly explore
how political ecological explorations relating to land and resources (issues that
are literally matters of life of death for many human beings across the planet)
have challenged central neo-Malthusian arguments.
Neo-Marxist, or what was once referred to as “third world” political ecol-
ogy, has its roots in Marxist peasant studies conducted in the Global South
from the 1970s onward. Early work coming out of this tradition was executed
in Africa and Asia, spreading to Central America and South America fairly soon
thereafter. This research program has its roots in the desire to bring together
the analysis of socio-ecological problems and political economy. Through this
a very considerable range of meso-level social ecological events have been
studied such as drought, desertification, the enforced settlement of migratory
peoples and the impacts of global conservation projects on local people. With
regard to land issues, much research emerging out of political ecology has
argued that land scarcity is often the product of unequal access to land or
migration patterns at least as often as it is produced by population increase (see
Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; Collins, 1987; Peet and Watts, 1993). Political
ecologists indeed have argued that population increase is often the product of
the social and political production of land scarcity (in other words, the intro-
duction or mandated development of private property on land). They have
further suggested that production problems and associated environmental
82 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

degradation are often due to unequal access to capital and resources, as opposed
to land scarcity. It has also been observed that land scarcity and labor sur-
plus often stimulate innovations by farmers, to intensify production or create
local institutions or social-political mechanisms to cope with land-associated
constraints. These may be “knowledge-led” strategies, or innovations in man-
agement techniques, within an intimately understood indigenous knowledge
system. Hence, Blaikie observes that farmers may be able to rely on their own
knowledge rather than scarce capital resources or physical labor to intensify
production (Blaikie, 1994).
Let us turn to broader questions of the relationship between population
and resources, and consider how this has been developed in the work of David
Harvey, Michael Watts and Gavin Bridge (see Harvey, 1974, 1996; Watts,
1998; Bridge, 2011). Harvey (1974, 1996) has long insisted that it is of criti-
cal importance that we do not approach an understanding of socio-ecological
problems viewing “society” and “nature” as fundamentally distinct spheres (as
neo-Malthusian and much Promethean/cornucopian thinking tends to empha-
size). Rather, following Marx, and with notable commonalities with Bookchin
(see Harvey, 2012), Harvey recommends the value of thinking dialectically and
relationally. What he means by this is the notion that “society” and “nature”
are best thought of not just as dynamic, historical, intertwined socio-ecological
processes (1974, 1996:140). Rather, Harvey wants to suggest that we have to
try and think about socio-ecological processes historically and also geographi-
cally. Socio-ecological processes are dynamic, and they work across space and
time. We have to recognize that our knowledge of these processes is profoundly
social and that there is much value to be gained in reflecting on the basic
ontological and epistemological assumptions we are deploying when we make
claims about “the environment” and “nature.”
What do we mean then when we talk of “natural resources,” “limits” and
“scarcity”? Harvey argues that resources can’t be seen as simply “things in
the ground,” rather they are “a cultural, technical and economic appraisal of
elements and processes in nature that can be applied to fulfill social objec-
tives and goals through specific material practices” (Harvey, 1996:147). We
have to recognize here that the term appraisal “refers to a state of knowl-
edge and a capacity to understand and communicate discursively that varies
historically and geographically” (Harvey, 1996:147). Additionally we have to
recognize that social objectives and goals “can vary greatly depending on who
is doing the desiring about what and how human desires get institutionalized,
discursively expressed and politically organized” (Harvey, 1996:147). Harvey
wants to draw attention to the fact that dynamic societies are always making
natures, and some made or produced natures (to use Neil Smith’s term that
we explored in Chapter 2) and some of these activities benefit certain activi-
ties and forms of life rather than others. Ideas of the limits and affordances
that present themselves in environmental discussions have to be thought of in
their historical and geographical specificities and in conversation with broader
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 83

social ­relations. Different societies at different points in time have made very
different appraisals of what culture of resources, objectives and goals should be
brought together to maintain social life.
Thinking about socio-environmental problems as both historical and geo-
graphical requires that we recognize that they are not just static phenomena.
Rather, they move, they change and they can be resolved in various ways creat-
ing different kinds of further problems for different kinds of people and land-
scapes. Environmental problems can be displaced across time (e.g., burying
nuclear waste so that it can be dealt with at some point in the future), across
space (e.g., shipping toxic waste or the most polluting industries overseas) and
across other media (e.g., dealing with the problem generated by coal-burning
fossil fuels by shifting to nuclear energy generation, which generates its own set
of socio-environmental issues) (see Harvey, 1996 and in addition see Dryzek’s
[1987] seminal discussion of this matter, Dryzek, 1987). Such observations
suggest that the zero-sum framing of the environmental debate posed by neo-
Malthusians versus Prometheans may find it very difficult to grapple with the
possibility that environmental trends may be subject to profoundly uneven pat-
terns of improvement and degradation. For example, as we will see in the next
chapter, it is perfectly possible now to recognize that improvements in air pol-
lution can occur in Northern Europe while worsening considerably in North
Asia and South Asia. Many deindustrializing European and US cities have
successfully dealt with the kinds of chronic air pollution problems that were
common to such urban areas in the first part of the 20th century. However, the
same cannot be said of Chinese cities, many of which now have chronic air
pollution problems. Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 8, even in the same city,
different groups can be impacted in wildly different ways by environmental
improvements and environmental degradation. Harvey’s approach then lends
itself to the observation that talking about “one nature” and “one planet” as
being in some ways uniform, unified and adequately conceptualized as ulti-
mately finite/limited (Ehrlich) or abundant (Simon) may well be an unhelpful
way to think about environmental problems. Harvey’s work suggests that both
limits and abundance in different socio-environmental circumstances in rela-
tion to different materials can generate profound issues.
Let’s illustrate these somewhat abstract issues by considering how political
ecologists such as Michael Watts (1998) and Gavin Bridge (Bridge and Wood
2010) have built on the observations made by Harvey to understand the oil
industry and the peak oil discussion. Bridge and Watts both argue that when
it comes to oil, at least a great deal of cut-and-dried neo-Malthusian “peak
oil declarations” are empirically almost impossible to substantiate with any
accuracy given the political nature of oil reserves, the varying nature of oil
reserve figures and the ways in which a whole range of other social, histori-
cal, political, geological and environmental variables play into reserve estimates
(Cf. Barry, 2012). They suggest that some of the biggest “below ground” socio-
environmental concerns that can be raised around the oil industry may well be
84 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

less that we are in total running out, but that we are now extracting oil from
some of the dirtiest, most expensive and most ecologically vulnerable ecosys-
tems on the planet (oil shale, deep sea drilling). Additionally, it is not necessary
to buy into some form of neo-Malthusian analysis to demonstrate that the
above-ground socio-ecological impacts of oil can be devastating for people and
ecosystems at many levels. Watts (1998) has developed extended analyses of the
ways in which the Ogoni People of Nigeria, a community that find themselves
living in an oil-rich area of Nigeria, have experienced inordinate pollution as
a result of drilling, devastating local ecosystems, farms and the health of the
people. They have experienced the mass militarization of their communities,
execution of local leaders and declining living standards as oil has been pumped
out of their communities. Many people who live in the oil-rich parts of Nigeria
suffer from energy poverty – they don’t have enough energy to live or live well.
Obviously, at a more attenuated level, burning the oil that is drawn out of the
grown will contribute to climate change in other spaces and places.
What are the virtues of this type of socio-environmental critique? What Watts
and Bridge demonstrate reinforces the observation of Amory Lovins, who has
suggested that the peak oil argument is actually irrelevant, “nobody can know
if it’s true, but it doesn’t matter, because we should get off oil anyway” (see
Lovins, in Porritt, 2007:xv). Let us return here to the matter of climate change
to further illustrate this point. In part, climate change can be understood as a
question of limits, the need to limit greenhouse gases to avoid runaway climate
change. Yet, it is also a problem that is generated by abundance – notably the
abundance of coal and other fossil fuels. We are not going to run out of coal any
time soon. Indeed, this is the problem. We probably have coal to burn for hun-
dreds of years – a condition of abundance if ever there was one – but to limit
CO2 emissions we will need to leave it in the ground (see Carbontracker, 2013).

Criticism of Social Environmentalism and Political Ecologists

How can we critically evaluate the contribution of social environmentalists,

political ecologists, feminists and critical Southern voices to the environmental
debate? These traditions, on the whole, have received modest attention from
mainstream neo-Malthusian or Promethean perspectives. A general tendency
of both dominant forces in the environmental discussion has been to largely
ignore the social environmentalist critiques of the mainstream environmen-
tal discussion and simply assume the environmental debate can be reduced to
the classic two-dimensional discussion. Indeed, it could be argued that large
swathes of the environmental social sciences more generally have tended to
render invisible the contributions of Bookchin, Lappé, Commoner, Harvey,
Agarwal and Narain, Hartmann and other political ecologists. If external cri-
tiques of assorted social environmentalists and political ecologists are not easy
to locate, one can nevertheless reconstruct certain critical concerns.
Table 4.1  From Two to Three and Beyond Dimensional Readings of the Classic Postwar Environmental Debate
Neo-Malthusian Pessimists and
Limits Environmentalists
ONTOLOGY: Nature is
separate from and largely
determines society.
UNDERLYING VISION
OF “NATURE”: Fixed,
limited, scarce, fragile, can be
understood/modeled/captured
in single uniform ways, “one
Earth,” “one planet.”
OPTIMAL NATURE:
Untouched (by human hands)
and in balance; “real nature”
is what exists when humans
are taken out… wilderness,
rainforest.
VISION OF HUMANS:
Mouths to feed; environmental
despoilers; merely one species
among many.
Free Market Prometheans, Rational
Optimists and Cornucopians
ONTOLOGY: Society can and should
dominate nature.
UNDERLYING VISION OF “NATURE”:
Infinite, plastic, infinitely flexible, robust,
abundant.
OPTIMAL NATURE: Transformed,
privatized, commodified. What we
have now – a transformed, humanized
and commodified landscape which
meets “consumer” needs – allows for
the extraction of resources, wealth
generation and profit making; the
anthropocene as it currently is.
VISION OF HUMANS: “The ultimate
resource,” active consumers, active
producers; innovators, market actors;
entrepreneurial.
Social Environmentalists and Possibilists (Social
Ecologists, Socialist Ecologists, Feminist Political
Ecologists); Southern Voices Such as the Centre for
Science and Environment, New Delhi
ONTOLOGY: Society and nature are entangled.
UNDERLYING VISION OF “NATURE”:
Plural and diverse.
Socio-ecological relations are dynamic, historical and
deeply political. Levels of fecundity or scarcity are
not just natural facts but produced the outcome of
socio-ecological and socio-environmental relations.
Nature could be potentially abundant and fecund.
OPTIMAL NATURE: Democratic future natures;
natures that have been activity gardened. An
abundant and fecund world for all. Urban ecologies
and worked rural ecologies.
VISION OF HUMANS: Potentially productive
gardeners, productive historical agents, creative
transformers of socio-ecological relations, active
citizens.
85
(Continued)
 86

Table 4.1  Continued

ETHICS: Anti-humanism, ETHICS: Utilitarianism, market ETHICS: Ecological humanism.
Earth centered, “ecocentric,” humanism.
“biocentric.”
VIEW OF MODERNITY: VIEW OF MODERNITY: Optimistic. A VIEW OF MODERNITY: Marked by progressive
Pessimistic. A catastrophe. triumph. and regressive dynamics.
PRIMARY DANGERS TO THE PRIMARY DANGERS TO THE PLANET: PRIMARY DANGERS TO THE PLANET: Free
PLANET: Human population Environmentalism, pessimism, eco- market capitalism, neo-liberalism, inequality,
growth, industrial societies, apocalyticism. environmental and social injustices, narrow or
growth. orthodox understanding of economic growth that
does not meet human needs. Authoritarian forms of
environmentalism.
POLITICS: POLITICS: POLITICS:
Embracing “reality” of scarcity Free markets, free minds, business as Various but mostly heading toward postcapitalism
and limits; deindustrialization, usual, ecomarkets where necessary. and the democratic control over the productive
depopulation, degrowth. forces.
VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGY: VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGY: VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGY:
Technophobic but some Technophile, cornucopian. Democratize and socialize technology, develop new
technophile elements – green “liberatory technologies.”
particularly after Hawken et al.
(1999).
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 87

Many Promethean currents could certainly agree with elements of the social
environmentalist critique of neo-Malthusian thinking. Promethean discourse
has long demonstrated high degrees of discursive flexibility, and from Simon to
Lomborg, it has been common for such currents to present themselves as cham-
pions of the fossil fuel industry and saving the global poor from Malthusians
through their defense of “growth forever.” The most obvious point of conten-
tion between Prometheans and social environmentalists clearly surrounds the
free market and issues surrounding technological innovation more generally.
Prometheans would clearly wish to push back against Bookchin and Commoner’s
anticapitalist sensibilities and emphasize, in contrast, capitalism’s remarkable
capacity to generate technological innovations and forms of substitution to deal
with any and all environmental questions. They would furthermore argue that
the “solutions” social environmentalists themselves offer to resolve many envi-
ronmental problems are at best vague (gesturing toward “democracy” in the case
of much political ecology without specifying any concrete institutional content
to this gesture), clearly utopian and unfeasible (in the case of Bookchin’s, self-
declared utopia of an alternative “ecological society”) or clearly liable to make
matters worse (in the case of Commoner’s defense of a socialist mode of ecologi-
cal modernization). Prometheans can similarly respond to feminist and Southern
political ecologists by arguing that ultimately women and the amorphous “peo-
ple of the South” would do well to follow the free market model because it is
ultimately rich, prosperous peoples that will look after their environment.
While most neo-Malthusian thinkers have largely ignored the work of social
environmentalists and political ecologists, there have been some engagements
over the years. Perhaps the most obvious point of critique that can be leveled
against most of the currents we have surveyed in this chapter is that whatever
their different foci, they all represent forms of environmentalisms which are
clearly humanist in their orientations. From Bookchin to Lappé to Harvey, at
the end of the day, it is humans that are of primary concern for social envi-
ronmentalists, not Gaia, or “the planet as a whole.” From the perspective then
of ecocentric (Earth-centered) thinkers such as Robyn Eckersley (1992), some
advocates of animal rights or even some post-humanist thinkers such as Latour
and Haraway and their followers (see Chapter 7), these humanist commitments,
even understood as ecological humanisms – as Bookchin (1982, 1990) would
have it – are inadequate for capturing the diversity of our posthuman worlds.
Some contemporary neo-Malthusian currents have accommodated to many
of the critiques made of them by social environmentalists in the 1970s and
1980s (see Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1996). Nevertheless, neo-Malthusians and
other assorted “limits” environmentalists have still argued that much social
environmentalist discourse – as well as much political ecology – has an exces-
sively social view of “nature” and tends toward a view of ecosystems, resources
and limits that is far too plastic to be compelling. More sophisticated forms of
“limits” environmentalism, witnessed by the work of the Stockholm Resilience
Institute, have indeed suggested global limits do exist and can be specified;
88 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

recent developments in the environmental sciences allow us to articulate a

view of external planetary limits with some high degree of precision, and we
do not have to embrace vulgar Malthusian ideas to nevertheless acknowledge
the existence of real planetary boundaries. Let’s conclude this chapter then by
looking at how talk of planetary boundaries has in some senses kick-started a
new limits to growth discussion.

Planetary Boundaries/Planetary Opportunities

The planetary boundaries concept pioneered by the Stockholm Resilience

Institute and its associates over the last decade (see Rockström et al., 2009)
has developed a rather different approach to the question of natural limits than
Harvey or many other political ecologists. The aim of this group has been to
quantify “planetary boundaries” that might identify a “safe operating space”
for humanity. The starting premise for the planetary boundaries discussion
is the assumption that over the last 10,000 years, the geological era of the
Holocene has provided a relatively stable period for human civilizations to
“rise, develop and flourish.” However, following the industrial revolution, John
Rockström and his colleagues argue, the rise of the anthropocene has seen
“human actions” becoming “the main driver of global environmental change”
(Rockström, 2009:472). We have covered debates over the anthropocene in
Chapter 2. The Stockholm Resilience Institute has nevertheless argued that the
environmental sciences can now identify with some degree of accuracy nine
boundaries, notably: (i) climate change, (ii) rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial
and marine), (iii) interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles,
(iv) stratospheric ozone depletion, (v) ocean acidification, (vi) global freshwa-
ter use, (vii) change in land use, (viii) chemical pollution and (ix) atmospheric
aerosol loading. These boundaries are of critical concern and clearly should
not be crossed. If the impact of anthropocentric systems pushes beyond certain
critical thresholds of these processes, it is argued that this could generate “irre-
versible and, in some cases, abrupt environmental change” that would result
in “a state less conducive to human development.” The concern with planetary
boundaries discussions then are to identify potential “tipping points” beyond
which nonlinear change could generate environmental change that would
endanger human life on the planet. Table 4.2 provides a summary of the find-
ings of the planetary boundaries group.
There is no doubt that the planetary boundaries concept has quite quickly
become extraordinarily influential. It has been incorporated into all manner of
literatures produced by various international agencies from the United Nations
to the World Bank. It is interesting to note, however, that in terms of our previ-
ous discussion, the planetary boundaries understanding of limits is, as presently
defined, not a vulgar restatement of neo-Malthusian thinking. Indeed, with its
focus on ecological limits rather than reworking contentious claims about the
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 89

Table 4.2  Planetary Boundaries. Reprinted with permission.

Earth system Parameters Proposed Current Pre-industrial
process Boundary Status value
Climate change (i) Atmospheric 350 387 280
carbon dioxide
concentration
(parts per million
by volume)
(ii) Change in 1 1.5 0
radiative forcing
(watts per metre
squared)
Rate of biodiversity Extinction rate 10 >100 0.1−1
loss (number of species
per million species
per year)
Nitrogen cycle (part Amount of N2 35 121 0
of a boundary with removed from the
the phosphorus atmosphere for
cycle) human use (millions
of tonnes per year)
Phosphorus cycle Quantity of P 11 8.5−9.5 −1
(part of a boundary flowing into the
with the nitrogen oceans (millions of
cycle) tonnes per year)
Stratospheric ozone Concentration of 276 283 290
depletion ozone (Dobson unit)
Ocean acidification Global mean 2.75 2.90 3.44
saturation state of
aragonite in surface
sea water
Global freshwater Consumption 4,000 2,600 415
use of freshwater by
humans (km3 per
year)
Change in land use Percentage of global 15 11.7 Low
land cover converted
to cropland
Atmospheric Overall particulate To be determined
aerosol loading concentration in the
atmosphere, on a
regional basis

(Continued)
90 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Table 4.2  (Continued)

Chemical pollution For example, To be determined
amount emitted to,
or concentration of
persistent persistent
organic pollutants,
plastics, endocrine
disrupters, heavy
metals and nuclear
waste in, the global
environment, or the
effects on ecosystem
and functioning of
the Earth system
thereof

population-resource issue, it could be observed that it bears more resemblance

to the understanding of limits proposed by Bookchin and Commoner than clas-
sic neo-Malthusian thinking. Nevertheless, the ways in which the Stockholm
Resilience Institute has attempted to think these boundaries has received
extended critique (see Defries et al., 2012; Nordhaus et al., 2012). We might
summarize the central critical issues at stake here in the following way:

• Should we regard these planetary boundaries as “hard” or “soft,” or are

they somewhat flexible?
• What degree of certainty can be given to assessments of where “critical
thresholds” lie for different planetary boundary processes? Does this adju-
dication involve a degree of informed guesswork and normative judgment
about risk and uncertainty?
• How much does human ingenuity, technological and social innovation of
“planetary opportunities,” transform the nature of a boundary?
• How can ideas of “global boundaries” be operationalized to deal with
environmental problems that often express themselves in local and regional
ways?
• What are the various social, institutional and cultural mixes that are com-
patible with living within a safe operating space for the Earth?
• Does the “planetary boundaries concept” allow for acknowledgment that
trade-offs exist in all forms of socio-environmental change?
• If we accept the idea of planetary boundaries – who and what should be
bound, and who and what should be unbound?

In short, if it is the view of the Stockholm Resilience Institute that we can

anchor our analysis in a naturalistic view of planetary boundaries, critics
 Social Environmentalism and Political Ecology 91

have asserted, much in the same way as Harvey’s critique of natural limits
ideologies (1974, 1996), that at root we cannot rely on nature alone to define
this balance of boundaries and opportunities. As Harvey’s analysis has sought
to remind us, talk of planetary boundaries inevitably entails not just making
scientific but social scientific and normative judgments about how the social
and the ecological interact and the consequences that follow from this inter-
action. This involves making judgments about social institutions, national
and global economies and their trajectories; judgments about the capacities
of societies, cultures and economies to adapt to new socio-ecological condi-
tions; and judgments about the level of flexibility it is reasonable to believe
technological innovation and other factors introduce into the discussion.
Evaluations of “planetary boundaries” also involve making social and nor-
mative judgments about risk and uncertainty and how much risk and uncer-
tainty we might want to live with and who should bear that risk. For social
environmentalists then, “planetary boundaries” have to be brought into poli-
tics because, they would ultimately argue, all judgments about the social and
ecological constraints and enablements that human societies encounter are
scientific, social scientific and political. They are essentially posing questions
about the nature(s) we want to make and the consequences we are willing to
tolerate that follows this.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have seen that (1) when we “write back” into the environ-
mental debate the contributions of diverse social environmentalists, a whole set
of binary ways of understanding this debate start to fall away. The idea that the
modern environmental debate can be reduced to two competing parties repre-
sented by technocentric versus ecocentric currents, advocates of limits versus
advocates of no limits, or the growth versus non-growth party becomes hard
to sustain. All the social environmentalists we have engaged with in this chap-
ter acknowledge that capitalism and conventional economic growth generate
profound environmental crises. However, all argue that ideas of “limits” and
“scarcity” cannot be simply understood as power-free naturalistic facts that
can be directly imported into socio-ecological analysis. Additionally, (2)  we
have seen that Barry Commoner, Frances Moore Lappé and David Harvey
have all argued at different points that “growth” is not all one thing, and we
may need a more layered politics to discuss what we wish to grow and what
we wish to contract. (3) All the thinkers and currents we have looked at in this
chapter also suggest the choices before us do not reduce down to embracing
a technological fix or a social fix, but may entail projects to transform and
democratize socio-technical and socio-ecological relations writ large.
 5
Structures and Institutions:
The Treadmill of Production,
the Metabolic Rift and the
Sociology of Ecological
Modernization

Citizens of the affluent world are regularly entreated by environmentalists,

ethicists and sometimes the media or governments (in more liberal western
European countries) to shop more ethically, drive less, use public transport,
fly less, recycle and so on. Now, these forms of behavior are probably, on bal-
ance, “good things to do” for a wide range of reasons. At the same time, we
know that individual lifestyle decisions on mobility (to take one example) are
shaped by income and status expectations and by the availability of alterna-
tive transport infrastructures. The logistics of home and work, age and gen-
der, childcare and eldercare commitments, the spatial organization of urban
and rural life, climate, cultural expectations and time constraints all play into
whether a trip is taken by bus or car. At the broader level, an individual deci-
sion to fly less will have modest to little effect on greenhouse gas emissions if
the airplane still takes off. We can, as individuals, decide to consume less, but
if the vast majority of waste comes from the productive side of the economy
or if national economic policy is centrally dependent on more production
and more consumption to “get the economy going again,” this may become
self-defeating.
The point of these observations of course is not to deny that individuals
have capacities and agency to act and that these actions can, in certain circum-
stances, have cumulative effects. But these observations do suggest there may

92
 Structures and Institutions 93

be a big difference between environmental actions that allow you to feel good
about yourself and finding ways of acting politically that are politically effica-
cious. When we act politically, we make certain assumptions about how the
systems works, the extent to which certain institutions are flexible or not and
how pressure can be most effectively applied. More sociologically, we might
say political agency is always negotiated through the social institutions, social
structures and power relations expressed in these forces that exert consider-
able influence over our lives. We need to think about these matters because we
need to understand the difference between feeling good and being effective. It
is this debate, about how such structural and institutional forms intersect, that
has preoccupied many discussions in environmental sociology and overlapping
fields over the last three decades.
In this chapter, we will consider how different currents of environmental
social theory have responded to some of the challenges posed by the foun-
dational debates we surveyed in Chapters 2–4. We will see in this chapter
that most currents of environmental social theory are in agreement with the
social environmentalists we surveyed in the previous chapter that a credible
social theory needs to foreground and investigate the relations between mar-
kets, the state, environmental legislation and environmental social movements.
However, as we shall also see, how these relationships should be understood
and the policy/political implications that can be derived from this research has
been subject to heated dispute between political economy approaches and vari-
ous sociologies of environmental reform.
In US environmental sociology, the treadmill of production and the related
“metabolic rift” school of eco-Marxism have provided some of the most
influential research programs for investigating these socio-environmental
dynamics. Both these currents of environmental sociology – despite some
differences – have developed theoretical models and empirical evidences to
suggest deep-seated structural forces are necessarily and inevitably lead-
ing to a rapid and disastrous expansion of socio-environmental impacts.
In contrast to such positions, the sociology of ecological modernization, a
sociological approach that has largely emerged out of Northern European
countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, has suggested we can main-
tain a much more flexible and optimistic view of the capacities of liberal
democratic states, institutions and market actors to deal with environmen-
tal challenges. As we shall see, there are multiple issues at stake in this
debate. But one of the critical issues of contention centers on the possi-
bilities of “greening capitalism.” For proponents of the treadmill of produc-
tion and the metabolic rift, “green capitalism” is simply “greenwash.” It
is a claim that should be treated as skeptically as the marketing campaign
that has announced the oil company BP has gone “beyond petroleum.” It
simply obscures the hard reality that capitalism cannot accommodate to
our impending ecological catastrophe. For ecological modernizers, green
­capitalism is an emerging reality.
94 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Structural Political Economy Perspectives

The Treadmill of Production
The treadmill of production has been described by the environmental soci-
ologist Fred Buttel as one of the key original theoretical contributions that
US environmental sociology has made to the environmental debate (see
Buttel, 2003). The founding premises for this theory are developed in Allan
Schnaiberg’s classic text The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity (1980). In
The Environment, Schnaiberg starts from the observation that all societies are
dependent on extracting materials from ecosystems. These materials are then
transformed though physical and chemical processes, and after distribution
and use they are disposed of in some way (Schnaiberg, 1980:23). It is argued
that this relationship between the two separate systems of society and ecology
is best captured in terms of the concept of additions and withdrawals. All soci-
eties make withdrawals from ecosystems – in terms of extraction and depletion
of natural resources – and they make additions – in terms of pollution and
waste. The environmental impacts of the additions and withdrawals that socie-
ties make to ecosystems are determined by the production process. Schnaiberg
argues that the central mechanism for determining the volume and type of
production in industrial societies is the treadmill of production. Relative abun-
dance of ecosystems allows greater social usage, but there is always the risk
of overuse generating “ecosystem disruption” or “ecosystem disorganization.”
Moreover, it is argued, that “human creation of new products and discovery
of new resources can only proceed up to the limits of particular ecosystems”
(Schnaiberg, 1980:21).
It is acknowledged by Schnaiberg that “critical uncertainties” exist among
scholars as to where natural limits lie (Schnaiberg, 1980:41). Nevertheless, he
argues, we have clearly seen a vast increase in the scale of the production process
in the 20th century, and a vast concurrent increase in environmental impacts.
In trying to identify the underlying drivers of the treadmill, Schnaiberg suggests
we should reject mono-causal narratives that are focused only on single fac-
tors such as “population” or “consumption” (i.e., neo-Malthusian thinking) or
“technology.” Rather, we need to grapple with the overall systemic properties
of modern social structures and specifically on institutional factors that can
lock societies into environmentally hazardous treadmill dynamics.
Schnaiberg’s initial iteration of the treadmill of production thesis in 1980
suggested that both capitalist and state socialist societies were marked by insti-
tutional imperatives to increase industrial production. He also suggested that
there were institutional constraints on the capacity of such societies to deal
with the environmental problems that emerge from such production. Why is
this? To focus here on capitalist societies, Schnaiberg suggests in such societies,
the treadmill of production is structured by “the nature of competition between
capital owners and the profitability and predictability of high-energy and cap-
ital-intensive mass production.” Constant competition between ­corporations
 Structures and Institutions 95

and entrepreneurs ensures that they must expand their operations and their
profits to avoid being undercut by their competitors. As such, they must con-
stantly ratchet up the treadmill to survive. However, it is also emphasized that
“treadmill dynamics” are not just pushed by capital. Schnaiberg argues the
treadmill of production is also “buttressed by the commitment of both organ-
ized labor and the state to generate employment and income through rising
national production” (Schnaiberg, 1980:4). The state also has an expansionary
tendency in itself – state agencies seek to grow to collect tax revenue. The state
subsidizes the cost of treadmill production by providing infrastructure, educa-
tion, research and development, military spending and so on to support pri-
vate capital. These forms of spending by the state encourage capital-intensive
investments, which increase automation and technological innovation, but
they also increase unemployment. The state then has to respond to treadmill
dynamics through welfare state programs and more job creation, which push
the treadmill further forward. Additionally, it is argued the development of
environmentally and socially destructive technology, which damages the envi-
ronment and displaces workers, is driven by social, state institutions and eco-
nomic imperatives and their influences on scientific and technological research,
development and implementation. As Schnaiberg summarizes:

The treadmill of production is a model that directs attention to the link-

age of capital-intensive technology investment, profitability, and employ-
ment and income generation. It is a treadmill that has been accelerating at
least since 1945, and probably for fifty years before that. The logic of the
treadmill is that of an ever-growing need for capital investment in order to
generate a given volume of social welfare – a trickle-down model of socio-
economic development. From the environment, it requires growing inputs
of energy and material to create a given level of socioeconomic welfare.
When resources are constrained, the treadmill searches for alternative
sources rather than conserving and restructuring production. (Schnaiberg,
1980:417–418)

Schnaiberg’s analysis of the US economy in 1980 held out some political hope
that the basic dynamics of the treadmill could be brought under control by
achieving alliances between labor and environmental groups. However, in its
more recent iterations, treadmill thinking has tended towards more somber
analyses. More recent research has moved from the nation–state focus of the
early work to explore more extensively the phenomena of globalization. Gould
(Gould et al., 2008) focused on the way globalization of capitalism and the
globalization of capital investment have led to the intensification of global pro-
duction, environmental destruction, and the reduction of global labor costs.
This work, for instance, shows how transnational corporations have found
ways to increase productivity by making capital investments in less-developed
countries, investments that take full advantage of poor populations and ­lenient
96 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

environmental regulations before moving on to new areas of investment. It

is argued that the same sort of process happens in the US, when companies
and the government work to find cheap ways to deal with industrial waste by
exploiting low income communities, and communities of color, which some
researchers have described as a “treadmill of destruction” (Hooks and Smith,
2004). In short, it is argued that investing in capital goods and resources and
minimizing the costs of waste disposal rather than improving labor conditions
reduces the flexibility of capital to make a shift to sustainability (in both the
social and ecological senses of the term). Increased productivity and labor
intensity further increase the raw material throughputs of the global economy.
This accelerates pressures placed on the global ecologies from which resources
are extracted. Most critically, it is argued, that even in cases where technical
efficiency has reduced pollution or energy utilization per unit output, this net
increase in efficiency generates a gross increase in production such that, meas-
ured in total, increasing efficiency increases resource extraction, at best, and
extraction and pollution, at worst, as the treadmill necessitates intensification
(York, 2006).

The Metabolic Rift in Eco-Marxism

The theory of the metabolic rift has been popularized in eco-Marxist scholar-
ship by John Bellamy Foster (1999) and elaborated further by his colleagues
such as Richard York, Brett Clark and others (e.g., Clark and Foster, 2009;
Foster et al., 2010). The metabolic rift shares similarities with the treadmill
of production thesis, yet it starts from rather different places and evolves in
different ways. Foster and his colleagues suggest that while the treadmill of
production provides a useful and vivid metaphor for capturing the “futility
and irrationality” of many elements of capitalist production, it has some limits.
Specifically, it is argued that treadmill thinking can feed “into an abstract notion
of ‘growth’ which is divorced from the specific form that this takes under the
regime of capital – as a system of accumulation.” The problem here is that the
treadmill of production is focused “almost exclusively on scale and relatively
little on system” (Foster et al., 2010:203). What do they mean by this?
While treadmill thinking can capture quantitative features of the tension
between economy and ecology, it is argued by Foster and his colleagues that
the qualitative aspects of environmental degradation “get lost.” For example,
it is observed that it is perfectly plausible within capitalism for the physical
scale of production to stay the same while the toxicity of production goes up.
Indeed, the growth of “micro toxicities,” according to Foster (mirroring Barry
Commoner, 1990), is a central contemporary environmental problem. Similarly,
a focus on quantitative issues can miss how many environmental problems that
emerge from capitalism are not just about an increase in the physical scale of
production but a result of the ways in which capital accumulation is driven
to reduce and simplify human labor and resource ecologies to exploit them
 Structures and Institutions 97

more effectively (Foster, 1994). For example, Foster observes that old-growth,
biodiverse and ecologically complex forests are often replaced by the forestry
industry with forests of similar scale. However, these are simplified industrial
forests made up of ecologically sterile monocultures designed for a simple pur-
pose – profit. Such qualitative forms of environmental degradation cannot be
captured by a simple focus on the quantitative focus on scalar increase.
More explicitly, it is argued, the central issue is best understood as the
treadmill of capital accumulation rather than production in its general sense.
Metabolic rift scholars have thus suggested that the tension between capital-
ism is not simply a tension of scale but the ways in which the accumulation
dynamic of capitalism has opened up a profound ecological rift between capi-
talism and ecology, a rift that is “killing the planet” (Foster et al., 2010:10).
Foster’s use of the term “metabolic rift” is derived from a particular reading
of Marx’s Capital, where Marx discusses the “irreparable rift in the interde-
pendent process of social metabolism” (Marx, 1981:949). In Marx’s Ecology
(2000), Foster has argued that the dominant environmentalist reading of
Marx as a Victorian Promethean is almost certainly incorrect. He suggests the
development of Marx’s historical materialism was significantly engaged with
Liebig’s organic chemistry and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selec-
tion. Specifically, it is claimed one can find in Marx’s agricultural writings strik-
ing recognition that a central failing of capitalist agriculture is to be found in
the ways in which it has distinct tendencies to exhaust the soil and rob it of its
nutrients. Marx wrote:

In modern agriculture, as in urban industry, the increase in the productivity

and the mobility of labor is purchased at the cost of laying waste and debili-
tating labor-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a
progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil;
all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a pro-
gress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. (Marx,
1977[1867]:638)

This rupture or rift in the soil system emerges from this process of exhausting
soil of its nutrients, by overgrazing animals, monocropping food and fiber,
and moving away from traditional patterns of rotational replenishment. When
meats, grains, vegetables and fiber are marketed in the city, these elements turn
into waste that is not returned to the land. Rather, it is variously disposed of in
ways that “end up contributing to pollution” (Foster et al., 2010:45). This, in
turn, generates reliance in capitalist agriculture on technological inputs such as
fertilizers to restore fertility, and so increases outputs. What results from this
is a precarious form of land management which gives rise to a “metabolic rift”
between society and nature.
Foster has generalized these arguments to claim that we can recover from
Marx a broader claim that capitalism has a distinct propensity to undermine
98 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

its fundamental ecological conditions. To grasp this point, Foster argues atten-
tion needs to be paid to the central ways in which capital accumulation as the
juggernaut of capitalism embeds an inner grow or die logic into the system
(Foster et al., 2010:39).
As a system, Marx explained capital accumulation through the M-C-M'
formula. As discussed in the preceding chapter, Marx argued capitalism is
defined by the manner in which it expands with a concern not for use value
but with exchange value (2010:39). Money (M) is transformed by capital
into a commodity (C) through the productive process of mixing natural
resources, technology and human labor. It is then sold for more money (M'),
realizing original value plus additional surplus value. In the next circuit
of accumulation, this money is then reinvested with the aim of obtaining
M", or even more profit. Capital then, by its nature, is self-expanding value
(Foster et al., 2010:201–202). Capitalism is driven by the need to continu-
ously accumulate, and this constant attempt to secure more and more money
and discover more and more places where accumulation can take place is
what Foster, York and Clark identify as generating an “extreme” rift in the
planetary system. Thus it is maintained: “The planet is now dominated by a
technologically potent but alienated humanity – alienated from both nature
and itself; and hence ultimately destructive of everything around it” (Foster
et al., 2010:14). Indeed, extrapolating further from the planetary boundaries
literature, we are told: “The current course on which the world is heading
could be described no so much as the appearance of a new stable geologi-
cal epoch (the Anthropocene), as an end Holocene, or more ominously, end
Quarternary, terminal event, which is a way of referring to the mass extinc-
tions that often separate geological eras.” In the face of “planetary ecologi-
cal crisis,” Foster et al. have argued “there is no way out of this dilemma
within the laws of motion of a capitalist economy” (2010:29). Moreover,
it is not simply ecological planetary boundaries of the kind discussed by
the Stockholm Resilience Institute (see Chapter 4) that demonstrate there
are inevitable limits to capital accumulation; Foster et al. argue the “basic
physics” of thermodynamics set upper limits on the possibilities for con-
tinued expansion of capitalism (2010:43). Technological fixes of any kind
will not resolve the environmental contradictions of capitalism because, it
is argued, the scale effects of economic expansion eat up energy gains and
environmental savings (Foster, 2002). Nothing will stop this situation short
of an “ecological revolution” (Foster et al., 2010:45).

The Sociology of Ecological Modernization

The treadmill of production and metabolic rift approaches have been hugely
influential in North American environmental sociology over the last decade.
Nevertheless, the experience of environmental reform in Northern European
countries, in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere, has
 Structures and Institutions 99

produced a very different view of the potential relationship between states,

markets and environmental degradation.
Ecological modernization is premised on the belief that it is not simply envi-
ronmental crisis that needs to be explained but also processes of environmental
reform (see Buttel, 2003). As such, it has been argued by Joseph Huber, Martin
Jänicke and latterly Arthur Mol and Gert Spaargaren, among many others,
that a range of significant environmental reforms, social and cultural changes
and economic shifts have taken place in Northern Europe but increasingly
further afield in the last few decades, which suggests the institutional forms of
“modernity” are much more flexible and perhaps more able to adapt to envi-
ronmental challenges than neo-Malthusian, treadmill or metabolic rift argu-
ments allow (see Mol et al., 2009).
The roots of such ideas are to be found in the writings of Martin Jänicke
(1978, 1984) and Joseph Huber (1982, 1985). The preference in this theory
for the term “modernity” rather than capitalism is important to note in that
it underlines how much the sociology of ecological modernization has its ori-
gins in neofunctionalist modernization theories and systems theory, as well
as various currents of innovation theory (see Mol and Jänicke, 2009). Huber
(1982, 1985) suggested in a series of seminal publications in the 1980s that
if we follow modernization theory with its claim that societies progressively
move through various stages of modernization, then we can understand envi-
ronmental problems as presenting both a challenge to “industrial society” but
also offering opportunities. As such, Huber argued that the growth of the eco-
technology sector, green entrepreneurialism and green legislation in Germany
all suggested that industry societies could “functionally respond” to environ-
mental problems. Indeed, he speculated that environmental problems could
well trigger the rise of a new green form of “super-industrialization.” Perhaps
the most sustained attempt to sociologically map and investigate further the
ecological modernization thesis has been done by the Dutch environmental
sociologists Arthur Mol and Gert Spaagaren.
Mol, Spaagaren and their colleagues have expanded and extended Huber’s
research program (albeit making significant theoretical revisions along the
way). Mol has argued that “end of pipe” resolutions to environmental difficul-
ties so common in the late 1970s have been increasingly replaced (in what Mol
referred to as the “ecologically advanced nations”) by “more advanced envi-
ronmental technologies that not only redirect production processes and prod-
ucts into more environmentally sound ones but also are triggering processes of
ecological restructuring in key industries” (Mol, 1996, 2003). Following Huber,
Mol has argued that these transformations “can no longer be interpreted as
mere window dressing, as they were seen in the 1970s” (Mol, 1996:303). How
do ecological modernizers substantiate such bold claims?
At the level of the nation–state, the sociology of ecological moderniza-
tion argues that structural modes of political economy have largely ignored a
broad range of “environmental innovations” implemented over the last two
100 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

decades in the global triad (i.e., the US, the EU and Japan). Japan’s remark-
ably quick response to its notorious air pollution problems in the 1970s,
the comprehensive nature of Dutch environmental policy, legislative devel-
opments in Germany and the European Union’s environmental programs –
particularly the 4th Environmental Action Program– have all been cited as
paradigmatic early examples of how widespread and well thought out legis-
lation can facilitate meaningful environmental reform (Weale, 1992; Hajer,
1995; Christoff, 1996).
Cross-national comparative studies by Dryzek et al. (2003) evaluating
and comparing North American and European environmental performance
have also argued that there are significant differences between capitalist lib-
eral democracies and real environmental gains have been made by Northern
European countries across a range of indicators. Even within the US, it has
been observed that when political conditions have allowed, there have been
remarkably successful moments when comprehensive environmental legisla-
tion has been passed. Thus it has been observed that the wave of outrage and
political mobilization that followed the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring in 1962 did not simply come to nothing. On the contrary, the wave of
pressure built up from this and social movement mobilizations ensured that
a comprehensive spread of environmental legislation was passed while the
Nixon Administration, no less, was in office in the early 1970s. Recent years
have seen the expansion of the research programs of ecological moderniza-
tion to study environmental reform beyond the Atlantic fringes of the US and
Northern Europe to Thailand, China and beyond.
Ecological modernizers have additionally suggested that diverse ecologi-
cal innovations have occurred across the overlapping worlds of business,
academe and policymaking. Thus, it has been observed there has been a sig-
nificant expansion over the last two decades of “green business” models of
sustainable governance emerging from the development of green accounting
and ISO14000 environmental management standards. Significant literatures
and concrete applied research emerged in green management studies, “green
chemistry,” industrial ecology (attempts to develop various forms of green
production process characterized by closed loop industrial processes), factor
four/ten strategies (strategies to improve resource and energy productivity),
and other diverse forms of sustainable technological innovation (see Hawken
et al., 1999). Ecological modernizers read this literature as demonstrating that
a shift to a “low carbon future” can open up range of new business opportuni-
ties. Mol has provided a detailed account of the ecological modernization of
the Dutch chemical industry in the 1980s. Marten Hajer has suggested that
there is some evidence that the integration of ecological concerns in the first
conceptualization of products – which was an abstract notion in the 1980s –
is “now a reality in many industrial practice in the core” (Hajer, 1996:250).
Indeed, even in terms of social movements, Spaargaren (1997) has sug-
gested that green consumer movements, from organic food to ethical
 Structures and Institutions 101

c­ onsumption, are becoming further “drivers” of environmental reform creating

demands for new environmentally friendly consumer policies and legislation in
“frontrunner states.”
If we take the international domain, it has been observed by ecological
modernizers that while neo-Malthusian, treadmill and metabolic rift thinkers
often give the impression that international environmental agreements has sim-
ply led to one environmental failure after another, since the 1972 Stockholm
conference on the Human Environment, there have been on average 16 inter-
state environmental treaties a year and 19 a year since the Rio Earth Summit
of 1992 (Mitchell, 2003). Ecological modernizers have argued such treaties
cannot be simply dismissed (Mol, 1996) because there are many examples of
such agreements leading to real environmental reforms. Ecological modern-
izers point here to legislation addressing acid rain in the EU, international
conventions against the trade in endangered species such as CITES, conven-
tions against trade in toxic exports such as the Basel Convention (1992) and
innumerable international agreements to regulate trade in toxic exports and
improvements in air, water and land pollution in the OECD.
Perhaps the primary international example that ecological modernizers
argue fits this narrative is the Montreal Protocol on stratospheric ozone deple-
tion. It is now widely accepted by virtually all parties to the environmental
debate that thinning of the ozone layer through the use of CFCs and other
gases very nearly caused a global environmental calamity. It was with some
degree of pure luck that this problem was recognized in time. Yet ecologi-
cal modernizers suggest that it was recognized, and it was quickly acted on
(see Chapter 8 for an extended discussion of this issue). Examples such as the
Montreal Protocol and such other international treaties thus, it is argued, sug-
gest that when there is the political will, the international community can act
quickly to deal with environmental degradation.
In some respects then the broad worldview of ecological modernizers can
accommodate to elements of the Promethean critique of neo-Malthusian
thinking outlined in Chapter 3. Ecological modernizers, in common with
optimists (Simon, 1981; Lomborg, 2001, Ridley, 2010) have been keen to
highlight the ways in which the treadmill dynamics of capitalism are more
malleable than structural political economists would have us believe. Thus, it
is argued some environmental concerns – “the population bomb,” acid rain,
ozone-layer depletion – have proved much less damaging than was previ-
ously thought. Legislation in most Western countries to control water and
air pollution has had high degrees of success. Careful environmental man-
agement has led to reforestation in many parts of the US and Europe. This
has led ecological modernizers to suggest that the central assumption that a
sustainable society requires a break with modernity is fundamentally dubious.
Indeed, it is argued that such evidences, on the contrary, suggest that the
continuation of environmental reforms requires a further embrace and con-
tinuation of the project of modernity (see Mol, 2003). Mol explicitly argues
102 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

that the only possible way out of environmental problems is to move further
into the process of modernization.
To empirically support their claims, ecological modernization scholars have
tended to produce research that is focused on the extended case study method
to demonstrate how environmental reform occurs within specific industries of
specific nation states. Yet, can any more general claims be made about global
impacts? Three broad bodies of research are regularly presented as potentially
supporting the ecological modernization thesis.
(i) Postmaterialism: The postmaterialism thesis informed by Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs suggests that once basic needs are met, there is a natural
tendency for populations to shift attention from material concerns focused
on increasing production to quality of life issues. Since the 1970s, the soci-
ologist Ronald Inglehart and the World Values Survey have studied this issue
through a range of cross-national surveys. Both claim from this that a statis-
tically significant rise in postmaterialist values in affluent world countries can
be identified. Ecological modernizers have argued that if such postmaterialist
trends continue to be affirmed, they offer underlying sociological forces that
might mitigate against the treadmill of production. (ii) Literatures on envi-
ronmental Kuznet curves emerging out of neo-classical economics have long
posited the possibility that environmental impacts may follow a “U” shape
relationship where environmental impacts are heaviest in the earliest stages
of industrialization, but then level and enter a period of decline. The environ-
mental Kuznet curve thesis is frequently presented as affirming the claim that
a greening of modernity is taking place. Finally, ecological modernizers have
enthusiastically embraced (iii) the dematerialization thesis, notably, the prop-
osition that growth can or is being decoupled from the material throughput
of goods and thus from environmental degradation. Mol has argued demate-
rialization is not simply a hypothetical proposition to be found in industrial
ecology; he notes:

From the mid-1980s onward, a rupture in the long-established trend of

parallel economic growth and increasing ecological disruption can be
identified in most of the ecologically advanced nations, such as Germany,
Japan, the Netherlands, the USA, Sweden and Denmark. This slowdown
is often referred to as the decoupling or delinking of material flows from
economic flows. In a number of cases (regarding countries and/or spe-
cific industrial sectors and/or specific social practices and/or specific envi-
ronmental issues), environmental reform has even resulted in an absolute
decline in the use of natural resources and/or in discharge of emissions,
regardless of economic growth in financial or material terms (product out-
put). (Mol, 2010:66)

How can we adjudicate between the polarized worldviews of structural politi-

cal economists and sociologists of ecological modernization?
 Structures and Institutions 103

Merits of the Metabolic Rift and the Treadmill of Production

The treadmill of production and the metabolic rift are discourses that have
clearly contributed much to environmental sociology. In contrast to the atten-
tion that much policy-oriented environmental discourse has given to achieving
micro behavior change, or the pursuit of isolated green technological fixes, these
discourses reasonably suggest that engagement with many global environmen-
tal issues (such as global climate change, biodiversity loss, resource extraction,
use and waste, global pollution patterns) requires that we pay attention to
the productive side of the economy and questions of ownership and control.
The depiction of global capitalism as an unstable system that is systematically
defined by crisis tendencies produced by internal contradictions would seem an
observation that is as relevant as ever in the wake of the great financial crisis of
2008 and the identification of climate change by even mainstream economists
as “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen” (Stern, 2006:i).
The claim that this system is locked into certain destructive treadmill dynam-
ics is clearly vitally important. The broader focus of the metabolic rift on the
ways in which growth is central to capital accumulation and why it may be
reasonable to assume that a commitment to undifferentiated capitalist growth
is a plausible driver of many environmental impacts builds on the insights of
the social environmentalists that we engaged with in the last chapter.
The great lesson then that metabolic rift and the treadmill approach teach
is that certain socio-environmental problems are structural in nature. The envi-
ronmental impacts generated by hydrocarbon usage, for example, are a prod-
uct of a profound structural dependency that global capitalism has developed
on fossil fuels. This dependency is sunk into the basic industrial fabric of capi-
talist societies, their global division of labor, their infrastructure, their patterns
of urbanization, modes of travel, energy generation, consumer culture and so
on. The full range of issues that arise from hydrocarbon dependencies are not
going to be resolved by “walk to school days,” shopping more ethically or
refusing to use plastic bags. Rather, it will require deep-seated structural trans-
formations of basic social, institutional, political, economic and technological
relations. Both these traditions have their merits but they also have limitations.

Limits of the Metabolic Rift and the Treadmill of Production

Malthusianism and Dualism
An first line of critique that has been made by numerous Marxist critics of the
writings of metabolic rift thinkers such as Foster and York and articulations of
the treadmill in the work of Gould is that much of this literature has been far
more open to neo-Malthusian conceptualizations of environmental problems
than earlier currents of social environmentalists. In metabolic rift and tread-
mill literatures, “overshoot,” “carrying capacity,” “natural scarcity,” “peak oil”
104 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

and “overpopulation” are all concepts regularly used in fairly undifferentiated

ways by Foster and York to render the critique of capitalism more absolute
and fundamental. The kind of critical interrogation of these concepts made by
Bookchin and Harvey, Lappé and Commoner (that we documented in Chapter
4) has now largely been suspended. It is notable how it has been Marxist envi-
ronmental scientists, ecologists and geographers of late (see Harvey, 1996;
Schwartzman, 1996, 1998; Boucher, 1998; Rudy, 2005; Bridge and Wood,
2010; but additionally see Moore, 2011; Henwood, 2012) that have been par-
ticularly concerned with the ways in which an orthodox political economy
tied to Malthusian concepts might actually delimit our understanding of the
contradictions between capitalism and the environment.
An interrelated set of concerns that has been posed against some iterations
of the treadmill and metabolic rift is that while these traditions of environmen-
tal sociology are aware of the problem of dualism in socio-ecological analysis,
strong dualist frameworks reemerge in their applied research. The treadmill of
production, as we have seen in Schnaiberg’s thinking, is premised on the analy-
sis of two systems, where “nature” is conceptualized as primarily the passive
object of withdrawals and the passive recipient of pollution. Metabolic rift,
in theory, emphasizes the dialectical nature of socio-ecological relations but,
again, in practice, leans to a view of “nature” as external from capitalism, sin-
gular and largely fixed (see Rudy, 2005; White, 2005). It could be further noted
that both these particular social theories see this external “nature” through
very particular optics. Both treadmill and rift scholars are heavily informed by
human ecology as developed in the 1960 and 1970s, and thus tend to draw
from equilibrium and steady state view of systems ecology that cause them
to emphasize the “traditional balance between humanity and nature” (Foster,
1994:40). Surprisingly little reference has been made in treadmill or metabolic
rift literatures to the hybrid understandings of historical socio-ecological rela-
tions we began to map in Chapter 2 or to the rise of dynamic, non-equilibrium
understandings of ecosystems that have been widely embraced by scientific
ecologists, environmental geographers and political ecologists over the last
two decades (see Levins and Lewontin, 1985; Botkin, 1990; Haila and Levins,
1992; Haila, 1999; Lewontin and Levins, 2007). Let’s explore the latter issue
a little further here.

The Challenge of Non-Equilibrium Ecology and Southern Political Ecology

to Metabolic Rift and Treadmill Perspectives
Many classic articulations of ecological science, elements of the field that
Boucher (1998) refers to as “Newtonian ecology,” have generally tended to
emphasize that ecosystems can be characterized by gradual transitions, homeo-
stasis and – at some level – “a balance of nature.” It has been widely observed
over recent decades that such an emphasis on equilibrium, balance and order
has increasingly shifted in scientific ecology to a much greater emphasis on
 Structures and Institutions 105

disequilibria, instability and even chaotic fluctuations that are now seen as
more adequately characterizing many biophysical environments (Zimmerer,
1994; Forsyth, 2003; Leach et al., 2010). Much of this work reflects the grow-
ing influence of complexity theory that is now occurring in many fields of the
social sciences and the natural sciences (see Urry, 2011). The shift that has
occurred in ecology from 1960s systems models to non-equilibrium perspec-
tives that focus much more on chaotic fluctuations, disequilibria and instability
has suggested that many previous studies of range management or soil degra-
dation resting on simple notions of stability, harmony and resilience may have
to be rethought (Forsyth, 2003).
Such developments in political ecology and ecosystem science have largely
gone unremarked in treadmill and metabolic rift literatures. However, non-
equilibrium ecologies have increasingly been drawn together with poststructur-
alist, postcolonial, feminist and Marxian theoretical tools by political ecologies
working in the Global South. The body of research emergent from this diverges
strongly from the generic ecocrisis narratives running through rift and treadmill
literatures in emphasizing that attending to dynamic socio-ecological relations
and struggles over interpretations of environmental change matters when we
are trying to understand forms of socio-environmental change on the ground.
In particular, much of this work has claimed that many Northern environmen-
tal NGOs and even radical currents of Northern environmental social science
are still overly reliant on outdated, romantic “balance of nature” understand-
ings of optimal ecologies as well as outdated neo-Malthusian and eco-romantic
crisis narratives resulting in much (mis)understanding of Southern contexts.
Many political ecologists have argued that as a result of the dominance of these
narratives, some of the most vulnerable people on the planet are often blocked
from articulating their own understandings of environmental problems. Indeed,
some political ecological researchers have argued that neoliberal governance
regimes imposed on South countries by domestic Southern elites as well as by
“global” institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have often found
generic neo-Malthusian “environmental crisis narratives” useful for legitimizing
policies that push people off their land and/or treat them in profoundly unjust
ways (see Escobar, 1995, 1999; Rocheleau et al., 1996; Bryant and Bailey, 1997;
Braun, 2002; Asher, 2004; Paulson and Gezon, 2004; Robbins, 2010; Agrawal,
2005; Castree, 2005; Demeritt, 2005; Biersack and Greenberg, 2006).
For example, without rejecting the importance of deforestation, Fairhead
and Leach (1998, 2000) are deeply critical of sweeping environmental degra-
dation narratives which have tended to blame peasant and pastoral communi-
ties for environmental crises. Finding what they deem the “degradation vision”
embedded in the narratives of global institutions, national governments, donor
agencies and local NGOs, Fairhead and Leach argue that these views are not
grounded in ignorance or obfuscation but in the deep institutionalization of
neo-Malthusian discourses in the production of knowledge about the state of
nature in sub-Saharan Africa. They observer that colonial postcolonial and
106 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

global development project foresters have often drawn on traditional species-

succession and climax equilibrium theories of ecology to read discontinuous
forest cover across sub-Saharan Africa as forest remnants that had survived the
irrational actions of both elite and subordinated colonized peoples. In addition
to the idea that forest ecology tends towards states of equilibrium, the degra-
dation vision often tends to equally post an earlier time when innocent indig-
enous peoples lived in greater harmony with the forest, an assumption that
undergirds research into how patchy forest landscapes must now be the result
of disharmony between nature and the activities of local peoples. Under these
conditions, scientific data on existing conditions intending to prove hypotheses
based on the social ecological degradation thesis was collected while alterna-
tive sources were often ignored. “Historical data were deemed unimportant
because the underlying assumption of recent, rapid one-way deforestation was
so strong and so institutionalized as to render precision unnecessary” (Fairhead
and Leach, 1998:174). The institutionalization and materialization of dis-
courses of degradation thus obscured both the production and potential viabil-
ity of existing social ecological relationships, as well as the social processes
whereby local people managed their relationship with the landscape.
Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) have also argued, in relation to soil erosion,
that generalized crisis narratives frequently obscure interpretive complexi-
ties in mapping these processes: one farmer’s soil erosion can provide another
farmer’s soil fertility. Forsyth (2003) has tracked the decline of Himalayan envi-
ronmental degradation theory in the mid-1980s – where it was found that the
assumption of rapid deforestation occurring in this area was simply inaccurate
(being premised on faulty neo-Malthusian premises) and underestimating nor-
mally high rates of soil movement under monsoon rainfall. Many more recent
studies of environmental change in sub-Saharan Africa have been premised on
records made by colonial park rangers, who have tended to romanticize the
state of the African landscape prior to European settlement and underestimate
the adaptive practices of people living in dry lands (see Leach and Mearns,
1996; Blackie in Castree and Braun, 2001).
Contemporary research by political ecologists certainly does not undermine
the basic argument that there are fundamental contradictions playing out at the
global level between capitalism and the environment, and that many of these
contradictions are expressed most severely across regions of the Global South.
It is a body of literature though that suggests as one moves closer to the ground,
a great deal of social, cultural and ecological complexity enters the picture. As
James McCarthy and Karen Bakker have suggested, it is important to acknowl-
edge that the relations between the biophysical world and neoliberalism are quite
“variegated and heterogeneous” (McCarthy, 2012:181) at different spatial scales
of analysis and that “there is no reason to think that the relationships between
them will follow the same pathway in every case” (McCarthy, 2012:181).
 Structures and Institutions 107

The Limits of Zero-Sum Binary Thinking and Left Functionalism: The

Disproportionality and Divergence Thesis
The work of William Freudenburg, Dana Fisher and their collaborators (see
Fisher and Freudenburg, 2004; Freudenburg, 2005; Nowak et al., 2006; Berry,
2008) presents an interesting sectoral attempt to disaggregate the capital/envi-
ronment relation that presents rather different challenges for treadmill and
metabolic rift literatures. While Freudenburg and Fisher agree with treadmill
and metabolic rift theorists that assessments of environmental problems must
pay much greater attention to the activities of organized producers rather to
aggregated groups of individual consumers, their work pushes back against
the deterministic and functionalist elements of these arguments. Drawing from
Ayer’s mapping of the material flows of the US economy, Freudenburg stresses
data showing that consumables and durables constitute a relatively small per-
centage – only about 9% – of the material flows moving through the global
economy, with 91% of waste of material flows from preconsumer industrial
sources. In short, resource extraction and processing is extremely inefficient.
Here, Freudenburg argues that generic critiques of “economic growth” can be
misleading because the relationship between growth and environmental deg-
radation is far more problematic in resource extraction and processing areas –
and capital goods production – than in commodity production, distribution
and sales, and much less in household consumption. Specific industries, specific
sectors and specific plants can, and do, have hugely disproportional environ-
mental impacts. To illustrate this hypothesis, Freudenburg turns to exploring
toxic releases.
If you look at the data, Freudenburg argues that over 60% of all highly
toxic releases in the US come from only 4% of the economy. This sector in
turn provides a very small percentage of jobs in the US (about 1.5%). Indeed,
it is argued when we break things down even more, we can see gross dis-
proportionalities in toxic impacts between different sectors and specific toxics
plants inside that 4%. For example, it is observed that in the US in 1993, two
companies – DuPont and Freeport McMoran – put out 400 million tons of
toxic waste. Together these two companies generated 30% of total chemical
toxic waste for the US and 14% of all US toxic waste while generating $39 bil-
lion in revenues (0.6% of US revenue) and 115,000 employees (0.09% of US
jobs). Freeport McMoran, alone, had four facilities that produced almost half
of these toxins. Along similar lines, the single worst facility in the US, run by
IMC Agrico James, produced 128 million tons of toxins, 4.53% of the national
total. What follows from this analysis? Freudenburg argues that both the neo-
Malthusian focus on population/consumers and excessively determinist met-
abolic rift/treadmill arguments focused on “the structural logics of capital”
miss the fact that if you closed down certain key chemical plants or effectively
reduced the environmental impacts of such plants, major reduction in toxic
108 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

production and impacts would occur because 80%–90% of toxic pollution

comes from a small number of facilities.
In summary, what Freudenburg calls the “disproportionality and diversion
hypothesis” suggests that structural logics work in aggregate but disaggregat-
able patterns – that the uneven development of capitalism unevenly distrib-
utes waste and pollution in important ways. Freudenburg’s writings show that
in many cases, highly particular and applied public policy can play a very
significant role in addressing certain environmental problems. And what fol-
lows from this is the claim that rigorous environmental reform in relation to
addressing certain kinds of environmental problems is possible when there is
political will and political coalitions to make it so.
Freudenburg makes a further interesting point here. He suggests the ways
in which companies that produce high levels of toxic materials deal with such
issues is through organized forms of distraction. They deploy cornucopian/
contrarian arguments to shift public attention away from the specific regional
ecological and environmental health problems they generate. Often times the
focus is placed on national-level data. This ensures that attention is draw away
from regional impacts such as the level of pollution in hot spot areas such as
Cancer Alley, Louisiana (see Chapter 7). They also use very similar “zero-sum”
argument to the kinds of binaries that are often made by the most militant
advocates of zero growth. Notably, they propose to workers that we just have
a simple choice to be made between jobs versus environmental protection:
growth versus sustainability. Freudenburg argues that these zero-sum argu-
ments are very useful in propagating the view that environmental regulations
will destroy the US economy – even though a very small percentage of US
workers actually work in the most toxic plants.
While Freudenburg’s “disproportionality and diversion hypothesis” has yet
to receive comprehensive empirical testing, the call for more middle range dis-
aggregating research that can attend to differential environmental impacts by
sectors, nations or regional groupings would seem to offer a promising line of
future empirical inquiry. For example, Grant, Jorgenson and Longhofer (2013)
explore power plant–level carbon emissions in roughly 20 nations. Electricity
generation accounts for nearly 25% of carbon emissions. They demonstrate
that if the top 5% of polluters in the 20 nations responsible for most electricity
pollution reduced emission rates in each country’s electricity sector to the aver-
age, worldwide emissions from electricity could possibly go down by 25%. As
such, and following Freudenburg, it is argued “carbon emissions can be greatly
reduced – within each country, and across the globe – if regulators simply
focus on lowering the unusually high carbon emissions of each country’s most
extreme polluters” Grant, Jorgenson and Longhofer (2013).

The Postpolitics of (Socialist) Eco-Catastrophism

A final observation that could be made of metabolic rift and treadmill
approaches is that both these traditions offer comprehensive, totalizing
 Structures and Institutions 109

­ aterialist critiques of existing arrangements. However, it is very unclear what

m
they offer in the way of materialist solutions to the problems diagnosed. To
focus more on the politics of the metabolic rift, it could be observed that
since the theory is informed by quite a generic catastrophist worldview, no
room is allowed for the proposition that forms of environmental reform could
be imagined that in different socio-political contexts offer different possibili-
ties. As such, we are left with a demand for revolutionary transformation of
the social totality but little clear account of what this might involve. Indeed,
when pressed, metabolic rift and treadmill arguments seem to largely return to
1970s radical ecological visions of a low-tech, pastoral “steady state” ecoso-
cialism as the alternative to existing capitalist modernity. This distinctly physi-
calist view, though focused on shrinking the ecological footprint, does not
seem to be able to entertain the possibility that we could perhaps aspire to a
sustainable, democratic society that might actually aspire to leaving a better
ecological footprint!

Evaluating the Sociology of Ecological Modernization

What then can be said about the sociology of ecological modernization? Let’s
consider first the strengths of this tradition. Literature in the sociology of eco-
logical modernization and broader literatures on green innovation can be fruit-
fully read for a number of reasons. As Ha-Joon Chang observes: “The fact that
a factor is structural … does not mean that the outcome of its influence is pre-
determined” (Chang, 2010:120). The reliance of capitalist liberal democracies
on hydrocarbons is clearly structural but this observation in itself does not tell
us about the level of flexibility of specific structures (the capitalist economy, the
international system, specific nation states), the extent to which these historical
social structures can be reformed, the extent to which they may be checked or
the extent to which “events” might ensure they are systematically reshaped by
different kinds of agencies and countervailing forces (political parties, social
movements, protest, riot, rebellion, revolution).
Second, sociologies of ecological modernization serve as a reminder that
environmental problems are not all of one kind. Different kinds of environ-
mental problems may be more or less structural or “systemic” and more or less
intractable. Such literatures can reasonably point to the observation that in
certain specific cases, environmental problems can be significantly ameliorated
within the boundaries of a specific nation–state through legislative means. Air
and water pollution issues in the affluent world, acid rain and forest regrowth
in North America are all cases in point. The fact that per capita there are
still significant differences in the energy mix (renewable versus nonrenewable,
cleaner-burning versus dirty), the fuel consumption and the CO2 production
of similar advanced capitalist countries such as Germany and the US further
reinforces the observation that even within the context of advance capital-
ism, attending to the differential configurations of polities and their differen-
tial environmental impacts is important. Different institutional configurations,
110 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

different policy choices, different electoral systems and different mobilizations

of social movements clearly matter. There is thus no reason why, in principle,
attention to these institutional specificities could not enrich and render more
complex a political critical economy of environmental crisis and reform (see
for example Oosterveer, 2012; Barry, 2012). However, it is clear as well that
the sociology of ecological modernization has significant limits.

Limits of the Sociology of Ecological Modernization

Functionalism and Theoretical Limitations in the Sociology of Ecological
Modernization
While the basic argument that certain “front runner states” (Mol, 2003) –
Germany, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, the US – have been able to achieve
environmental reforms within the boundaries of their territories is an argu-
ment that most informed observers have been willing to acknowledge, the soci-
ology of ecological modernization has long struggled to theoretically explain
these partial victories. Indeed, the sociology of ecological modernization has
moved between quite an eclectic range of theoretical traditions in the attempt
to explain causalities generating environmental reforms. We have observed
that environmental reform in the earliest phase of ecological modernization
was often explained by functionalist claims that such reforms are ultimately
evidence of “self-correcting” tendencies of modernization. The plausibility of
this functionalist claim largely unraveled in the face of clear evidence that envi-
ronmental reform in the affluent world was subject to considerable ebb and
flow and that environmental movements could themselves trigger conservative
anti-environmental movements leading to the rolling back of environmental
legislation. This impasse then led Mol, Spaargaren and their colleagues to look
for a new theoretical basis for ecological modernization studies, variously turn-
ing to: the work of Giddens’ structuration theory, the reflexive modernization
thesis, the post-society centric turn of John Urry, complexity theory and the
network society thesis of Manuel Castells. Two observations of these changes
can be made here. First, it is unclear as yet whether a coherent explanatory the-
ory of environmental reform has emerged from the gathering together of these
largely descriptive theories. Second, even with this theoretical refitting, one can
see tendencies in the ecological modernization literature to loosely gather up
social theories that could support a view of environmental change and then
revert back to quasi-functionalist claims that locate some kind of teleological
basis for hope in the “self-correcting mechanisms” or “ecological rationality”
of modernity. However, much of the historical case studies analyzed suggest
that politics, culture and contingent matters play a much bigger role in the
fortunes of environmental legislation than any latent “ecological rationality”
of industrial societies as a whole.
 Structures and Institutions 111

Empirical and Methodological Deficiencies in the Sociology of Ecological

Modernization: Ecologically Uneven Exchange, the Jevons Paradox and
STIRPAT
Such criticisms lead us to an extended empirical critique that has been devel-
oped against the ecological modernization thesis. Critics of the ecological
modernization thesis have long suggested that basic problems exist with the
spatial/temporal scale that the sociology of ecological modernization works to
and the units of analysis that have been used in studies to demonstrate envi-
ronmental improvements. The favored method that many scholars informed
by ecological modernization have adopted is the extended case study. Yet, this
approach tells us little about more general systemic dynamics. For example,
to demonstrate that the Dutch chemical industry can transform its ecologi-
cal impacts (Mol, 1995) or that the paper industry in Thailand (Sonnenfeld,
2002) can improve its efficiencies does not in itself help us to understand
whether broader regional, national or global ecological modernization of the
economy is taking place. Indeed, one of the central worries that critics have
long posed against ecological modernization is that it is a theory that suffers
from what Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich (1990) have referred to as “the
Netherlands Fallacy,” notably, an inability to grasp the ways in which afflu-
ent countries in the core are able to improve their environmental conditions
through outsourcing the impacts of material extraction and disposal to the
periphery (York et al., 2003a). Dutch citizens many well find themselves living
in post-industrial cities with historically high levels of urban air quality. The
same cannot be said of Chinese workers, breathing in deadly levels of air pol-
lution while producing a majority of the goods that the affluent world happily
consumes. Indeed, it is precisely the issue of displacement that has generated a
notable empirical turn in environmental sociology over the last decade.
The concept of “Ecologically Uneven Exchange” is informed by Wallerstein’s
(1974) claim that the capitalist world system is divided into “core,” “periph-
ery” and “semi-periphery nations” through an exploitative global division of
labor. A growing body of work following these ideas has sought to empirically
investigate the ways in which countries in the periphery or the less-developed
world perform the role of a tap for the raw materials or a sink for the waste
assimilation needs of the core or the affluent nations. Following Bunker’s
(1984) classic study, a significant body of work has fairly conclusively dem-
onstrated that affluent economies in the core persistently off-load the nega-
tive (environmental) aspects of their production practices onto the peripheral
and semi-peripheral zones that contain more complacent (or easily quelled)
political and social conditions (e.g., see Frey, 2006; Bartley and Bergesen,
1997; Martinez-Alier, 2002, 2012; Goldfrank et al., 1999; Grimes and Kentor,
2003; Jorgenson, 2003; Moore, 2003; Bunker et al., 2003; Jorgenson, 2006,
2009; Chew, 2007; Rice, 2007; Hornborg and Crumley, 2007; Jorgenson and
Kuykendall, 2008; Lawrence, 2009; Jorgenson and Clark, 2009). This body of
112 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

research suggests that in some cases, the improved environmental regulations

and protections accomplished in the core has impelled transnational corpora-
tions to relocate their pesticide-laden, toxic, and otherwise hazardous pro-
duction platforms to the periphery (Frey, 2003, 2006; Pellow, 2007). Andrew
Jorgenson has argued that all these empirical studies point to a “consumption/
environmental degradation paradox” (Jorgenson, 2003), notably, that:

nations with the highest levels of natural resource consumption, principally

the most industrialized countries, are typically characterized by the low-
est domestic levels of environmental degradation. In turn, the most intense
natural resource degradation processes frequently beset the poorest coun-
tries in the world; those exhibiting minimal natural resource consumption
demand.

The STIRPAT Research program (York et al., 2003a, 2003b) in a complimentary

fashion has argued that evidence for the existence of environmental “Kuznets”
curves and current examples of dematerialization that have been claimed by
ecological modernizers remains thin. Much of this research program has also
suggested that the “Jevons Effect,” notably that improvements in the efficiencies
of resource use tend to increase rather than decrease rates of consumption of
such resources, applies to much resource and energy use occurring in the core.

Ecological Modernization as Postpolitical Eco-Managerialism?

The Normative Deficit in Ecological Modernization?
Let us turn here to the politics of ecological modernization. While ecological
modernization as social theory is informed by some normative commitments –
notably a commitment to the virtues of something called “modernization” –
these commitments are rarely interrogated or clearly defended in the literature.
Indeed, the term “modernization” is often used in the sociology of ecologi-
cal modernization as a descriptive term and a normative term. This can be
seen in the manner in which “political modernization” is used to both describe
and recommend a range of institutional and market transformations of mod-
els of environmental governance. As such, political decisions made by par-
ticular political actors to suit certain political interests and constituencies
are regularly reworked in ecological modernizing literatures as apolitical,
“ecologically rational” managerial responses that meet “systemic impera-
tives.” It is interesting here to observe the extent to which much of the soci-
ology of ecological modernization emerging out of Northern Europe in the
1990s seemed to have strong elected affinities with not only the realo wing of
the Green Greens but also the politics of the Third Way (as advocated
variously by Bill Clinton and New Democrats in the USA, Tony Blair and
New Labour, and Gerhard Schröder in Germany to take three examples). It is
here, from the perspective of critical theory, that the social theory of ecological
modernization could seem to come close to playing something of an i­ deological
 Structures and Institutions 113

role in environmental discussions, through its tendency to translate political

questions into a postpolitical managerialism, and through this, avoid discus-
sions of power. This is reflected in the manner in which the sociology of ecolog-
ical modernization has displayed little interest in exploring how environmental
reforms have been secured in different societies or who wins or who loses in
processes of environmental reform. The intellectual framework of ecological
modernization is as indifferent as neo-Malthusian thinking as to whether envi-
ronmental reforms have been achieved through authoritarian or democratic
means, whether they are respectful of human rights or not, whether they facili-
tate autonomy or green governmentality and whether environmental reforms
merely redistribute environmental problems from some communities to others.
The technocratic, positivistic and managerial starting points of much research
in ecological modernization, coupled with an implicit if rarely explicitly stated
tendency to view “environmental reform” from the perspectives of elite policy
makers, does mean that these questions have not been dealt with.

The Problem with “Greenwash,” The Neo-Liberalization of Environmental

Governance and the Politics of Bait and Switch
The sociology of ecological modernization has done a good descriptive job of
mapping the rise of new environmental institutions and agencies, the rise of
green business and ecotechnology literatures and so on across local, regional,
national and super-national scales – particularly in the European Union.
However, a critical question mark that hovers over the literature is the extent
to which such institutions and legislative mechanisms have been able to secure
compliance to achieve meaningful reductions in environmental impacts. States,
governments and businesses frequently sign up to all manner of humane and
sustainable-sounding commitments. For example, all the major oil companies
now have vast armies of sustainability officers, human rights divisions, mission
statements on shareholder responsibilities, community partnerships in low-
income areas and personable, charming chief executives testifying their com-
mitment to ecological modernizing projects. Some companies indeed contribute
extensively to large environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy (see
Klein, 2014). However, many of these companies have been found to also con-
tribute handsomely to anti-environmental and climate skeptic think tanks (see
Brulle, 2014), continue to annex new fossil fuel resources (see Carbontracker,
2013) and undermine political and regulatory processes that might lead to
regulation or oversight (see Klein, 2014). Perhaps the underlying concern then
that exists with the sociology of ecological modernization for many critical
sociologists is that while this body of research does a good job of descriptively
documenting the rise of “win-win” business narratives that have come to domi-
nate “the front stage” of business practice in the public relations departments of
major companies, governments and institutions, at the “back stage” we are see-
ing the very same green capitalists engage in business-as-usual projects. As such,
despite the widespread use of Green capitalist rhetoric across the ­corporate
114 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

landscape, we can see the very same companies pushing for the privatization of
common lands and common resources, the outsourcing of compliance systems
and the deregulation and financialization of environmental governance.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have seen that the contemporary debate between advocates
of metabolic rift/treadmill positions and sociologists of ecological moderniza-
tion has generated real insights. We have also observed that to the extent that
debates slid towards a series of binary positions, the discussion can become
quite intellectually and politically disabling. (1) Theorists of ecological modern-
ization can point to real gains that have been made by environmental reforms
at local, national and regional levels in Northern Europe and elsewhere at cer-
tain points in the last four decades. However, we have suggested this optimistic
literature has generally not dealt well with explaining revisions and reversals
of environmental reform. Indeed the pathologies of green capitalism, problems
of spatial or temporal displacement of socio-environmental bads onto poorer
groups or nations or examinations of ongoing forms of exploitation or even
violence that can quite easily go hand in hand with “environmental reform”
are all left unexamined by this social theory. (2) This chapter has also suggested
that if the basic proposition that capitalism has a structural dynamic towards
generating ecological crises is compelling, developing this argument through a
synthesis of neo-Malthusian ecology, eco-romanticism and orthodox Marxism
may not be optimal either. We have seen that many political ecologists and
environmental geographers and advocates of the disproportionality and diver-
sion hypothesis all indicate many messy complexities run through the capital/
ecology relationship. Moreover, we have also suggested that if contemporary
ecological modernizers overstate the current gains of ecological innovation
much of the literature on the metabolic rift/treadmill literature seems unable to
make creative materialist recuperative readings of developments like industrial
ecology, cradle to cradle design strategies, closed loop economies, eco-urban
retrofitting, new food management systems or other forms of socio-ecological
innovation. (3) As such, we have suggested that many of the most influential
“green Left” currents in environmental sociology appear so overwhelmed by
a structural determinist pessimism that they are unable to generate a materi-
alist horizon for a reconstructive environmental sociology (as was advocated
by Bookchin and Gorz, Commoner and Lappé a generation earlier). Instead, we
are left with an increasingly apocalyptic assertion of the need for an ­“ecological
revolution.” There is very little further account of the political agents that would
bring this into being or the institutional, economic, cultural, political and mate-
rial forms that an ecological society would take once ­capitalism is unraveled.
 6
Hybridities and Agencies:
Latour, Haraway, Beck and the
Vital Materialists

I will tell you what you are, a hybrid, a complex cross of lawyer, poet, natu-
ralist, and theologian! Was there ever such a monster seen before?
Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray
Darwin: Life & Letters (1887) II 338

If debates about limits have provided the central imaginary for much work in
environmental sociology and green political theory (Dobson, 2007) over the
last few decades, it is striking how many other ascending currents of the envi-
ronmental social sciences have been much more vexed of late with the matter
of hybridity. In this chapter we attempt to get to grips with the key thinkers
that have explored this terrain, notably Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour.
We look at how their writings, emerging out of science and technology studies,
have mingled with the work of Ulrich Beck and gone on to help stimulate a
series of posthumanist interventions across the humanities, social sciences and
now into the natural sciences.
As we shall see in this chapter, the interventions of Latour, Haraway and Beck
unsettle. They suggest (in different ways) that the boundaries policed by con-
ventional environmental analysis have been decisively breached … and there
is no way back. All suggest that conventional views of “humanity,” “Nature,”
and “society” are obsolete. All argue that the material worlds we are living in
are uncanny and risky worlds, characterized by all manner of boundary break-
downs and border crossings and populated by all manner of strange sociotech-
nical assemblages, cyborgs and companion species. Perhaps most troubling,
though, for classic environmental analysis is the claim that what follows from
this condition is that neither “nature” nor “science” nor “limits” can have the

115
116 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

last word in resolving our environmental dilemmas. Rather, all these thinkers,
in different ways, have suggested that environmental politics now is irreducibly
a debate about the making of natures in the plural. It is argued that what fol-
lows from this is that we need a fundamentally different kind of environmental
politics, an experimental politics, to develop a very different understanding of
democracy, science and possible socio-ecological futures. This chapter moves
from Latour, to Haraway to Beck, and we conclude with a review of the recent
explosion of interest in vital materialism and “object-orientated ontology” that
has followed in the wake of their work. Let us begin first by briefly tracing the
history of the term that binds Haraway and Latour: hybridity.

Hybridity

The word hybrid is derived from the Latin word hybridia and has a complex
history. Used rarely for most of its history, the term has most often referred to
animal and plant half-breeds. As Steve Hinchliffe (2007:50) has observed, in
English, the most frequent traditional reference was to swine when the piglet
was the offspring of a domesticated sow and a wild boar. It is also a word pos-
sibly related to the Greek hubris, which can mean pride but can also refer to
an “outrage against nature” (Kingsbury, 2009:75). Noel Kingsbury notes that
the word draws on an historical belief sometimes rooted in the Old Testament
that sexual intercourse between different breeds was “an immoral perver-
sion.” From the late-18th century onward, hybridity was increasingly used to
refer to social phenomena that mix elements of “society” and “nature” that
were previously understood to be “naturally” separate. The term often came
to refer to problematic, inauthentic or unnatural combinations of genuine or
“natural types” – plants, animals, humans, “races,” genders. This situation, of
course, had ramifications relative to “race” mixing. Synonyms used for hybrid
in the early-19th century included the terms “mulatto,” “quadroon” and “half-
breed.” This pejorative use of the term hybrid is obviously connected to the
rise of modern racism and white supremacy. It is also connected to patriarchal
anxieties that traditional gender roles might be challenged by demands for
“unnatural mixing” between women whose “natural talents” were assumed
to be reproductive and domestic, with the “natural talents” of men that were
assumed to be productive and public. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provides
one of the most subtle 19th-century inquiries into these anxieties about such
entanglements.
If a dominant use of the term hybrid then can be seen to be deeply pejora-
tive, we can also locate a more playful tradition that celebrates potential pleas-
ures in tangled connections. Kingsbury notes that from Shakespeare onward,
a growing Renaissance sense that plants might cross natural boundaries was
widely used as suggestive and humorous literary metaphors for transgressive
sexual behavior (Kingsbury, 2009:76). The view that the hybrid identities
 Hybridities and Agencies 117

imposed on subjugated peoples might open new vantage points to view the
world is an implicit theme of W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk and
Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. It continues to inform contemporary
discussions in queer theory and transgender studies. Key figures in the develop-
ment of postcolonial discourse, most notably Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha
and Salman Rushdie have also used the term hybridization in a more posi-
tive light to understand the longstanding historical entanglements of human
cultures, languages and politics. These approaches to hybridity problematize
historical narratives focused purely on the nation–state and they seek to open
up and map the diverse mixings and movements of people across history and
culture. Ideas of cultural hybridity have also been used more recently in glo-
balization literatures to think about the cultural mixings that are persistently
produced by global interactions: from fusion cooking to hip-hop, Bollywood
to hyphenated identities.
For contemporary environmental studies, there have been two further con-
verging and sometimes entangled discussions associated with hybrid imagi-
naries and ontologies. First, discussions of hybridity have become particularly
significant of late within science and technology studies. Science and technol-
ogy studies, or “STS,” is a post-disciplinary field that has largely emerged out
of a series of engagements between sociologists, anthropologists, historians of
science and natural scientists. Rather than view the natural sciences as offer-
ing a straightforwardly objective “view from nowhere” (scientism) or viewing
technology as machines and instruments which drive social change (techno-
logical determinism), STS brings science and technology into history, politics
and society – and society, politics and history into technology and science.
Classic debates in STS explored the social shaping or social construction of
science and technology.
Haraway and Latour’s writings, though, are of particular interest as they
have argued that reality must be conceptualized as co-shaped and co-produced
by all manner of social, material and ecological processes. If many older debates
in STS tended to default into a flat social constructionism that presented nature
as a malleable surface overwhelmingly subject to social transformation, the
focus has now turned to taking the liveliness, surprises, “agency” and recalci-
trance of natures, beings and objects seriously. Second, as we shall see, this turn
in STS has striking points of overlap with certain “new materialist” currents
that have emerged out of continental philosophy over the last decade inspired
by Spinoza, Deleuze, Stengers and Guttari, as well as Haraway and Latour.

Bruno Latour: We Have Never Been Modern

Bruno Latour is one of the key contemporary figures recognized for introduc-
ing the term hybridity into STS and environmental studies (see Latour, 1993,
2004). His core argument is expressed in his now classic work We Have Never
118 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Been Modern (1993). In this text Latour argues that hybridity is explicitly a
problem for modernity because the modern world was founded on an implicit
agreement to separate nature and the practice of science from society and the
practice of politics. Latour refers to this moment as “the modern constitution.”
He locates the beginnings of this worldview to 17th-century England and the
approaches to studying politics and nature that emerge out of the writings of
the political theorist Thomas Hobbes and the natural scientist Robert Boyle.
Boyle and his colleagues in the Royal Society begin to anticipate the rise of
modern experimental science by speaking of a nature that exists independently
of the speaker. In his own writings, Hobbes began to think about the origins
of social and political order in terms of human conflicts and agreements. For
Latour, this marking out of territory eventually generated a sharp separation
between nature and society. The first element of the modern constitution is
that nature is assumed to preexist and transcend us, while society is presented
as wholly the product of our actions. The second element of the modern con-
stitution – held simultaneously – is that we produce nature in the form of our
understanding of natural laws as the product of our actions in scientific labo-
ratories while society is assumed to preexist and transcend us, because no one
can survive without or outside of it.
Latour maintains a constitutional tension lies in the fact that we produce
nature and our knowledge of it but deny our role in that process, and the
fact that we do not produce society but rather inherit the knowledge and
practices it imparts on us while acting as if we do produce society. Latour
argues that what nevertheless holds this modernist worldview together is
a sharp demarcation of modern disciplines and modern worldviews. The
modern world requires that we never let the fact that we’ve been active in
the production of environments, ecologies and scientific knowledges come
into contact with our efforts to produce or change the nature of society and
politics.
The paradoxical effort to hold nature and science separate from society
and politics is obvious in the worlds of health policy or social policy, engi-
neering or environmental concerns, where these knowledges are constantly
mixed together. Moreover, in productive economic activities and reproduc-
tive domestic ones, “society” and “nature” are persistently mixed. We Have
Never Been Modern points out that two hundred or more years of mixing
natures, sciences, societies and politics – while treating one set of these mixed
products as natural and another set as social – has generated a world where
it is next to impossible for the natural sciences, social sciences and humani-
ties to continue these practices. Our ecologies, bodies, technologies, selves,
knowledges, infrastructures and even our values are all now undeniably
products of sociotechnical activity and prior rounds of socionatural engage-
ment (see Chapter 2 for elaboration of this basic argument).
The core of hybrid scholarship is, therefore, to reject the modern consti-
tution. We Have Never Been Modern claims that we have never really lived
 Hybridities and Agencies 119

in worlds where nature sits “over there” and society “over here” and never
the twain shall meet. The template that moderns placed on the world may
have generated useful knowledge and ways to engage with this world at one
time. However, Latour shows that it is now falling apart. And any engage-
ment with social or environmental issues demonstrates on a daily basis the
impossibility of holding “the natural” and “the social” separate. Just pick
up a newspaper, Latour says in We Have Never Been Modern, and you will
find yourself immediately thrown into hybrid worlds, entangled worlds. As
he observes:

The smallest AIDS virus takes you from sex to the unconscious, then to
Africa, tissue cultures, DNA and San Francisco, but the analysts, thinkers,
journalists and decision-makers will slice the delicate network traced by
the virus for you into tidy compartments. Where you will find only science,
only economy, only social phenomena, only local news, only sentiment,
only sex. Press the most innocent aerosol button and you’ll be heading for
the Antarctic, and from there to the University of California at Irvine, the
mountain ranges of Lyon, the chemistry of inert gases, and then maybe to
the United Nations. (Latour, 1993:2–3)

Latour observes that modern environmental debates in particular, provide

striking examples of the limits of modernity and modernist ways of knowing.
Environmental degradation generates the call from romantic environmentalists
that we must “save” something called “nature” from something called “society.”
Yet these same environmentalists instruct us to get rid of dualist worldviews
while framing the very problem in profoundly dualist ways. And all the while
that this debate is going on, we become more and more aware that we live in
worlds of multiple hybrid objects. They keep on popping up: from ozone layers
to genetically modified crops, prosthetic implants to histories of modified land-
scapes. Are they social? Are they natural? Attempts to understand this hybrid
world through the purification of objects and subjects into boxes labeled “soci-
ety” or “nature” has limited utility. Nevertheless, we are stuffed full of universi-
ties containing disciplines that have been carved out of society-nature dualisms.
And these disciplines where the natural sciences sit on this side of campus and
the social sciences sit on the other side, the applied sciences and the humani-
ties sit elsewhere, are simply not up to grappling with many of the problems
thrown up by the entangled worlds we live in. They are either too partial to
be effective in policy terms or they are informed by reductionist worldviews
that displace problems from one element of a hybrid phenomenon onto oth-
ers, sometimes making situations worse! In short, from a Latourian worldview,
it should be evident that the dualist traditions of classic social theory or the
foundations of neo-Malthusian or limits-oriented environmentalisms have to
be viewed as profoundly inadequate for investigating our unfolding, mixed up,
entangled hybrid worlds.
120 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Latour and Actor-Network Theory

How does Bruno Latour propose that we understand and investigate our con-
temporary world? Having diagnosed the problem, much of Latour’s work over
the last 20 years has suggested we need new metaphors and new methods
more suitable for thinking about social-ecological-technological relations.
Latour has suggested – at different times – that the concept of “networks”
(1993), or more recently “assemblages” (2004, 2005), provide more dynamic
and fluid  means of building an “amodern” ontology that will capture our
hybrid relations.
Latour maintains it is productive to think of our hybrid worlds in terms of
multiple larger and smaller “assemblages” that draw together human beings,
physical objects, measuring devices, nonhuman entities and so on for longer or
shorter periods of time and space. We can more productively think about and
explore our world, he argues, if we see it in terms of a multitude of overlapping
and shifting technological, scientific, cultural, political, institutional, urban and
other kinds of networks or assemblages stretching near and far, more or less
permanently, across the globe. Let’s give a concrete example of this Latourian
way of thinking.
Consider any object placed around you, say the chair that you are sitting
on. We can think of this in realist terms as simply an immediately bounded
material presence. We can think of it as a social construction that modern
Western culture has generated as an object necessary for comfort in the home
but one that might not be viewed as necessary or comfortable in a Japanese
home If we think of it in Latourian terms, it is both of these. It is material
and cultural, but also porous and entangled. From a Latourian worldview a
chair is certainly a cultural object with a cultural history and a material object
that has a physicality that allows some ways of slouching rather than others.
However, it is also an entangled object that sits in relationship with a whole
series of other objects and relations or assemblages. The chair is made possible
by a range of resources – metals and chemicals (plastics), possibly animal (e.g.,
leather) or ecological (wood, cotton etc.), technological capacities, calculating
and measuring devices, milling and molding machines, industrial stains and
resins, and fleshy and coordinated humans with their labor and social rela-
tions. Quickly then we can see a chair emerge as a Latourian assemblage that
can takes us from your chair to the forest in Indonesia where the wood came
from and every point in between. This assemblage then reveals how many
complex, lively objects and presences have to come together to make the chair
you are sitting on possible.
One of Latour’s concerns, and the politically hopeful side of his project,
is with the potential malleability of this kind of network. While the hybrid-
ity of a chair might now seem obvious, and possibly facile, Latour’s purpose
in unpacking hybrid assemblages lies less in the description and more in the
effort to understand the breadth of opportunities for intervention when the
 Hybridities and Agencies 121

conditions and relationships under investigation are accepted as problematic.

While many of the relationships contributing to the generation of a desirable
or problematic assemblage are hard to alter, many are not. Therefore, the view
from actor-network theory is that this presents opportunities for action.
A second moment of complexity that Latour introduces is the claim that
these networks or assemblages are best thought of as always comprised of
lively and active agencies of many types. Here, Latour is directly challeng-
ing anthropocentric modes of thinking long dominant in sociology. Modern
social theory places either active, interpretive human subjects or a meta-social
subject – say, “society,” “capitalism,” or “modernization” – at the center of all
things, leaving everything else passive. Latour argues that humans are not the
only active agencies in the world. He wants to emphasize that human action
is predicated on and inescapably enabled by relationships with nonhumans:
animals, landscapes, microbes, weather, technological artifacts, buildings and
so on. It is important to attend to these nonhuman elements of everyday life,
and the networks that produce and reproduce them, because they can enable
or resist our plans and projects.
Consider for example the ways we move through everyday life. From the
moment we wake up in the morning, our actions are entangled with a whole set
of technologies, processes, energy systems and pathways that have to be suc-
cessfully brought together in stabilized networks without which we could not
successfully get out of bed, turn off the alarm clock, use the bathroom, make
breakfast, get to work and so forth. In his wry and amusing essay “Where
Are the Missing Masses? A Sociology of Mundane Objects” (1992), Latour
encourages us to think about all these objects we encounter in everyday life,
from key chains to door openers, automotive alarm systems that remind us to
put on our seatbelts and a massive range of other things that foster and resist
our decisions and actions.
This kind of analysis leads Latour to claim that human agency is always
premised on working with and through multiple networks that can never be
adequately thought of as a simply individual or social affairs. “Things” that
already affect our lives can no longer be “objects” in this perspective; they must
be “quasi-objects” or “actants.” Furthermore, if human agency is so powerfully
enabled and constrained by rich forms of material networking then we, too,
are “actants” or, as he put it, “quasi-subjects.”

Doing Actor-Network Theory

Latour maintains that the constant evoking of “society” as the causal ele-
ment in social explanation is a form of social reductionism as problematic as
any form of naturalistic reductionism. The manner in which so-called criti-
cal sociology persistently makes use of meta-categories such as “the State,”
“capital,” “bureaucracy” and so on leaves unexamined all the component
122 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

parts that ­constantly need to be shorn up to make such entities possible. He

maintains that all these entities are part of larger and smaller socio-ecological
technological networks or assemblages.
In terms of doing actor-network theory (ANT), Latour advocates for a kind of
grounded empirical inquiry where ANT researchers generate their findings and
conceptualization based on intimate empirical engagements. Adherents to ANT
are instructed to follow the entanglements of human and nonhuman “actants”
as they work to generate and stabilize networks of association. Actor-network
theory often draws from classic research methods developed in qualitative social
science: fieldwork, participant observation, interviewing, archival work as well
as theoretical and historical reflection are all part of the arsenal. However, in
contrast to humanist traditions of microsociology, the actors studied by ANT
are not simply or even primarily human. Adherents to ANT, following Latour,
refuse to assume that subjects are uniquely active and objects are unavoid-
ably passive in relations between (social) agents and (natural) conditions or
(­science-based) technologies. Rather, ANT takes the stance that humans, natures
and technologies ought to be treated/at least initially/as equal participants, all
enrolled in a network and which (may) contribute in a mutually constitutive
fashion to the generation of the world as we know and relate to it.
In addition to producing philosophical works (Latour, 1993, 2004), Latour’s
career has been marked by a series of empirical research projects. Latour’s
work in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s was focused on producing
ethnographies of engineers and scientists. These explored the ways in which
such groups enrolled technological objects, natural processes, biological enti-
ties and other human actors in their projects. In his early anthropological work
in laboratories (Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Latour, 1987), he focused his inves-
tigation on unpacking taken-for-granted assumptions, theories, technologies
and practices used in everyday scientific activity in the laboratory. This work
has sought to capture the broad range of activities that are involved in science,
from bench science to technology development, grant writing to conference
presentations, technological workarounds to status-driven expert competition.
This ethnographic work illuminated the spectrum of social and material work
that scientists must do and the many negotiations scientists must practice in
order to strengthen the case for the factuality of their research and/or the util-
ity of their results and technical products. He calls this combination of social
and material work networking, a dynamic process where diverse social actors,
manifold technical objects and variously recalcitrant objects of study are
enrolled into a collective, cooperative effort. Successful scientific development,
then, is defined by the stabilization of robust networks able to maintain coher-
ent and generative “internal” socionatural relationships in the face of changes
from within and challenges from outside those relationships. The upshot of
much of this analysis is the claim that everyday practices rely on a remarkable
range of phenomena that are far less stable or have more unstable elements and
nodes than “modern” people expect.
 Hybridities and Agencies 123

A central facet of Latour’s project then is to unpack the socionatural dynam-

ics of apparently stable phenomena. This is intended to show how prone to
instability and collapse our everyday relationships are and how hard it is to
anticipate when any one or more of those networked relationships will become
unstable or collapse. Put another way, Latour’s work has long been about the
instability of a world most “moderns” see as ineluctably structured. The move
to a focus on human and nonhuman assemblages or networks is intended to
undermine the kind of structural fatalism that underpins the kind of Malthusian
discourse we reviewed in Chapter 3 or the type of thinking articulated by politi-
cal economists of the metabolic rift in Chapter 5. In contrast to the binary view
that capitalism needs to be taken down in its entirety to deal with environ-
mental crises, Latour’s world of networks and assemblages suggests we live in
a world of much looser entanglements. It might just be that less work than is
generally imagined might be necessary to produce a world with fewer socion-
atural problems, one that we would find more rich, satisfying and enjoyable.

Donna Haraway: We Have Never Been Human

I think we learn to be worldly by grappling with, rather than generalizing

from the ordinary.
Donna Haraway (2008:3)

The writings of Donna Haraway provide some interesting points of conver-

gence as well as divergence with Latour in the attempt to think about our
hybrid worlds. Haraway is a feminist, with an intellectual background in biol-
ogy, philosophy and social theory. She has played a key role in the develop-
ment of feminist science studies. Philosophically she has been influenced by
Whitehead, Foucault and debates in socialist feminism. Her writings are fur-
ther inspired by feminist science fiction and a wide range of debates from the
1970s and 1980s about race and IQ, the relationship between primates and
humans, and the possibilities and problems of left-environmentalism. Haraway
has long argued for a material semiotic account of society–nature relations.
Her work, moreover, is much more clear and transparent about its political
intent than Latour’s work.
Haraway’s PhD explored the ways that biology shifted paradigms, from
vitalism to mechanistic to organicist worldviews, to understand biological sys-
tems change. This work was published as Crystals, Fabrics and Fields (1976),
and demonstrated the central role that cultural metaphors play in the con-
struction of biological worldviews. Later, Primate Visions (1990) explored the
relationship between scientific narratives told by primatologists about human–
primate relations and Western accounts of race and gender. For all the striking
insights of primatology, scientific engagements with primates rarely shake off
socially conditioned ideas about appropriate masculine and feminine behavior
124 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

and are often as much about who counts as human and how as it is about
primates themselves.
Developing her work from these origins, she has experimented with an ever
more elaborate cast of characters or “figurations” as she prefers – the cyborg,
the coyote, vampires, Oncomouse™ (a laboratory mouse genetically engineered
for use in cancer research patented by DuPont) and “companion species” – to
explore blurring boundaries and even kinship that might be emerging between
humans and machines, humans and animals, culture and nature. These figura-
tions allow Haraway to explore the mixings that, she maintains, are a persis-
tent feature of our hybrid worlds and also to explore the boundary work that
is done to prevent recognition of the “kinship” and intertwined nature that
humans have with these strange creatures. The point of this work is also to get
closer to objects and relationships, to get more worldly and to get more mate-
rial, but in doing so, to demonstrate the material semiotic complexities and
layers that we can see as we get more material.
Unlike Latour, Haraway’s writings have always combined her investigation
of “technoscience” (as she often likes to refer to corporate science and technol-
ogy) and broader “technocultures” (notably our contemporary technology sat-
urated cultures) with a critique of modern capitalism and the ongoing power of
modern hierarchies relative to gender, race, class, compulsory heterosexuality
and scientific, political and economic expertise.
Let us turn then to what is probably Haraway’s most famous single essay
to explore some of these issues. Haraway’s 1985 article, “A Cyborg Manifesto:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” is
a provocative appropriation and redeployment of the traditionally militarist
and masculinist image of the cyborg. In many respects, this essay is an attempt
to remain critical of what Haraway calls “technoscience” while refusing the
rather explicitly antiscience rhetoric adopted by some elements of late 1970s
feminism. Haraway provides us with a form of feminist analysis that wants to
resist feminist technophobia, romanticism and the purist essentialism that has
often defined ecofeminism. The core of the essay insists that what it is to be a
human subject in contemporary times is to be the socialized product of a meld-
ing of sociopolitical and technoscientific reality. Arguing, as Latour does, that
even the semblance of the modern separation of the social, the natural and the
technical is effectively impossible to support, Haraway argues that the cyborg
“skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western
sense” (1991:151). She notes that by:

the late twentieth century in United States scientific culture, the boundary
between human and animal is thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of
uniqueness have been polluted if not turned into amusement parks – lan-
guage, tool use, social behavior, mental events, nothing really convincingly
settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel
the need for such a separation; indeed, many branches of feminist culture
 Hybridities and Agencies 125

affirm the pleasure of connection of human and other living creatures …

The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human
and animal is transgressed. Far from signaling a walling off of people from
other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight cou-
pling … Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous
the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing
and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to
organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we our-
selves frighteningly inert. (1991:151–152)

The implication here is that a core project for political people must lie not
in essentializing the properties of social beings, technical objects or natural
entities, but in exploring the ways that “the human” is always already techno-
natural and thus cyborg. Such a claim may seem odd. But look around you.
Consider the number of children now that are living as a result of in vitro
fertilization or the number of people that are aided by external prosthetics
for limbs, or by internal technologies (cochlear implants, pacemakers, metal
plates). Consider the number of humans who have obtained control over
their reproductive capacities through use of the contraceptive pill, who have
extended their longevity by using insulin or other chemical technologies, who
augment their intellectual, sexual or physical performance through drug use,
from Viagra to alcohol. Consider the range of species, fauna and flora, that
have either been altered by centuries of cross-breeding or recent developments
in genetic modification. Consider Deep Blue, the chess computer that faced and
possibly beat Garry Kasparov. It is in these respects that Haraway argues the
cyborg is “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”
So, how can we think about science and environmental knowledge in the
light of this cyborg worldview? Haraway’s material-semiotics in essence is a
call for modesty and seriousness, an attempt to see the world but also grap-
ple with the messy limitations that always constrain our way of seeing. As she
articulates:

So, I think my problem and “our” problem is how to have, simultaneously

an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and
knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own “semiotic
technologies” for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to
faithful accounts of a “real” world, one that can be partially shared and
that is friendly to earth-wide projects of finite freedom, adequate material
abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited happiness. (Haraway,
1991:187)

Since the cyborg, Haraway has gone on to explore a broad range of socio-
technical relations and phenomena that highlight the hybridity, and sometimes
quite frightening hybridity, of our emerging worlds.
126 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse:
Feminism and Technoscience (1997) provides a stunning, unruly exploration
of the worlds of biotechnology and biomedical research using Oncomouse™,
the world’s first patented animal, as one of the figurations for thinking further
about this world. In this work, Haraway does not flinch from seeing the ways
in which modern biology has become “an accumulation strategy” (1997:14) for
capital. Modest_Witness describes a new rapacious mode of capitalism that is
marked by an “implosion of informatics, biologics and economics” (1997:70),
where large corporations are persistently involved in biopiracy and patenting of
life in their attempt to control biodiversity. Haraway warns that we are seeing
the rise of Nature™ and Culture™ as capitalism is now exercising new forms
of “technobiopower” (1997:57). At the same time, Haraway further unsettles
conventional environmentalist positions by arguing that while we should surely
contest the social relations through which this world is being constructed, and
the interests it serves, there is no way back to purity. We cannot premise our
critical politics on the defense of pure nature. Indeed, she reminds us that many
of biotechnology’s sharpest “radical” critics “forget that anxiety over the pollu-
tion of lineages is at the origins of racist discourse in European cultures as well
as at the heart of linked gender and sexual anxiety” (1997:60).
Oncomouse™ may well represent a world where nature and culture are
“spliced together and enterprised up” (1997:85). Yet, Haraway also suggests
we can feel empathy, kinship and excitement for the creation of these new
beings as well (1997:88). The point then is not to embrace an anticapitalist
politics that resists all in the name of organic purity, but an attempt to envisage
and achieve “a multi-cultural biotechnological commons” (1997:87).
In her most recent work, When Species Meet, we are provided with a multi-
layered analysis of human–dog relations. The text focuses, in painful detail, on all
manner of human–dog interactions, from lab animals to her own interest in train-
ing dogs for sports. Haraway documents entanglements and points of potential
kinship between humans and other companion species. Yet, this is also a text that
does not flinch from confronting difficult questions. She suggests that a serious
approach to exploring multispecies co-flourishing requires us to recognize “killing
as an inescapable part of mortal companion species entanglements” (Haraway,
2008:105‑106). In a world where so many animals are domesticated animals,
there is no final solution to the human–animal questions, no moral absolutes that
can avoid the need to deepen our responsibilities for these entanglements.

Ulrich Beck: The Sociology of Risk

That we live in a hybrid world which transcends our dichotic framework

of thought has convincingly been argued by Latour … I totally agree with
him. … Yet the notion of a “hybrid” world is necessary but insufficient to
understand the new. “Hybrid” is more of a negative than a positive concept.
 Hybridities and Agencies 127

It somehow says what it is not – not nature and not society etc – but it does
not really say what it is. I want to suggest that we have to overcome the
“nots”, “beyonds” and “post” which dominate our thinking. But if you ask
what begins where the ends end, my answer is: the notion of risk and risk
society. (Beck, 2000:221)

The work of Ulrich Beck stands as an interesting sociological counterpart to

the rise of “hybrid worlds” pioneered by Latour, Haraway and others working
in and around STS. If Latour and Haraway both combine large philosophical
and ontological claims about hybridity, they illustrate these claims through
very site-specific anthropological modes of inquiry that occur in very specific
places – the scientific laboratory, corporate literatures on biotechnology, the
dog training sites and so on. Beck’s thinking follows much more in the pattern
of grand social theory.
Beck has argued (in ways that somewhat mirror Latour) that there has been
something of an epochal shift in the experience of modernity over recent dec-
ades. He uses rather different vocabulary to describe this shift. Specifically,
it is argued that we have moved on from “first modernity” (broadly associ-
ated with the Keynesian/Fordist welfare state settlement in the affluent world),
where Beck argues risks were largely calculated and knowable, to increasingly
a second or reflexive modernity. Second modernity is for Beck a “world risk
society” defined by “the explosion of socio-technically-produced rather than
naturally-emergent risks.” He names a world where the chemical, biotechnol-
ogy and nuclear industries (in their civilian and military forms) coupled with
phenomena such as climate change have given rise to literally incalculable risks
whose impacts are potentially universal.
In this world, Beck argues, we cannot go back to the sociologies of first
modernity, their modernist understandings of science or their political philoso-
phies which simply assumed that the environmental problems we are dealing
with today can still be captured and evaluated by 19th-century scientific mod-
els of risk assessment “and industrial assumptions about danger and safety.”
Indeed, Beck suggests these risks persistently demonstrate how the public and
private institutions of first modernity are unable to deal with or respond ade-
quately to such risks. Rather, what we see are growing forms of “organized
irresponsibility.” Organized irresponsibility, for Beck, is captured by the fol-
lowing paradox at the heart of modern institutions:

Risk societies are characterized by the paradox of more and more environ-
mental degradation – perceived and possible – coupled with an expansion of
environmental law and regulation. Yet at the same time, no individual or insti-
tution seems to be held specifically accountable for anything. (Beck, 1999:149)

Despite this rather chilling view of the present, Beck supplements this view
with a rather more optimistic claim that an outcome of entering into risk
128 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

s­ociety is that societies have the possibility to become “reflexive.” What he

means by this is that many matters that were simply not of concern under con-
ditions of first modernity have now become objects of profound public concern
in second modernity. Risk society has created a variety of “subpolitics” in the
forms of numerous environmental and other citizens’ movements which are
increasingly ensuring that “people, expert groups, cultures, nations are getting
involved involuntary at every level of social organization” (Beck, 1999:148).
The positive potential that risk society possibly opens up is a world of
reflexive modernity, a world that could bring risk generation and processes of
hybridization under democratic control. Reflexivity implies that the founda-
tions of modernity, “its activity and its objectives become the object of public,
scientific and political controversy” (Beck, 1999:148–149). And it is this that
Beck, hopefully, refers to as a developing process of ecological democracy.

Democracy, Science and Environmental Politics in a Postnaturalistic

Age

So, what do these interventions in the world seek to achieve? What might they
allow us to do in relation to environmental politics? For Haraway, Latour and
Beck, “nature” can never serve as a final arbiter in hybrid worlds. Indeed, Latour
has rather provocatively argued that environmentalism has to “let go of nature”
because “nature is the chief obstacle that has always hampered the development
of public discourse” (Latour, 2004:9). For all these thinkers, environmental ques-
tions must be opened to a much broader array of participants and knowledge-
making practices than the modern focus on scientific expertise allows. All these
thinkers believe a democratic culture must be informed by science. But they
also argue that many more peoples with differently “situated knowledges” need
to be brought into collective efforts to define environmental problems, develop
scientific research, operationalize research conclusions and implement iterative
policy programs. At its most radical, the argument can be formulated that we
not only need to democratize science but also to bring into democracy discus-
sion about how things – from cell phones to climate change – are assembled. But
how would such an approach help us address issues like climate change?
Latour has argued (2013) that however important it is to address this issue,
there is no easy route back to modernist experts informing passive publics. We
simply have to engage with the science, acknowledge the skill that has gone
into its production, make (always) provisional judgments about its credibility
and bring in as many voices as we can to address the issue of what is to be done.
Latour has argued that climate science – like all science – is made by scientists.
He argues the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) increas-
ingly reports “well-made science,” science that has been constructed at incred-
ibly sophisticated levels bringing more and more agencies, devices, ­measuring
activities and so on into its remit to achieve its aims. As such, while it cannot
 Hybridities and Agencies 129

be presented as the final single truth, the reports of the IPCC provide a com-
plex and rigorous attempt to establish future climate trajectories that provide
enormous and varied levels of evidence for the need for action. However, cli-
mate science and projections are never fully closed down because, as the old
adage has it, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. While
most climate skeptics are sustaining “artificial controversies” (Latour, 2004,
2013), the climate question itself is so substantial that it persistently generates
new controversies, controversies that enroll ever more wide-ranging members
of the public in discussions about possible futures. Moreover, the range of
material activity and scope of persistent unknowns mean that the processes by
which the trajectories of climate change occur continually present scientists,
policy-makers, opponents and the public with surprises. As Latour observes:

Whether you take the world dispute over genetically modified organisms
(GMOs), the calculation of fish stocks, the development of wind turbines, the
redesign of coast lines, the making of clothes, of food, of drugs, of cars, the
redesign of cities, the transformation of agricultural practices, the protection
of wild life, the change in carbon cycle, the role of water vapor or sun spots,
or the monitoring of ice packs – in each case you find matters of concern that
gather within their many contradictory folds varied groups of folks that are
in disagreement, and vast amounts of knowledge that are always necessar-
ily in dispute not because they are not objective but because they transform
everybody’s world. It would have been amazingly naïve to think that such
revolutionary changes in the daily make-up of billions of people might have
been triggered simply by producing more accurate data! (Latour, 2013:116)

Human worlds are irreducibly plural, with many voices trying to be heard, and
climate science at every step invariably brings in more voices. So, what follows
from this is that the embrace of natural limits, sustainable development or the
ecological society cannot come from apocalyptic appeals by experts situated
outside, and above, society. The complexity of the issues and the vast array of
differences in causal contributions, local consequences and the distribution of
remediation costs mean that “we have to decide. That’s why we need politics”
(Latour, 2013:116).

Evaluating the Hybrid Thinking of Latour, Haraway and Beck

The work of Latour and Haraway currently stands in an interesting position in

the environmental social sciences. Their writings have been largely marginal to
the kind of discussions occurring in North American environmental sociology we
reviewed in the last chapter. Nevertheless, Haraway and Latour have had noth-
ing less than a transformative role in intersections of environmental ­geography,
cultural studies and literary theory, poststructuralism, political ecology, food
130 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

studies, animal studies, rural and urban studies and feminist theory. Beck’s work
similarly may have made a modest impact in the US. His influence, however, on
European sociology and public debate has been vast and agenda setting. The
approaches of these thinkers have clearly struck a chord because they capture,
probably more sharply and succinctly than any other current of contemporary
social theory, our entangled world. They open up innovative and inviting lines
of research that can explore and illustrate in innumerable ways how specific
aspects of these worlds are entangled. They would also seem to hold the prom-
ise of opening up political possibilities around socio-­environmental questions.
Having acknowledged the genuine innovations of all these thinkers, let us now
press some critical concerns about the limitations of all these thinkers, starting
in reverse order and beginning with Beck.

Critical Thoughts on Beck – Risk Society or a Society of

Hypochondriacs?

There is no doubt that Beck, who passed away January 1, 2015, was an end-
lessly inventive, challenging and interesting thinker who boldly articulated grand
sociological concepts and social theories in ways that many other sociologists
have shied away from in the last few decades. He produced a remarkable body
of work striking in its conceptual inventiveness and ability to read the social
landscape in a deeply prescient and interesting fashion. There are a number of
concerns, though, that could be raised with how his sociology of risk grapples
with the issue of hybridity and how it then informs environmental analysis.
First, what makes Beck’s sociology so exciting – its grand sweep and oracu-
lar pronouncements about the emergence of new epochs – is also a weakness.
His vision of hybridity as “global risk society” is very general, lacks discrimina-
tion, and is arguably somewhat dark, paranoid and Kafka-esque in its assess-
ments of the impact of the explosion of hybridity as risk. The difference here
between Haraway and Beck is rather striking. Haraway is at pains to argue
that the nature of boundary breakdowns and emerging hybridities has to be
evaluated in their empirical, socio-ecological and ethical specificity. All her
writings emphasize that different kinds of hybridity can be oppressive in their
specificity and other kinds can liberate. Haraway at her best is invaluable in
demonstrating that that there are forms of hybridity – like genetic modifica-
tion or animal enhancement or testing – that are troubling because they con-
tain both liberatory and oppressive moments in their making (see Haraway,
2008:82–84). When hybridity becomes generalized “risk” in Beck’s discourse,
this complexity is rather lost.
It could be additionally argued here that Beck’s work rarely studies environ-
mental problems in their empirical specificity, but rather provides metasocio-
logical generalization about what we might say about the project of modernity
in general based on largely popular readings of environmental problems. These
 Hybridities and Agencies 131

are invariably interesting and insightful readings, but they do mean that Beck
tends to present processes of hybridization-as-risk society as almost universally
dangerous or something to be suspicious about. Linked to this is perhaps a
rather exaggerated claim that risks writ large have become incalculable and
unknowable. To recognize that classic methods of risk assessment are lim-
ited, asocial, sometimes undemocratic, politically biased and often failing to
embrace the complexities presented by lay knowledge, lay assessment and so
on is one thing. The idea that sometimes creeps up in Beck’s writings that we
can make no informed assessments of any risks whatsoever would seem less a
route to “reflexive modernity” and more a route to the hypochondriac society!
Raymond Murphy (2013) has usefully observed that the dangers of this
kind of argument is that rather than give rise to ecological democracy, it can
feed social, political and institutional paralysis. This does mean we do need to
be able to distinguish between “total and partial uncertainty, between igno-
rance and valuable indicate knowledge” (Murphy, 2013:228). The danger with
generalized risk society narratives is that in layering a broad sociological tem-
plate on environmental debates such as climate change, what goes missing is
the seriousness of the empirical and normative discussions that goes on around
these debates.

Critical Thoughts on Latour: Enlightenment, Agency and the Missing

Middle

If the writings of Beck provide us with a Frankfurt School style of critique,

which is critique as a frying pan to the face, the hybrid worlds of Latour are
rolled out via a great blueprint of socionatural complexity and specificity that
can generate other kinds of problems. Latour’s work is provocative, amusing
and sometime quite funny to read. In all his work he positions himself as both
the smartest boy in the room who will annoy the teacher while showing off
his brilliance to fellow students (i.e., us readers) and an iconoclast speaking
fundamental truths to power. This work is not revolutionary in the old hat “get
out of your seat” way, but it is revolutionary in the “rethinking your world in
your armchair” form. While this performance – as it is always a performance
in Latour’s writing – is often wry and sardonic, it has issues.
Let’s turn to We Have Never Been Modern. Latour has unquestionably pro-
duced a deeply provocative and insightful book. At one level he provides a
brilliant critique of certain kinds of modernist discourse (particularly Cartesian
worldviews), certain traditions of the enlightenment, and it does present a
compelling alternative account of our socio-ecological and technological
worlds. At the same time, this is a text that involves various polemical sleights
of hand. Specifically, Latour’s argument with modernity and the enlightenment
relies on a polemical “black boxing” of modernity and enlightenment itself!
For someone who stresses close empirical study over all else, of attending to
132 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

the complexities of the object of study, his reading of the intellectual history
of the Enlightenment or modernity more generally grants it little complexity.
Latour writes about the scientistic and dualistic moment in modernist thought
as if they were straightforward portrayals. However, as everyone from Mary
Shelley to Karl Marx, Max Weber to Raymond Williams, Habermas to W.E.B.
DuBois and Paul Gilroy have argued, modernism and modernity have always
been complex and contradictory phenomena with all kinds of tensions, sub-
currents, silences and internal disputes and contentions. We Have Never Been
Modern is a brilliant argument, but it does somewhat purify what moderns do
in order to achieve its effects.
There is no doubt that Latour’s ANT has opened up some remarkable tools
for exploring hybridity. Actor-network theorists have articulated very influen-
tial critiques of classical social theory, particularly of meso-level social theo-
ries of capitalism, bureaucracy, theories of the state and so on that have been
central to Marxian and Weberian sociology for the last half century. Latour
maintains that all these approaches are full of plenary claims and grand his-
torical horizons that too often drift towards generic, ungrounded assertions.
In contrast, and taking its lead from anthropology, microsociology (notably
ethnomethodology) and the centrality of place-based ideographic research in
much human geography, ANT asserts the primacy of detailed empirical inquiry
focused on very specific case studies. This leads to modes of descriptive inquiry
that construct worlds with the kind of close attention to empirical detail like
that of the models and blueprints produced by chemical or mechanical engi-
neers. This layer upon layer of detail in ANT studies can often result in stud-
ies that capture quite effectively how very specific hybrid worlds come to be
assembled into their current forms. However, there is then a strange quality
to much of this research in that case study research is highly valued, as are
very sweeping ontological meta-discussions about modernity and its trajectory.
Explanatory modes of theorizing that are situated somewhere in between these
levels of analysis are largely ruled out of court. As such, orthodox ANT rather
leaves underanalyzed continuities and stabilities that can be found informing
network construction moving across networks. ANT seems to generate thick
descriptions of the world with layer on layer of detail, but the critical purpose
of this activity often gets lost in the detail.
The matter of “agency” provides a further set of concerns about Latour’s
approach. The manner in which he encourages us to acknowledge that we
live in a lively material world where humans live alongside multiple nonhu-
man presences is, of course, important. Who could deny now the manner in
which modern humans are embodied and embedded in all manner of socio-
technical and socioecological networks? There is no going back from Latour
(or  Haraway) in this regard. However, a good bit of actor-network theory
is so intent on insisting that the presence of nonhuman actants is acknowl-
edged within social theory, that it flattens the liveliness and creativity of vibrant
humans, offering us a rather anthropomorphized account of the nonhuman
 Hybridities and Agencies 133

forces we share the planet with. The principle of symmetry that Latour follows,
insisting that the agency of humans should not be prioritized over nonhumans,
has a shocking quality on first encounter. It is a strategy that pushes back
against sociological reductionism. However, this can then generate work that
hovers between a necessary materialism and a rather Disney-fied vision of the
“agency” of nonhuman forces. To envisage the world as full of multiple active
forces is a useful pushback against flattening forms of social constructionism.
However, flattening the hierarchical terrain of agencies within and between
humans can reach the point where important distinctions between humans and
other actants are rather lost in the analysis (see Pickering, 1995; Laurier and
Philo, 1999; Gross, 2003; Lorimer, 2012).
Such criticisms more generally lead us to some broader sociological concerns
that could be raised with Latour’s thinking and ANT more generally. Notably,
Latour’s tendency to view all consolidated social-ecological-­ technological
forms as dissolving into fluid networks or assemblages would seem, at its core,
to underestimate the sticky obduracy of certain key social processes and insti-
tutional forms that have shaped modernity, notably capital and processes of
capital accumulation, bureaucracy and the advanced institutional divisions
of labor, nation–state boundaries and political interests, patriarchy, racism,
­imperialism, and so on. Some of these phenomena can be studied, and some-
times studied fruitfully, from a Latourian worldview, helping us to see how all
these processes and institution are embedded in and related to nonhumans,
technologies, modes of calculation, ecologies and so on. However, these social
processes, institutional forms and reinforced ideologies have proven rather
more stable, accommodating and emergent on their own terms than actor-
network theorists would have us believe.
Much of Latour’s research here can be seen as adopting these positions
against traditions of French structuralism from Durkheim and Althussser to
Bourdieu. From his early writings on laboratories and technologies, he has coun-
terposed his own deep empiricism with these traditions that he believes too often
misattributed agency to ghostly contextual phenomena: “society,” “the capital-
ist state,” “the habitus.” Latourian approaches to assemblages or networks,
though, find it very difficult to differentiate power relations within and between
networks or assemblages (see Mallavarapu and Prasad, 2006; Watson, 2011). It
could be observed that the diverse global networks that organize finance capital
have been rather more robust over the last 40 years than attempts to establish
global networks for labor, the unemployed, the homeless and the dispossessed.
The fluidity of these networks is a sign of strength more than potential for col-
lapse or remaking. Davos Man would seem to be able to access rather more
robust networks to telegraph their view of the good life than the two billion
people living on two dollars a day. This, of course, is not to claim that the
unemployed do not have agency or the potential capacity to organize and effect
change. It does mean though that this agency always has to confront powerful
networks and interests that seek to derail such ventures. We might say then that
134 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

stabilized networks of sociotechnical association produce stable inequalities and

differences. These are concretized and embodied in and interweave with human
and nonhuman networkings of immediate concern. In Latour’s terms, these net-
works are “acting at a distance” and their immediate presence can be detected.
What goes missing though in much Latourian analysis is the effects stabilized
networks have on actions downstream or elsewhere. These questions have, in
general, not been of empirical interested or conceptual concern.
Let us give some concrete examples here of where power relations seem
to disappear in Latour’s applied research. In Laboratory Life and Science in
Action, Latour follows engineers, lab scientists, grant writers, committee mem-
bers, technological devices, letters and more in order to unpack the richness of
the production of variously stable socionatural relations in scientific practice.
The potential direction that this research agenda could have taken was to fur-
ther open up black-boxed networkings of socionaturalized and sociotechnolog-
ical power relations that generate and reproduce laboratories. The opportunity
existed for Latour to explore not only the positive spaces of sociotechnical
practices but also the negative spaces. In these spaces he could have asked
critical questions about who and what had been excluded in earlier rounds of
sociotechnical engagement and why. His studies could have opened up their
purview more broadly to explore the influence that markets, finance, legacies
of colonialism and gender subordination all have on laboratory spaces and the
science created in these spaces. However, these are not the lines of inquiry that
are followed, and this is due to some significant methodological limitations of
his thinking. Notably, for Latour, people, objects and relationships beyond his
immediate experience are forbidden from entering into his analysis. This means
that work like Latour’s – because it is not committed to what is hidden on
purpose or hidden by tradition or hidden because it was made absent – defines
power in terms of the ability of actors and networks to reproduce patterns of
networked acting. It tends though to be silent about the ways that power is
reproduced and hidden by the reproduction of normalized stable networks.
Unlike Haraway, who is interested in the products and outcomes of tech-
noscientific activity, Latour seems to bracket the results of lab work. He does
not take seriously (or “follow”) the results. He treats results like inscriptions
by devices where the inscriptions are not themselves substantive products
of networkings. Results simply become another, not followed, actant in the
­networkings.
It is important to note that many of these limitations of classic ANT have
been slowly acknowledged by some of its most prominent defenders. Thus, in
a review of the strengths and limits that ANT can make to an understanding of
international relations, the actor-network theorist Andrew Barry has observed:

Actor-network theorists wrongly assumed that the hybrid actor-­networked

world is a world without clear boundaries, divisions or structural ­inequalities
in resources. The world of actor-network theory appears to be a world in
 Hybridities and Agencies 135

which all translations are in principle possible, and structural inequali-

ties are flattened. It is a world of circulating references, fluids and flows,
in which rigid borders do not exist, or are unimportant and untheorised.
(Barry, 2013: 413)

Latour’s more recent work has not been deaf to some of these concerns. In an
adjustment to the once rather imperial claims of actor-network theory (which
seems to announce itself as a theory applicable for all of reality), he has
pulled back considerably. For example, in Reassembling the Social (2005),
Latour argues that some modern processes are characterized by relatively
stable networks, which allow them to be analyzed by conventional socio-
logical categories. In contrast, he has suggested that his own approach is best
used for dealing with unstable and/or emergent socionatural processes that
are thrown into crisis. This is a huge concession for Latour to make to his
critics. Such adjustments, though, to the scope of inquiry that ANT can deal
with does not clarify how a researcher might tell if they are investigating a
stable, decaying or emergent network or what kinds of sociological theories
might be adequate for addressing the kinds of stable networks his early work
sought to open up.

Critical Perspectives on Donna Haraway: Towards a Critical

Hybridity?

Donna Haraway’s work has been subject to some remarkable misreadings over
the years. Her attempt to situate herself between technophilia and technopho-
bia in feminism and environmental thought has led to the misleading view
that she is somehow celebrating all forms of mixing. Her attempt to grasp
the material, semiotic and power-laded features of scientific activity has gen-
erated accusations of relativism, accusations she has strenuously denied (see
Haraway, 1991:187). Her commitment to finding a form of “multi-species”
co-flourishing which acknowledges “contradictory truths,” that we must
find ways to acknowledge the “mortal entanglements” between humans and
nonhumans while also recognizing that animal breeding, hunting, eating and
killing animals is “an inescapable part of mortal companion species entangle-
ments” (2008:105–106), has led to accusations that she is both an antihuman-
ist or excessively humanist. In many critical respects, it is our sense that it is
Haraway’s mode of ethically and critically grasping our entangled worlds that
comes far closer to envisaging a critical hybrid worldview than the work of
Beck or Latour.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Haraway’s critical hybrid worldview in
contrast to Latour is that power, capitalist accumulation, racism, sexism and
imperialism are not only present but driving concerns of her whole body of
work. In contrast to Latour, Haraway insists we cannot engage with the world
136 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

free of any preconceptions. We always have to make a troubled but necessary

understanding of the use of received categories. As such, Haraway does not
abandon critical theory for ethnomethodology, but in her most powerful work
brings them together. It is interesting to note, for example, that in the essays
collected in Simians, Cyborgs and Women (1991) Haraway insists throughout
that there are generalizations about how capitalism functions that lead to the
creation of uneven power relations that affect people the world over. Haraway
argues these “generalizations” “echo and rest on the material social processes
of production and reproduction of human life” (Haraway, 1991:84). For
Haraway, Latour’s refusal to address these powerful dimensions influencing
socionatural relations in modern, capitalist networks of all shapes and sizes is
a refusal to engage in “contests in ideology and practice for who will control
the human means of reproduction … and struggles over technical ingenuity
and co-operative capacities in family and factory” (Haraway, 1991:94). Let us
draw out here certain limits to her thinking and her project.
First, like Latour, much of Haraway’s work primarily moves between
philosophy and anthropology, between ontological abstractions and highly
specific case studies. For Haraway, this anthropological and in some senses
“scientific” commitment to examining the specificities of the case is an intel-
lectual, ethical and political decision. Also like Latour, Haraway’s case studies
pursue not only local conditions but also case-specific patterns of historical,
spatial and discursive hybridizations. Sometimes this movement between dif-
ferent scales of analysis is quite brilliantly developed, but at other times the
connections between her cases and broader transformation occurring in our
socio-ecological relations is elusive. For example, the Haraway of the “Cyborg
Manifesto” takes a discrete slice of reality but from this ends up using the
metaphor or “trope” of the cyborg to make some dramatic and prescient
claims about broader transformation occurring in late-20th-century “informa-
tional capitalism” in the affluent world. Modest_Witness moves from specific
anthropological analyses to make a profound and nuanced critique of the bio-
technologization of life. More recent writings though are marked by a certain
political distancing and focal narrowing. For example, When Species Meet
enriches our understanding of our humanity and our rich historical and mate-
rial connections to lively species, domestic animals and human–dog worlds.
But broader connections that might exist between animal training and human
labor, migration, gender, industrial processes and struggles for social and envi-
ronmental justice are acknowledged as issues but not fully brought into view.
More generally, climate change, biodiversity loss, global economic instability,
commodified cultural homogenization and their relationship to hybrid worlds
are issues that are of deep concern to Haraway but they remain at the back-
drop of her thought and receive little specific attention in Haraway’s recent
articles and books.
Second, let us turn again to the matter of the human and agency. There
is no question that in comparison to Latour, Haraway provides a far more
 Hybridities and Agencies 137

politically sharp critique of the false universalism that has underpinned a

certain masculine, racialized Western-centric, unencumbered and transcen-
dental articulation of “humanism” that has been very influential in Western
thinking and politics. Her work on the cyborg and contemporary cultures
of biotech brilliantly captures how much the contemporary biomedical
and biotechnological industries are informed by a strange fused human-
ism that combines neoliberal dogma and Prometheanism with a “Christian
salvation history” (1997:133) in its promise to overcome all. In the essay
“Universal Donors in a Vampire Culture,” we are offered a sympathetic
critique of an “anti-racist liberal, biological humanism” that held sway in
many scientific circles until the 1970s. While “fatally flawed” in gender and
racial terms, it is acknowledged as a tradition that emphasized “flexibility,
progress, co-operation and universalism.” There are moments, though, in
Haraway’s later writings such as When Species Meet (2008) when the call
to differentiate humans is not held to and a generalized “anthros” as generic
environmental degrader emerges in the narrative. Thus, we are told at one
point in this text: “Facing up to the outrage of human exceptionalism will,
in my view, require severely reducing human demands on the more than
human world and also radically reducing the number of human beings (not
by murder, genocide, racism, war, neglect, disease and starvation – all means
that the daily news shows to be common as sand grains on the beach”
(Haraway, 2008:106).
A final observation that could be made of Haraway’s writings is that
while she is unquestioningly a politically committed writer and her political
vision has been steady and unwavering, the means through which this vision
might move towards more concrete forms has remained rather elusive. It is
our sense that Haraway’s material semiotic investigations open up ways of
thinking across the concerns of social movements from environmental justice
movements to labor, gender to immigration, public health to animal rights
and “science for the ­people” initiatives to critical technology design move-
ments in a way that is more promising than any of the other thinkers we
have looked at in this chapter. Her work insists we develop modes of analysis
of our socio-ecological entanglements that build alternative patterns of asso-
ciation, of gathering together the multiple forces that commit to more lively,
sustainable and fulfilling worlds. Perhaps it is too much to ask of any one
thinker, but questions remain in Haraway’s case as to how this project might
be ­materialized and institutionalized.

Exuberant Ontologies, Vital Materialisms and Decentered Humans

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally,
there’s no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts.
Why should I be concerned? Dr Manhattan, The Watchmen (1986)
138 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Let us conclude this chapter by briefly considering the impact of Latour’s

and Haraway’s writings on recent debates in social philosophy. Over the
last ­
decade Haraway and Latour have been increasingly read alongside
Spinoza, A.N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Isabelle Stengers, Jane Bennett and
Jacques Derrida, giving rise to an ontological and even pronounced real-
ist or new materialist turn in hybrid discussions (see Braun and Whatmore,
2010; Braun, 2008, 2015 for excellent surveys of the field, but additionally
see Morton, 2010, 2013; Bennett, 2010; Clark, 2011). At the risk of doing
violence to a differentiated field, these new “vital materialists” or “object-
oriented ontologists” follow Latour and Haraway, insofar as its proponents
are variously committed to (i) undercutting the “transcendental human
subject” of classic enlightenment humanisms, emphasizing that this human
subject is neither exceptional or bounded, but embedded within the flow
of heterogeneous, broader bio-chemical, social, biological, technological and
ecological assemblages; (ii) championing immanent ontologies that privilege
“intensive over extensive difference” by arguing that “the diversity of things
in the world” are less significant “than the generative processes that consti-
tute them” (Braun, 2015:2); (iii) emphasizing the vibrant, creative, innovative
qualities of matter, the nonlinear nature of time and the open end nature of
physical processes opened up by complexity theory and the new physics (see
Braun, 2008, 2015; Bennett, 2010); and (iv) re-narrating and re-exploring
socionatural, socio-ecological, human–animal relations and sociotechno-
logical relations in light of these claims. In contrast to the anthropological
specificity and boundedness of much of Latour’s and Haraway’s writings,
contemporary vital materialists have been much keener to throw off the yoke
of the prison house of language imposed by poststructuralism. The result of
this has been the explosion of fully blown realist universal hybrid ontologies
that are now drawn at geohistorical or even cosmological scales (see Morton,
2010, 2013; Clark, 2011).
The realist edge of the new vital materialism emerges from the claim that
firm convergences can now be identified between processual, nondeterminist
and nondualist currents of continental philosophy and certain leading-edge
developments in the natural sciences. Deleuze, Latour, Haraway and Whitehead
as such have been presented as shadowing, reinforcing or even anticipating,
variously, endosymbiosis theory in evolutionary biology’ various manifesta-
tions of second generation nonlinear systems theory’ complexity theory and
developments in the Earth sciences. How are these “ontological adventures”
suggesting we rethink modes of socio-ecological analysis? Let us briefly look
at two examples here.
Nigel Clark has argued in Inhuman Nature (2011) that too much work
on hybridity and social nature is in fact still too humanist. In this richly
developed text, Clark argues that if we telescope our environmental histories
out to take a view of socio-ecological relations across geological timescales,
the social production of nature fades fast. A radical asymmetry is revealed
 Hybridities and Agencies 139

between the mundane temporalities of human socio-ecological relations and

an unpredictable and often unknowable nature moving across deep time.
Thus, Clark maps a range of large-scale socio-environmental forces from
tsunamis to earthquakes, shifts in plate tectonics to rapid changes in climate,
to sudden shifts in ecosystem vegetation that reveal “the raw p ­ hysicality” of
the Earth. Moreover, this radical asymmetry places “limits on what is open
to being re-enacted or done differently” (Clark, 2011:57). Humans viewed
from the perspective of geohistory over time are indeed more one force bob-
bing on the sea than a producer of socionatures, as many eco-Marxists would
maintain. Yet, Clark suggests that in the moments when we are confronted
with catastrophic events, we witness a politics of care, infinite generosity and
a spirit of hospitality without limits, which offers new hope for a progressive
politics.
If Clark’s analysis remains planetary-focused at the geological level, Tim
Morton heads towards the cosmos in The Ecological Thought (2010). In this
inventive reworking and expansion of central themes of Haraway and Latour,
Morton argues that our hybrid worlds reveal a world of “infinite connected-
ness.” Displacing society and nature, Morton suggests we now exist within “the
mesh.” For Morton, “all life forms are the mesh, and so are all the dead ones,
as are their habitats, which are also made up of living and nonliving beings”
(Morton, 2010:29). We need to confront the ways in which “all beings are
related to each other negatively and differentially in an open system without
center or edge” (Morton, 2010:39). The claim then is made that in systemati-
cally decentering the human, hybrid approaches can allow much more hetero-
geneity to be seen, for imaginative connections and collaborations between
societies, ecologies, technologies, diverse humans, nonhumans and so on to be
investigated in ways that do not prejudge the human origins of their assem-
blage. Many of these authors seek to argue that this “commotion” of natures,
technologies, humans and nonhumans allows not only many more voices to
be heard, but it also can allow fluid boundaries to be investigated, opening
up many more possibilities for new potential futures. Is this the case though?
Let us explore three concerns that could be raised with this particular turn in
hybrid discussions.
The claim by assorted new materialists that clear convergences across
diverse natural sciences and currents of continental philosophy allow for the
assertion of a unitary realist hybrid ontology is clearly a very provocative asser-
tion. It would constitute an enormous intellectual breakthrough if this were
substantiated. However, there are some reasons for caution. First, it can be
observed that some of the clustering claims of the vital materialists that we
can ascertain a new (poststructuralist) unity of the sciences would seem to
potentially flatten the vast array of disputes and contestations that define sci-
entific discourse, particularly as they head towards the more speculative end of
ontological discussions. The claims of vital materialists also seem to be in ten-
sion with Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Rose’s long-standing insistence that a
140 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

­ onreductionist materialism must see the nature studied by science as a hierar-

n
chy of ­independent levels (biological, physical and chemical), that each level has
unique explanatory principles and that no singular level that is explored by a
particular science offers a point of ultimate reality (see Gould, 1987; Rose, 1997).
The manner in which various vital materialists bolster their claims for the vir-
tues of an emerging singular unitary ontology by drawing metaphors from
diverse natural sciences together, reading these metaphors in realist and literal-
ist ways and insisting on their commonality (beyond the specific disciplinary
conditions of their emergence), seems to not only involve sidestepping ques-
tions as to whether scientific knowledges generated at very different levels of
analysis and for very different purposes can be lumped together but also side-
step questions about the material-semiotics of scientific metaphors (Haraway,
1991; Benton, 1994; Kirkman, 1997). As Robert Kirkman observes, scientific
metaphors come from the social and are used in diverse natural sciences to offer
“specific solutions to specific problems.” The same metaphor – from symbiosis
to mutualism to non-equilibrium relations – as such can be used in different
scientific fields, in very different ways, to capture very different processes and
relations. And outside these concepts, they are “fish out of water” (see Gould,
1997; Kirkman, 1997). A related complication that can be added here is that
increasingly scientific metaphors, from computer languages to concepts in resil-
ience ecology, come into specific sciences with a great deal of social baggage
because they are emergent from and deeply entangled in the production and
reproduction of neoliberalism (Galloway, 2013; Reid, 2013; Nelson, 2014).
This does not mean, of course, that such metaphors are reducible to such points
of origin (Braun, 2015; Nelson, 2014), nor does it mean that tracing connec-
tions and commonalities between the social and the ecological, the natural sci-
ences and philosophy, should be discouraged. It is of course essential, but if
scientific metaphors have to be seen as attempts to grasp real material processes
and events but are also always social and situated (Haraway, 1991), this would
suggest the need for caution when humanist scholars present developments in
the “the new physics” as affirming Deleuze’s or Latour’s ontological worldview.
Second, many currents of vital materialism have sought to displace a histori-
cal and geographical materialism that has the social metabolism with nature
mediated through labor as the central focus of hybrid scholarship to the vital
materiality of “life itself.” It can be observed, though, that one result of this
maneuver is that laboring, situated human beings, in all their stratified power
relations, tend to fade from view in modes of socio-ecological analysis that
follow these “ontologically egalitarian” assumptions. With this displacement
of labor, it is the spaces of the museum, the laboratory, sci-art installations, the
conservation center, developments in computer coding, the petri dish or the
cosmos at large that have increasingly become sites for vital materialist scholar-
ship. Hybrid humans laboring in the factory, the office cubical, the workplace,
the sweatshop, the farm, the battered women’s shelter or the internment camp,
struggling over conditions of work, sometimes brutalized by the “vitality of
 Hybridities and Agencies 141

nature” or attempting to envisage new conditions of production, have fallen

into the background of these discussions. In moving from Haraway’s cyborg,
which might be understood as articulating an entangled human situated, nego-
tiating and metabolizing with informational/bio capitalism, to Clark’s geohis-
tories of inhuman nature, to Morton’s cosmological world of the Mesh, there is
a danger that one loses what Haraway refers to as the “earthliness” of differen-
tiated hybrid humans, and their political concerns are replaced by a flat, decen-
tered hybrid social subject dissipated through a hybrid ontological horizon
and considered across timescales that are politically meaningless. As Haraway
observes, in biotech capital, the sources of surplus value “can’t be theorized
as human labor power exclusively,”; however, as she does note, “that’s got to
remain part of what we are trying to figure out. We can’t lose track of human
labor” (Haraway, cited in Loftus, 2012:16).
Finally, it could be noted that abstract “life” itself may win in the new
vital materialisms, but it is not really clear how much the social and politi-
cal ­discourse or the anthros who has never had voice actually gains from an
insistence that we acknowledge the lively materiality of nonhuman nature.
Indeed, like the disinterested gaze of Dr. Manhattan in The Watchmen, who
concludes he is rather bored with human beings and their petty concerns
(having realized the superhuman power to reorganize matter itself), it is not
clear how vital materialist modes of analysis moving from up from the vital
liveliness of biochemistry to the vital liveliness of the cosmos can sustain
interest in the everyday social and environmental concerns of decentered
humans and their politics. Viewed across geohistorical or cosmological hori-
zons, after all, (human) political debates about health and safety at work, or
a lack of childcare, the distribution of power and control in the economy,
the quality of civic life, air pollution, anthropogenic climate change and so
on are all rather irrelevant. Indeed, and as we observed in Chapter 1, it is
not clear that any coherent account of politics, anthropogenic environmental
change or, indeed, “environmental problems” can be maintained from geo-
historical or cosmological vantage points that proclaim to have torn them-
selves out of mere “human-­centered” perspectives. The dilemma here would
seem to be that to the extent that vital materialists seek to return to the holy
grail of deep ecology – the ultimate non-anthropocentric worldview – we
could well just end up with a view from everywhere and nowhere. Haraway,
again, would seem to put her finger on the basic dilemma that hovers when
she observes:

Well, it is people who are ethical, not these non human entities … [there] …
is a kind of anthropomorphizing of the nonhuman … that we must be
wary of. Our relationality is not of the same kind of being. It is people
who have emotional, ethical, political, and cognitive responsibilities inside
these worlds. But non-humans are active not passive resources or products.
(Haraway, 2000:134)
142 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Conclusion

In this chapter we have (1) tried to review the strengths and weaknesses of the
work of Latour, Haraway and Beck and (very) briefly touch on further devel-
opments that have occurred in vital materialism and object-oriented ontology.
We have suggested in this chapter that in many ways, this remarkably crea-
tive literature has challenged foundational assumptions of the social sciences
and the environmental social sciences and confronting the challenge they pose
to particular forms of romantic environmentalism is particularly pressing (see
White and Wilbert, 2009). We live in a world of boundary breakdowns and
porous relations, and these have to be negotiated. However, (2) we have also
raised some sharp reservations with what we see as certain excessive claims
that also swirl around this literature. In a broad political context, where the
imperial claims of the life sciences increasingly converge with neo-liberal drives
to commodify and patent all of life (see Haraway, 1997), in an intellectual con-
text where all humanist forms of knowledge that cannot generate market value
are devalued, and in a neoliberal context where human subjects as political
actors capable of transforming their sociopolitical and socio-ecological con-
texts is persistently denied, a degree of care needs to be taken as to how hybrid
discourse proceeds.
It is for this reason that we have argued across this chapter that (3) a hybrid
analysis has to go hand in hand with a critical sensibility of the kind that
Haraway’s best work demonstrates. As Haraway insists (1997), attention has to
be given to the diverse power relations through which hybrid knowledges and
practices negotiate or flattening qualities and reductionist dangers can emerge
which could render hybrid literatures every bit as problematic as Malthusian
thinking or deep ecology. The desire to challenge the social-­centricism of the
19th-century social sciences is all very well, but if this merely leads to an implo-
sion of “the social” or “the human,” as Ted Benton has underlined (1994, and
see Chapter 1), the gains achieved by the critical social sciences over the last
century will be lost. Capturing the vitality, liveliness and creativity of our mate-
rial world can have insights, but if this is not combined with an acknowledge-
ment of the lively, vital, potential creativity of situated hybrid humans as world
makers through politics, then the result of hybrid work could simply reinforce
the neoliberal view that we live in a world largely out of our control. If dis-
courses of hybrid worlds that are coming into being only accent out of control
“risk societies,” “inhuman natures,” “vital materialisms” and passive subjects,
then Alain Badiou’s and Erik Swyngedouw’s worry that ecology could become
a “gigantic operation in the de-politicization of subjects” is not without some
foundation (Badiou, 2008; cf. Swyngedouw, 2013).
 7
Culture, Spaces, Power: From
Environmental Justice to Urban
Political Ecologies

In this chapter, we bring discussions of socio-environmental entanglements

back down to earth by exploring the contributions that recent currents of
labor/environmental histories, queer ecology, environmental justice ­studies
and urban political ecology have made to understanding socionatural
­mixings. Many of these literatures are rather more modest in their ontological
claims than the claims of vital materialists that we surveyed in the last chap-
ter. Indeed, in the case of environmental justice studies, research frequently
­proceeds through the use of conventional social scientific assumptions and
methods. Nevertheless, we suggest in this chapter that all these literatures
offer a distinctly Earthly, situated and materialist view of hybridity. We will
see in this chapter that as one moves “closer to the ground,” some kinds of
people count far more than others in terms of who is most impacted by “envi-
ronmental bads,” whose understanding of environmental problems are legiti-
mated and heard, and who pays the intended and unintended costs of how
hybrid natures are made, saved, restored, protected and conserved. We will
suggest that what is brought into view by these literatures is a rather more
critical view of power, politics and hybridity. This often implicit rather than
explicit view of a critical hybrid politics is nicely captured by the late environ-
mental justice activist Dana Alston, who once observed that for many envi-
ronmental justice activists:

the issues of the environment do not stand-alone by themselves. They are

not narrowly defined. Our vision of the environment is woven into an over-
all framework of social, racial and economic justice. … The Environment,
for us is where we live, where we work and where we play. The environment

143
144 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

affords us the platform to address the critical issues of our time: questions of
militarism and defense policy; religious freedom, cultural survival; energy-
sustainable development; the future of our cities; transportation, housing;
land and sovereignty rights; self-determination; employment – and we can
go on and on. (Dana Alston cited in Gottlieb, 2005:34)

If it is lively but differentiated and entangled humans that are accented in this
literature perhaps more so than lively natures, nevertheless it is the hybrid
entanglements and struggles occurring around work, labor, gender, sexuality,
race and ecology that are all brought to the fore.

Creative Historical Ecologies: Rereading the Historical Relations

between Environmental History, Labor, Gender, Sexuality and Race

In Chapter 2 of this book we explored how many classic environmental histo-

ries of the Americas have largely been informed by a backdrop “declensionist
narrative” that tells stories of environmental sin and potential expulsion from
“our” original global Eden. The declensionist narrative begins with the vision
of the world outside of Europe – but especially that of the Americas – as vast,
open landscapes containing authentic ecological terrains that were – at most –
lightly but sustainably tended by native peoples. It then goes on to map a tale
of decline by a generic human as “environmental degrader” following this. We
have already established numerous limitations of this discourse. Most notably,
we saw in Chapter 2 that it now appears the pre-Columbia Americas were
much more heavily populated and more substantially transformed than previ-
ously assumed, ecosystems were certainly not adequately understood in static
equilibrium terms and people, ecologies, diverse nonhumans and technologies
were in fact enfolded in all manner of complex hybrid relations with some-
times beneficial and sometimes problematic results. A second wave of revi-
sionist thinking emerging out of environmental history of late (see Gottlieb,
1993/2005; Stradling, 1999; Taylor, 2009; Montrie, 2011) is interesting for the
manner in which it has opened up another layer to this discussion by draw-
ing attention to the missing environmental histories of women, working-class,
African-American, Latino/a, nonwhite groups as well as urban dwellers.
Dorcetta Taylor’s The Environment and the People in American Cities 1600–
1900 (2009) and Chad Montrie’s A People’s History of Environmentalism in
the United States (2011) are of considerable interest here. Both argue that
much conventional 19th-century US environmental history has failed to docu-
ment the critical role that urban working people and movements played in
fighting for access to parks, gardens, unregulated green space and, indeed,
wilderness as a respite from the disciplining rhythms of the factory and the
squalor of the industrial city. Montrie examines a range of different groupings,
from Lowell Mill Girls to working class sportsmen’s clubs raising concerns
 Culture, Spaces, Power 145

about air and water pollution, to forms of union organizing focused on the
rights to outdoor recreation. He suggests it was often workers’ movements
and women who pushed for environmental regulations in the 19th-century
US. Taylor and Montrie acknowledge that memberships in explicitly preser-
vationist and conservationist organizations were overwhelmingly white, male,
­well-off and educated. This fact had real consequences for the visions of nature,
resources, parks and wilderness embraced and sought to be saved and man-
aged within these organizations. However, Taylor and Montrie have also dem-
onstrated that, in the US, a great deal of what activists and scholars since the
1960s would now call “environmental activism” was in fact being executed –
under different names and auspices by working-class immigrants as well as
women, trade unions and others.
Much of this new historical writing is clearly in debt to Robert Gottlieb’s
critically important text Forcing the Spring (1993/2005). Gottlieb argues that
from the 1880s to the 1920s, what we would now understand as “environmen-
tal problems” played a much more prominent role in urban working-class social
and political agitation in US cities than is commonly recognized. Contaminated
water supplies, inadequate sewage, sanitation and housing and workplace pol-
lution were all of central concern to “sewer socialists,” middle-class reform-
ers and emerging currents of feminism such as the Hull House Settlements
Movement in Chicago. On similar lines, Stradling (1999) has captured the
central importance that women played in the rise of the smokestack abate-
ment movement of the late-19th and early-20th century in the US. Growing
points of convergence between labor history and environmental history have
also demonstrated that the historical development of preservationist, conser-
vationist and antipollution movements, legislation and state bureaucracies is
far more complicated – and interesting – than generally presented. This work
has certainly underlined the observation that a great deal of environmentalism
and public land management in the US has had origins in a rather nationalist
and exclusionary vision of “nature preserved and protected for the right kinds
of people.” The establishment of many national parks in the US involved auto-
cratically displacing and resettling less powerful groups with scant compensa-
tion. As Paul S. Sutter observed:

In a diverse array of studies that have appeared during the past decade or so,
U.S. environmental historians have located groups on the margins who have
been mistreated by the U.S. conservation state – American Indians, Hispano
farmers, African American freed people, immigrant hunters and fishers,
small-scale pastoralists, rural workers, and others who found that state
conservation policies often worked to enclose various commons lands and
resources to which they previously had enjoyed access. (Sutter, 2011:546)

The writings of Gottlieb, Taylor, Montrie and others also document that there
have been critical moments in the rise of environmental consciousness in the
146 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

US when working-class and minority communities were involved in self-

organized cleanup of industrial sites, when they pushed for legislation to gain
increased leisure activities and public health options, and when they pursued
policies to regulate public and private land uses to maintain fishing waters and
hunting grounds. Of course, voices were regularly blocked or suppressed in
the advance of the conservation state. Gottlieb’s (2005) work again is of par-
ticular interest for demonstrating that the forms the conservation state took in
the ­20th-century US cannot be seen as just given or predetermined, but as the
product of battles won and lost. Indeed, a range of alternative moments and
paths not taken can be glimpsed and recovered that advocated for far more
democratic kinds of land management and far more inclusionary access poli-
cies to land than that which prevailed.
For example, Gottlieb observes many Mormon communities that settled
in the American West were influenced by utopian ideals that advocated com-
munal ownership of dams and cooperative management of land and water
(Gottlieb, 2005:52). The populist perspectives which were written into and
used to legitimate the Homestead, Desert Land, and Reclamation Acts in the US
during the half-century between 1860 and 1910 all contained elements com-
mitted to democratic communitarian self-determination. Gottlieb’s research
has also drawn attention to the ways in which, now forgotten, figures such as
Robert Marshall generated many rich debates about the potential relationship
between diverse peoples, democracy and wilderness that could have generated
a much more inclusive conservation state.
Marshall was author of The People’s Forests (1933), one of the founders of
The Wilderness Society and for a period in the era of the New Deal, the head
of an Outdoor and Recreation Service of the US Forest Service. He argued
for rigorous protection of wilderness areas from development, but neverthe-
less he also sought to transcend an elitist and narrow conceptualization of
the emerging National Parks as playgrounds for the wealthy. In contrast to
Teddy Roosevelt’s brand of progressive conservationism, Marshall envisaged a
“democratic wilderness” policy where multiple use programs would not only
serve resource extraction industries but also the recreational and spiritual
needs of “everyday” men, women and their children. In The People’s Forests,
Marshall argued that wilderness should be open to all citizens and protected
by large-scale public ownership in a manner that situated environmental pro-
tection within the broader context of social welfare and justice. This would
involve “a new labor and rural economic development strategy and careful
land use planning, more research and science, and safeguarding recreational
values from ‘commercial exploitation’” (Gottlieb, 2005:49). Marshall went on
to advocate a vision of wilderness where there is minimal development; pro-
tection from further encroachments of roads, commercial timber cutting and
occupancy and “subsidized transportation to public forests for low-income
people, operating public camps where groups of underprivileged people could
enjoy the outdoors for a nominal cost; changing Forest Service practices that
 Culture, Spaces, Power 147

discriminated against blacks, Jews, and other minorities, and acquiring more
forest land near urban centers” (Gottlieb, 2005:50).
Indeed, Montrie observes that in the fall of 1965, it was the United
Autoworkers that hosted a conference on clean water. And although it was the
largest meeting on that issue up to that date, “not a single American environ-
mental history textbook or course reader mentions this” (Montrie, 2011:5).
If all the work we have reviewed thus far demonstrates that the imprint of
class, race and gender struggles are all imprinted on the environment, recent
work around “queer ecology” marks an important addition to this literature
in demonstrating the range of ways in which park management and landscape
management can be said to contain “heteronormative” assumptions. Bringing
Foucauldian themes into conversation with queer theory, Catriona Mortimer-
Sandilands and her colleagues have powerfully demonstrated that “many mod-
ern formations of natural space – including parks and other designated nature
spaces – are organized by prevalent assumptions about sexuality, and espe-
cially a move to institutionalize heterosexuality by linking it to particular envi-
ronmental practices” (see Mortimer-Sandilands, 2005; Mortimer-Sandilands
and Erikson, 2010). Such work highlights the normative assumptions embed-
ded within the production of natural landscapes, recreational activities and
tourist viewsheds, and which are also often enforced by representatives of the
state. This element comes through most clearly in Sandilands’ discussion of
Canadian and US wilderness and public parks. Sandilands has observed that
since the explosion of urban park building by figures such as the landscape
designer Frederick Law Olmstead, urban parks have been “places for the
­public cultivation of morally upstanding citizens.”
As she notes:

Particularly after the 1950s, many camping facilities were intentionally

designed to resemble suburban cul-de-sacs, each campsite clearly designed
for one nuclear family, and all camping occurring in designated “private”
spaces away from “public” recreational activities such as swimming, h
­ iking,
and climbing. Trees were cut down in a pattern that screened campsites
from one another, but not from the roadway or path, so that the rangers or
wardens could still see in and make sure nothing illegal (such as sodomy)
was taking place. (Mortimer-Sandilands, 2005)

Environmental Justice and the Sociology of Environmental Inequalities

Environmental justice movements and studies provide an important socio-

logical complement to revisionist environmental histories. Much of this work
(which has been conducted in the first instance in the US) has tended to affirm
the ways in which marginalization of nonelite voices continue to be central to
the production of, and access to, natures and the distribution of healthy spaces
148 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

and environmental risks. To open this out, let’s briefly sketch the rise of the
movement in the US.
Environmental justice struggles in the US are rooted in the civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s and its struggle for minority rights and
freedoms, and the antitoxic struggles emerging in the 1970s (Bullard, 1990,
1993), which have been more focused on environmental health and often tied
much more explicitly to gender politics. The civil rights contribution to envi-
ronmental justice movements arose from concerns with environmental racism.
This is a phenomenon understood to be first delineated by a 1984 US General
Accounting Office (GAO) analysis of the correlation between race, income
and hazardous waste and a 1987 study commissioned by the United Church
of Christ (UCC) on the geographic distribution of pollution and so-called
“minority” communities. The GAO study arose in large part due to the erup-
tion of popular protest in Warren Country, North Carolina, over the illegal
dumping of toxic soils and wastes on a racially disempowered and economi-
cally disadvantaged region. This protest had been preceded by the explosion
of protest – led by Lois Gibbs and other housewives – at Love Canal near
Buffalo, New York. Gibbs’ middle-class neighborhood and school had been
built on land deeded to the city 30 years earlier on the formal understand-
ing that no construction would occur because the region held beneath it the
equivalent of a lake of toxic chemicals. In the late 1970s, high rates of miscar-
riage, cancers, autoimmune diseases and more occurred. However, the protests
were rebuffed because they were led by women, and the constrained space
of the neighborhood kept epidemiological thresholds, based on wider spatial
units, from reaching regulatory thresholds. Little or nothing was done until –
perhaps by accident – a local television station reported on the protests using
an image of a leaking, rusty, toxic canister juxtaposed with a mother holding
a sick child (Szasz, 1994). This image quickly spread across upstate New York
and then across the country. As such it helped raise awareness not only of the
problem of toxic waste but it gave a public platform to the broader issue of
environmental injustice more generally.
The 1984 GAO study found African-American communities subject to
highly disproportionate percentages of waste sites. A 1987 UCC report, “Toxic
Wastes and Race in the United States” further substantiated these claims. Using
multivariate analysis to control for the number of hazardous waste sites in an
area, the quantity of hazardous waste generated in an area, the mean house-
hold values and mean housing income and the percentage of people of color
in any one postal code area, this report found that race was the best predic-
tor of where hazardous waste facilities were cited. Such results were affirmed
eight years later in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “Environmental
Equity: Reducing Risks for All Communities” report. The intensity of ongoing
environmental justice mobilizations, as well the accumulation of reports, gave
rise to President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, which declared that all
agencies of the federal government have to consider environmental justice in
 Culture, Spaces, Power 149

their decision-making processes. However, the effectiveness of this order has

been widely questioned – particularly in light of the ways in which the federal
government responded to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
The questions posed by activism around environmental justice have now
galvanized a vast bound of research that has sought to empirically investi-
gate and theoretically refine the nature of environmental inequality in the US
and, increasingly, elsewhere. In this book, we can only scratch the surface of
this literature (see variously Bryant and Mohai, 1992; Capek, 1993; Szasz,
1994; Bryant, 1995; Gould et al., 1996; Pulido, 1996; Pellow, 2002, 2004,
2006, 2007; Agyeman et al., 2002; Agyeman, 2005; Brulle and Pellow, 2006;
Roberts and Parks, 2006). But let us highlight here some key studies that seek
to explore the links between environmental injustices and the construction
of specific natures, communities and workplaces, and in doing so expand the
critical hybrid imagination.
Bob Bullard’s Dumping in Dixie (1990) undoubtedly is the foundational text
in the sociology of environmental justice. Focused, in particular, on the phe-
nomena of environmental racism, Bullard’s study of environmental hazards in
the Southern US argued that even if we control for income and other variables,
race emerges as an overwhelmingly important force in deciding who is exposed
to environmental risks and who can avoid them. Bullard studies five communi-
ties – Houston, Texas’s Northwood Manor; West Dallas, Texas; Institute, West
Virginia; Emelle, Sumter County, Alabama; and Alsen, Louisiana. Hazards
included pollution from a secondary lead smelter, a chemical manufacturing
plant, waste disposal facilities (landfill and incinerator) and a municipal land-
fill. Bullard makes quite explicit the manner in which environmental justice
and economic opportunities are presented as alternatives in a zero-sum game
and the way that this discourse is particularly robust in areas already economi-
cally disadvantaged on the basis of past racism.
Subsequent to Bullard, investigations of both environmental inequalities
and environmental racism has opened up a vast field of research. Using the
methods of the case study or intersecting with large-scale data sets in public
health, such work has variously opened up our understanding of all manner of
environmental inequalities. These include the impact of “toxic dumping” on
Native American communities (by being unwilling receptors of military waste
or economic marginalization ensuring that leadership groups end up bid-
ding for and accepting disproportionate waste facilities on reservation lands);
methods of coal excavation involving “mountaintop removal” in Appalachia,
which have often had devastating effects on rural white communities (Fox,
1999); the exposure of Latino farm workers to dangerous pesticides and her-
bicides in the production of salad vegetables in California; and so on. Let us
focus here on what is possibly the best-studied signal case of environmental
injustice in the US: Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” (Koeppel, 1999; Roberts and
Toffolon-Weiss, 2001; Aldrich and Sinks, 2002; Allen, 2003; Lerner, 2005;
Hackel, 2006).
150 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

“Cancer Alley” – or the “Petrochemical Corridor” – stretches 100 miles

along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana.
A million and a quarter people – more than 40% of whom are black and 25%
of whom live below the poverty line – reside in the 11 parishes along the
river (Hackel, 2006). These residents live alongside 150 or more oil refineries,
industrial facilities and landfills emitting 1.3 million pounds of annual pollut-
ants – approximately 6% of the national total of toxic releases (Lerner, 2005).
What might elsewhere be characterized as toxic waste disposal areas – large
and small – spread out across the region (Koeppel, 1999; Allen, 2003). Waste
disposal in Cancer Alley is unique to Louisiana because when the US Congress
passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1980, the law
granted control over the regulation of oil field wastes to each state. Louisiana’s
legislature then chose to classify all oil field waste – a refinery byproduct flush
with heavy metals and carcinogens – as nonhazardous, effectively deregulating
its disposal (Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, 2001).
Social movements have sprung up across the region following outbreaks of
cancers, especially rare varieties, sudden onset asthma and other “respiratory
problems, boils, rashes, learning disabilities, miscarriages and other illnesses”
(Hackel, 2006:21). These movements seek public and private redress as they
connect the region’s high rate of industrial accidents, toxic depositions, pol-
lution rates and waste disposal sites to disease rates. However, because of the
multifactorial, sometimes multigenerational, and often nonlinear character
of cancer and other diseases’ etiology, conventional epidemiology can only
rarely determine direct causal links between specific pollutants and clusters of
illness (Aldrich and Sinks, 2002; Hackel, 2006). All of these issues are com-
pounded because the region and state are highly dependent on revenue from
large and profitable chemical industries, despite the fact that these industries
generate a low percentage of jobs in the area. While industrial jobs are gener-
ally good – if dangerous – jobs, the majority of the nonindustrial work in the
region is minimum wage, seasonal or both. This means that few residents in
the US have the health insurance, stable income, sick leave and other varieties
of personal or social capital necessary to deal with chronic environmental
health problems.
Cancer Alley is nationally known for its environmental justice struggles
and, like Love Canal, New York, and Times Beach, Missouri, neighborhoods
and communities in this part of Louisiana have been bought out by govern-
ment and, in some cases associated with state and federal lawsuits, by ­private
industry. These communities are then leveled and their people relocated.
Importantly, relocation does little or nothing to address existing environmen-
tal illnesses. The central issue, as has been argued throughout the book, is
that the production of landscapes and environments and the reproduction or
remediation of environmental problems is always flush with power relations
embedded in the processes of determining what counts as nature and who
counts in society.
 Culture, Spaces, Power 151

Hybrid, Cyborg and Relational Eco-Marxisms and Urban Political

Ecologies
Let us conclude our survey here by engaging briefly with the multiple ways in
which traditions of historical geographical materialisms (Harvey, 1974, 1996)
have been significantly renewed and reinvigorated of late by increasingly direct
engagements with literatures on hybridity and environmental justice studies.
Bruno Latour has frequently presented his project as fundamentally incompat-
ible with historical materialist approaches. It has been hybrid eco-Marxists –
particularly but not exclusively situated in geography – that have suggested
that relational and dialectical understandings of historical geographical mate-
rialisms can offer a necessary supplement to and, indeed, augmentation of
the general hybrid sensibilities of Latour and Haraway (see various: Castree,
1995, 2001, 2002; Swyngedouw, 1996, 2004, 2006, 2013; Swyngedouw
and Heynen, 2003:910; Gareau, 2005; Kaika, 2005; Rudy, 2005; Bakker,
2009, 2010; Heynen et al., 2006; Heynen et al., 2007; White and Wilbert,
2009; Loftus, 2012). What all these thinkers share is a commitment to root-
ing historical geographical materialism in a dynamic dialectical ontology (see
Harvey, 1974, 1996; Levins and Lewontin, 1985; Lefebvre, 1993; Smith,
1994; O’Connor, 1998) that stresses how processes and relations produce the
domains of the social and the natural. As such, contemporary landscapes (for
example) are viewed as products of dynamic, historical and multiple socio-
ecological relationships where stratified social labor, nonhumans and emergent
material processes combine to generate conditions for production, reproduc-
tion and life. Such modes of historical geographical materialism seek to grasp
the coevolution of human bodies and environments with our sociality, com-
municative abilities, tool use, plant selection and animal domestication, our
urbanscapes and our ruralscapes.
In contrast to Latour and what might be called orthodox actor-network
theory (ANT) or the vital materialists we considered in the last chapter, hybrid
eco-Marxists insist that an embrace of dynamic, relational and hybrid ontolo-
gies does not mean that all else dissolves or that the relative stability of modern
“natures” and “societies” is inconsequential. Noel Castree argues that, despite
ANT’s insights, it remains important to acknowledge that:

many actor networks are driven by similar processes, not withstanding

their other differences, that these processes might be global and system-
atic even as they are composed of nothing more than ties between dif-
ferent “localities”, that these processes are social and natural but not in
equal measure since it is the social processes that are disproportionately
directive; that agents, while social, natural and relational, vary greatly in
their powers to influence others; and that power whilst dispersed can be
directed by some (specifically, “social” actors) more than others. (Castree,
2002:135)
152 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

In short, Castree, in a fashion not dissimilar to Haraway, argues that a critical

hybridity needs to acknowledge that a relatively stabilized network of cap-
italist relations exist, that these capitalist networks are marked by inherent
and patterned uneven development and crisis tendencies, that they presently
have organized themselves in particularly rapacious neoliberal forms, and that
none of this can be wished away or dissolved via studying actor networks or
assemblages detached from political economic analysis. We can thus talk about
socionatural relations:

as pervasively capitalist (but not exclusively so), as structured and enduring

(but not in a reductionist or totalizing way) and as disproportionally driven
by “social” actions and relations (even as those actions and relations could
not exist without “natural” agents and relations). (Castree, 2002:135)

How do such relational historical geographical materialists engage with envi-

ronmental questions? And what is added by these approaches? Perhaps the
key contribution that has been added to these discussions is the insistence that
we must examine the ways in which diverse power relations are embodied in
the composition of nature–culture relations and the stabilization of networks.
Rather than focus on the extent to which capitalism has “impacted” nature,
as has been the general focus of the treadmill of production and metabolic rift
approaches we surveyed in Chapter 5, it is argued we would be better served to
explore the ways in which our contemporary natures are produced within and
through the sphere of capitalist production. As Castree notes: “nature may well
be ‘produced’ but produced nature in turn, cannot be exploited indefinitely: it
has a materiality which cannot be ignored” (Castree, 1995, 2002:29). Hybrid
eco-Marxists thus find the search for general and universal external ecologi-
cal limits to capitalism (as is evidenced by the metabolic rift and treadmill of
production) to be much less compelling. Rather, the task is to map how nature
and capital co-constitute one another in temporal and geographically varied
ways (Castree, 2002:28). The assumption here is that we are always dealing
with “created ecosystems which ‘both instantiate and reflect … [capitalism] …
in contradictory ways’” (Castree, quoting Harvey, 2002:29).
What is to be gained from such ontological starting points? The study of
cities and urbanization has emerged as one key site where both historical geo-
graphical materialist and hybrid ontologies have been used to considerable
effect, converging in many respects with work in environmental justice studies.
A great deal of classic work in urban ecology has classically treated the
urban as an unnatural eruption out of, or as an imposition upon, pure nature.
Relatedly, much of the urban side of the ecological footprint tradition has
sought to develop empirical measures that explain how something called “the
city” impacts something called “nature.” While literatures on ecological foot-
prints are useful in some policy settings, Erik Swyngedouw, Matt Gandy and
others have argued that moving beyond dualistic understandings of the urban
 Culture, Spaces, Power 153

and the natural can actually open up a much more developed understanding
of the many kinds of urban natures unfolding in our midst. Indeed, both have
explicitly deployed the concept of “cyborg urbanization” at different times.
What is the virtue of this concept? Swyngedouw suggests:

Cyborg metaphors allow us not only to recover the environmental history

of the city and the urban history of nature but allow us to see how urbani-
zation is a process which wields nature, society, technology, culture and the
city together materially and semiotically through a series of network infra-
structures and diverse social power relations moving from the local to the
global. (Swyngedouw, 1996, but also see Swyngedouw, 2009)

Building off of this insight, Matt Gandy’s Concrete and Clay provides a mas-
terful hybrid rereading of the history of New York City. New York, the ulti-
mate form of the 20th-century urban metropolis, can be seen from a parasitical
neo-Malthusian view as the antithesis of nature, and it is regularly treated
as a classic expression of the urban domination of nature. Drawing inspira-
tion from Swyngedouw as well as William Cronon’s (1991) hugely influential
urban environmental history, Nature’s Metropolis, Gandy demonstrates how
New York can be alternatively read as a form that has technologically and
socially reworked regional natures, and at the same time a form that myriad
recalcitrant natures have influenced, shaped and been transformed to reori-
ent and constrain the city’s urban ecological development. The story of New
York cannot be adequately told through a worldview that places the “urban”
over here, the “technological” over there, the “social” suffused with power,
and the “ecological” as passive victim. Rather, a much more interesting story
unfolds in Concrete and Clay of urban ecological and urban technological
infrastructures being built, resisted and reworked, and of perpetual political
battles occurring over planning, the forms urban nature should take and how
to respond to social ecological resistance. Gandy documents the various fates
of various human and nonhuman winners and losers drawn into and extruded
from this process, the different sectors and personifications that capital has
played in shaping the production of urban ecological networks in New York.
He also illuminates though the multiple forms of resistance that have occurred
in the making of the urban New York as an urban ecology, from working-class
and unemployed people struggling to resist the annexing of Central Park as a
playground for the rich, to Robert Moses’s reworking of the urban ecological
fabric of the city and its detracts to Puerto Rican environmental justice com-
munity groups resisting gentrification.
A similar cyborg urbanist reading of the urban ecological landscape can
be found in Swyngedouw’s remarkable Social Power and the Urbanization
of Water. This book provides an exploration of the multiple ways in which
political struggles over water sources, access to water and sewer infrastruc-
tures, and the force of the liquid circulation of water itself shapes the c­ ontours
154 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Here the focus is on recognizing how urban ecolo-

gies are perpetually made and remade by different interests through political
and material struggle. Such an approach moves us away from overly simplis-
tic and naturalistic judgments of city–nature relations and allows us to see
that discerning ecological baselines upon which to model sustainable urban
ecologies cannot be derived by straightforward readings of nature. A hybrid
perspective effectively forces a recognition that urban ecologies are the prod-
uct of power relations that are themselves always in processes of dynamic
­transformation.

Critical Evaluations

Literatures on the histories of labor–environment relations, contemporary

environmental injustices in the North and urban political ecologies greatly
enrich our understanding of socio-environmental questions. They are not
without their critics though. Let’s have a look at some issues that have
emerged.
An early debate which responded to the concept of “environmental rac-
ism” in the US is the class versus race debate. In essence, this discussion has
sought to empirically get to grips with the question of whether hazardous
dumping is deliberate or, indeed, targeted at African-American communi-
ties and other nonwhite communities or if disproportional environmental
burdens are best seen as the unintentional product of unfortunate histori-
cal circumstances. Szasz and Meuser (1997) and Mohai, Pellow and Roberts
(Mohai et al., 2009) provide excellent overviews of the contestation over the
causal arrows and central factors contributing to the relationship between
race, class, gender and environmental risks. Along with other reviewers of
the field, they find it hard to make universalizing generalizations as Bullard
does. The argument that there is a correlation between social inequality and
environmental injustice is conclusively demonstrated by empirical research in
the field. However, there remains considerable debate regarding the straight-
forward or linear relationship between social inequality and increased envi-
ronmental risks. Most often these concerns focus on how many intervening
variables, important to some cases but not others, are lost in the aggregation
of samples across space and time. Critics also question the historical, spatial
and normative character of studies that support arguments about environ-
mental racism and injustice. Stating the issues in a simplistic manner, ques-
tions are raised as to whether:

(1) pollution leads to low property values and rents which “attract” low-
income and disproportionately communities of color;
(2) low property values attract both polluting industries and low-income and
disproportionately communities of color;
 Culture, Spaces, Power 155

(3) low-income communities and communities of color make utilitarian deci-

sions prioritizing employment in high occupational and environmental risk
industries over living and working in greener places and, in some p
­ ublic
discourses, outside the academy;
(4) low-income communities and communities of color have the technical,
financial, and political background to reasonably understand conditions
and make decisions about employment opportunities, environmental
risks, etc.

David Pellow (2000) has made an interesting attempt to move the debate on. He
has observed that while the vast majority of research in environmental justice
provides compelling statistical or descriptive evidence of the existence of com-
prehensive environmental inequalities, dominant explanations tend towards a
perpetrator–victim model. This may have some value in certain cases, but he
suggests it is mostly “over-simplistic” and misses out variability across cases.
It is suggested that, in contrast, a more complex theoretical approach needs to
consider environmental inequalities as (i) the product of broader sociohistorical
processes rather than “discrete events,” (ii) involving a broader array of critical
stakeholders with “contradictory and shifting allegiances and sympathies” and
(iii) recognizing that these struggles are linked more broadly to structural dimen-
sions of inequality, notably the unequal distribution of power and resources in
society (Pellow, 2000). From this perspective, then, we need to investigate all
these matters to elucidate the production of environmental inequalities.
Let us draw out here two particular contributions that they make to an
understanding of our unequal hybrid worlds. First, all these literatures raise
critical questions about the role of the state, capital, state institutions, regulatory
agencies and, indeed, NGOs in environmental policy making. Environmental
justice studies have persistently highlighted the lack of democratic access that
many low-income communities and communities of color have to a range of
state officials and state agencies in the US, and raised significant questions
about zoning and planning. In arguing for more public participation in state
agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund process –
the federal program most often associated with toxic remediation – they can in
this respect be seen in some respects as movements attempting to democratize
the state (see O’Connor, 1998). Urban political ecologists in turn have raised
fundamentally important questions about the full range of regulatory forces
that seek to shape and govern the environmental behavior of people living in
the Global South as well as the spatial dynamics of power which shape envi-
ronmental improvement and environmental degradation. Once again, implic-
itly and often explicitly, they suggest that such regulatory structures have to
be open to democratic access and indeed some level of popular control or
environmental injustices will continue to prevail.
Second, all these literatures have also raised critical questions about the
role and meaning of science and expertise in environmental policy debates.
156 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

From the Love Canal crisis onwards, antitoxics and environmental justice
activists have been dismissed as “hysterical women” or “uneducated citi-
zens.” Such citizen activists mobilized by environmental justice struggles have
frequently found bureaucratic demands for scientific evidence could not be
met with data sets of sufficient breadth and scope to satisfy the statistical
thresholds necessary to establish actionable results. Disempowered com-
munities (often shunned by mainstream experts and federal agencies) thus
have subsequently gathered data themselves, and from this marshaled knowl-
edge resources of experts in the field to explore and expose environmental
health threats. The environmental sociologists Phil Brown (1987), Stephen
Zavestoski and Rachel Morello-Frosch and their colleagues (see Brown,
1987; Morello-Frosch and Jesdale, 2006; Morello-Frosch and Shenassa 2006;
Brown et al., 2012; Morello-Frosch et al., 2012), for example, have observed
that a significant range of antitoxics and environmental justice activism has
facilitated the rise of “popular epidemiology.” In this context environmental
justice advocates have not only played a role in alerting scientific experts
to problems that have not received attention from the mainstream, but they
have also helped public health officials and other scientists frame issues and
consider alternative lines of explanation, and even helped with data collec-
tion and dissemination of results (see Brown et al., 2012). It is interesting
how urban political ecologists working in the Global South have similarly
sought to problematize the hegemony of Northern neo-Malthusian environ-
mental narratives through constructing alternative modes of doing “environ-
mental science.” This has often combined quantitative and qualitative modes
of research that, in the qualitative side, attempt to capture and acknowledge
local people’s own understandings of environmental change as significant
sources of scientific and social scientific insight.

Conclusion

In this chapter (1) we have suggested that the contours of a critical hybrid
mode of thinking can be evidenced from a range of convergence literatures
that provides important supplements to the better insights of Haraway and
Latour. (2) Literatures on labor/environmental history and environmental
justice studies generally do not proceed following the kinds of ontological
understandings of hybridity offered by Haraway and Latour. Indeed, as we
have observed, these fields often make use of quite conventional quantitative
and qualitative social scientific methodologies to map environmental inequali-
ties. We have suggested, though, that all these literatures can enrich a critical
understanding of hybridity through the ways in which they demonstrate that
socio-environmental problems are entangled and materially grounded, in the
workplace, the community at large, at points of production and in struggles
over class, race, gender, sexuality, place and space. (3) We have also suggested
 Culture, Spaces, Power 157

that work in urban political ecology in particular usefully augments this litera-
ture, by suggesting that the kinds of ontological arguments about lively natures
we explored in the last chapter have to further engage with the environmental
inequalities produced by the capitalist production of socionatures to be fully
efficacious. Let us turn now to consider how some of these tensions are playing
out at the level of global environmental governance.
 8
Global Environmental
Governance and
Neoliberalization

In Chapter 5 we saw that some of the most optimistic currents in the soci-
ology of ecological modernization placed a good deal of emphasis on the
possibilities of multiple actors (states/social movements/green campaigners/
green businesses) potentially shaping benign global environmental govern-
ance regimes. This was certainly the hope of the Brundtland Report (1987)
that launched the concept of sustainable development and outlined in some
respects elements of a social democratic vision of global environmental gov-
ernance. In this chapter, focusing in particular on debates at the global scale
of environmental governance, we will see that things have not entirely turned
out as anticipated.
This chapter attempts to do two main things. First, we will map the vari-
ous political shifts that global environmental governance has experienced in
attempts to resolve some of the most significant environmental transforma-
tions that have been created by the capitalist production of our hybrid natures.
It will become apparent in this chapter that regimes of global environmental
governance do not simply passively mirror underlying treadmill dynamics or
processes of capital accumulation. Global environmental governance is shaped
by these forces, to be sure, but it is also shaped by the strategic play of domestic
and inter-state politics, science, social movement struggles, nonhuman actors
and other social and environmental phenomena. As such, we will outline here
how the political complexion of global environmental protection has changed
over time as these forces have shifted. Second, the chapter will go on to suggest
that one of the most striking political changes that has occurred in recent times
is unquestionably the political ascendance of diverse neoliberal approaches to
global environmental governance.

158
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 159

This chapter will demonstrate that while global environmental governance

has had notable periods of success, the rise of neoliberalism as a dominant or
hegemonic politics has systematically changed the ways that a full range of
actors go about their business. In most cases, environmental protection today
must first and foremost be profitable. As such, while it is incorrect to simply
collapse all modes of ecological modernization to neoliberalism, it is certainly
fair to observe that much of the applied practice of ecological modernization
has become progressively neoliberalized. We will also see that in contrast to
the Promethean assertions we reviewed in Chapter 3, free market environmen-
talisms do not in some simple fashion replace state and inter-state regulation
with the market but are often involved in reconfiguring state–market relations,
as Lockie and Higgins (2007) insightfully observe. States and global environ-
mental governance regimes are now increasingly involved in constructing new
financial instruments and new “business friendly” forms of ecomanagement
to open vast new zones of the planet to capital accumulation (Smith, 2009).
We will suggest that the end result of this process is a crisis in global environ-
mental governance. This crisis is most publicly expressed in the failure to get
meaningful global reductions on greenhouse gas emissions through a global
agreement to prevent runaway global climate change. We shall also see though
that neoliberal global governance is now creating profound problems for many
more important global environmental agreements, from the Montreal Protocol
(1987) (famous for the rapid phase-out of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocar-
bons (CFCs)) to the Basel Convention (the convention that controls the trans-
boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal).

Global Environmental Governance: A History of Transition and

Change

Let us begin by sketching a brief history of global environmental governance.

Over the last 100 years or so, governments, corporations, scientists and other
facets of civil society – such as social movements – have worked (certainly
not always harmoniously) toward the establishment of international institu-
tions designed to facilitate the creation and operation of international and
global environmental treaties. These institutions and treaties do not operate in
isolation, separated from politics, economics, capital accumulation, scientific
controversies and intrigues. But they are somewhat malleable and subject to
the ebbs and flows of dominant political and economic discourse, the geopo-
litical climate, and other relations of power, as well as to controversies in the
scientific realm and the problems that are thrown up by lively natures. How
the environment should be protected, and what mechanisms should be con-
sidered, has changed significantly over time. The origins of modern environ-
mental governance, though, largely have their roots in the 1970s and in some
160 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

of the debates that we mapped in Chapter 4. Four broad discourses can be

identified as attempting to shape regimes of global environmental governance
since the 1970s:

(1) Survivalism and Neo-Malthusianism: This discourse emphasizes the need

for global restriction on the use of natural resources, limits to growth
(economic and demographic), constraint and control over global birth
rates, economic development, and pollution. The general message in this
discourse is that nature is limited, so it (and society) must be controlled.
This discourse certainly played an influential role in shaping many global
understandings of global environmental problems in the earliest phase of
the discussion, and it continues to be influential to this day. It is, in short,
a global articulation of the limits arguments we reviewed in Chapter 3.
(2) UN Global Internationalism, Sustainable Development and Social
Democratic Visions of Ecological Modernization: This discourse promotes
an optimistic view of the possibilities of global cooperation via the view
that the international community can/should bring diverse groups together
to respond successfully and pragmatically to the challenge of global envi-
ronmental issues. It reflects the aspirations of much of the sociology of eco-
logical modernization we surveyed in Chapter 5, as well as “world ­polity”
and “world society” literatures in international studies. This discourse
tends to argue that the global scientific community has made it possible for
global cooperation to occur due to “rational” evidence that has accumu-
lated though our growing understanding of the world as a series of inter-
linked ecosystems that are negatively affected by human activity (Meyer
et al., 1997; Boli and Thomas, 1997). This discourse heavily shaped the
thinking of many currents present at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
(3) Neoliberal Eco-Modernizers and Free Market Prometheans/Cornucopians:
This discourse seeks to suggest that privatization, financialization, entre-
preneurialism and other market solutions are the most effective for deal-
ing with global environmental problems. We mapped this discourse in
Chapter 3, associating it in particular with the writings of Julian Simon,
Bjorn Lomborg and Matt Ridley, and we will suggest it is the dominant
discourse of most global environmental discussions today.
(4) Ecopopulism and the Environmentalism of the Poor: This discourse seeks
to draw attention to the imbalances in power relations between differ-
ent groups in global environmental negotiations and the different ways in
which various groups, communities, regions and nations are affected by
socio-environmental questions. It sees itself as attempting to give voice to
more local and democratic solutions to socio-environmental challenges,
and it is often supported intellectually through the discourses on envi-
ronmental justice and political ecology that we explored in the previous
chapter (see Szasz, 1994; Martinez-Allier, 2002; Parks and Roberts, 2010;
Ciplet, Roberts and Khan, 2015). This is a subordinate discourse that
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 161

­ rovides the dominant critique of the inadequacies of global environmen-

p
tal governance today but rarely sets the terms of the mainstream debate on
global governance.

Let us consider the ways in which these different discourses have risen and
fallen in influence over the last 40 years as political conditions have changed.

The Early Years: Environmental Pollution and Resource Protection

The 1970s was a decade fraught with emerging global environmental debates.
The Limits to Growth report put out in 1972 by the Club of Rome epito-
mizes this moment. As we saw earlier, while many of the report’s conclusions
and models have been criticized for being simplistic and/or overstated, it cer-
tainly played an influential role in shaping global environmental politics, and
is still widely referenced to this day. We can also identify other cultural forces
surfacing that helped contribute to this idea of “global ecology” and the need
for global environmental governance. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962)
played a hugely important role in alerting publics in the US and beyond to
the deleterious effects overuse of pesticides could play on ecosystem health
and broader biodiversity. Images of the Earth viewed from space produced
by the Apollo 11 spaceflight to the moon circulated around the world for the
first time in 1969, revealing a fragile blue-green sphere situated in a dark void.
This is was also the age of the affluent society in the West and mass social
movement mobilization with civil rights and student protest. Western publics
were preoccupied with the very real possibility of a nuclear exchange occur-
ring between the superpowers. A new insurgent “third world” was in the initial
throws of postcolonial independence, and emerging currents centered on the
United Nations and other emerging global institutions were anticipating ideas
of global governance.
It is interesting to note then that while certain rights were being demanded in
earnest (such as those affiliated with the Civil Rights movement) the survivalist
milieu of the time meant that other rights – especially those associated with envi-
ronmental conditions – were on the table for removal. For example, in anticipa-
tion of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment – the first
international meeting designed to tackle global environmental ­problems – The
Ecologist, an influential magazine managed by the neo-­Malthusian ecologist
Edward Goldsmith, made several suggestions about what society would need to
do to avoid the feared “limits to growth.” For one, people, it was argued, would
require “restraint,” and “controls” so as to limit their impact on the environ-
ment. Such restraints, Goldsmith argued, in the near term would likely require
“the operations of police forces,” albeit in a democratic setting (The Ecologist,
1972). Eco-authoritarian thinkers such as Garrett Hardin and William Ophuls
drew from Hobbes to explain why people needed to be “fettered” by a central-
ized force – the state – to lessen their environmental impacts.
162 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

The Stockholm meeting in 1972 can be seen as a key moment when a

v­ariety of competing global discourses, from UN “one-worldism” to sur-
vivalist and neo-Malthusian, to strategic divisions between East/West, came
together in a struggle for dominance. The conference was focused on gen-
erating a “global” view of the “rights of the human family to a healthy and
productive environment” with a focus on population growth, pollution and
resource use issues. From the beginning, though, this “global” vision had to
encounter hard political differences. The developing world threatened to boy-
cott the conference, concerned that environmental questions might triumph
or distract attention from poverty alleviation and the need for development.
The Soviet Union and its allies stayed away from the conference because
East Germany did not have a seat at the UN table. Outside the conference,
10,000 people formed a People’s Forum that gathered together to protest a
range of issues from mercury poisoning to the US use of Agent Orange in the
Vietnam War. Nevertheless, a resolution was passed calling for a moratorium
on whaling and action on pollution control. Notably, though, the burden was
placed on nation–states to control the pollution of industry. The Stockholm
Declaration emphasized the leading roles that national and local governments
must take to enforce social, economic and environmental change, and it was
maintained that effective pollution control would require that governments
provide support to less-developed countries as well. We might say then that
this initial moment in global environmental governance essentially expressed
a social democratic vision of a regulatory state operating in an international
community, a sort of Keynesian environmentalism. The range of possibilities
available to governance actors and pressures on that governance were over-
whelmingly supported on the regulatory side as opposed to the free market
side of the political spectrum. Stockholm – whatever its limitations – also saw
to all manner of further developments. The United National Environmental
Program was established, and it would become a key institution of UN
environmentalism. Environmental scientists achieved global recognition as
respected experts on global environmental problems, and the globalization of
environmental science, helped through UN sponsorship, was put into place.
Environmental ministries and departments emerged in the governance struc-
tures for the first time in virtually all developed world countries. With the
publication of the National Academy of Science’s “Charney Report” (1979),
global problems like climate change became recognized as real, tangible issues
that required imminent action. These scientific groups worked with the emer-
gent global governance structure to provide states with up-to-date scientific
information in order to make informed decisions about how best to enact
precautionary measures to avoid future environmental harms. The predomi-
nant message was that governments could work together to resolve environ-
mental problems, and the predominant recollection from social scientists was
that the model was designed for industrialized countries to deal with their
pollution, that less-developed countries could learn from the industrialized
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 163

world and that participation in these global events created a “world culture”
of ­environmental protection (Boli and Thomas, 1997).

The Transitional Years: Sustainable Development and Sustaining Growth

Moves toward developing a series of global environmental agreements con-
tinued in the 1980s, bolstered by the globalization of environmental science
that increasingly viewed the Earth as an integrated, complex set of ecological
systems (Frank, 1997; Frank et al., 2000). Internationally, the most success-
ful work was done by relatively small networks of actors working on rela-
tively specific problems. In this regard, the international community agreed to
adopt the “Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer”
in 1987. Informed by the precautionary principle, nation–states signed this
international treaty, thus agreeing to begin the eradication of chlorofluorocar-
bons (CFCs) despite the lack of conclusive scientific proof at this time of the
effect of these substances on the ozone layer. It was felt the potential risk was
too great, and the message from the scientific community was that further
evidence would only support preliminary conclusions that human-produced
CFCs would destroy the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from dan-
gerous ultraviolet radiation. The Montreal Protocol has been widely viewed
as one of the most successful global environmental agreements (McCright and
Dunlap, 2010). The manner in which it married command-and-control regu-
lation and technological substitution responding to precautionary concerns
became a key point of inspiration for social democratic ecological modern-
izing discourses in the 1990s. We might also note that this social democratic
ecological modernization approach marked a significant departure from the
survivalist, neo-Malthusian models in that it called for precaution while
working to sustain economic activity, albeit in a “sustainable way.” Radical
critics suggested that this heavily managerial approach never succeeded in
forcing societies to rethink their political economic structure, or to question
the roots of the problems associated with a carbon-centric social structure
(Sachs, 1995).
Nevertheless, we know that the increased institutionalization of environ-
mental issues at global meetings across the 1980s and 1990s garnered public
support and increased environmental NGO involvement. This spurred gov-
ernments to implement all manner of environmental treaties in this period.
According to Speth and Haas (2006), from 1983 to 1992, an astonishing 200
international environmental agreements, protocols and amendments were
signed. Compared to around 130 signings from 1973 to 1982, this is a notable
increase, followed by a further roughly 220 agreements signed between 1993
and 2002 (Speth and Haas, 2006:87). This augmentation of environmental
awareness was also reported in many other countries (Wapner, 2004). Indeed,
for two decades following the Stockholm meeting, support from s­ cience, states
and citizens for global governance efforts to tackle environmental problems
164 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

was consistently high. Some political scientists called for “planetary democ-
racy,” while others called for an international organization to be established
with “real power and authority” that would require states to relinquish some
of their sovereign rights, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Palmer,
1992:262).
The end of the Cold War brought a great deal of optimism for global
cooperation to move to the fore of many a political discussion. This was
the political milieu in which the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and
Development, often called the Rio Earth Summit, took place. Literally hun-
dreds of NGOs (close to 1,500 in total) officially attended the conference,
expressing hope that environmental improvements could be accompanied by
social improvements, especially for the rural poor in the Global South (Speth,
2005). It is at Rio where the term “sustainable development” became popu-
lar, linking environmental degradation to poverty while suggesting that eco-
logically sustainable economic growth is possible (Lélé, 1991; WCED, 1987).
However, it is important to remember that these global governing forums are
in fact assemblages of actors working to solidify environmental protections
to match their political and economic interests (Blok, 2011). So, while NGO
participation was high, the Rio summit was centered on the participation of
nation–states, and their constituents and business groups in particular began
to have a significant impact on discussions through the Business Council for
Sustainable Development (Speth and Haas, 2006). The need to have a more
business friendly environmentalism was equally pushed by US and Western
European countries – particularly the UK. As such, rather than opening envi-
ronmentalism up to multiple voices and multiple concerns, including those
of the Global South, it can be observed that many of the actual proposals
that emerged from the Rio Earth Summit signaled a move away from state
control to a much greater focus on state-facilitated market-based and locally
focused solutions to resolve environmental problems. Many elements of the
UN action plan encouraged governments to work with local authorities to
help implement sustainable development practices at the local level (Agenda
21). However, the general environmental management strategy pushed at Rio
clearly favored market mechanisms over command-and-control regulation or
“limits to growth” arguments.
For the rest of the 1990s, we can see this process continue. Notably, neo-
Malthusian, survivalist, liberal UN “one world” environmentalist ideas and
social-democratic style Brundtland arguments that drove momentum at earlier
points in global environmental governance were steadily replaced by various
manifestations of neoliberalism. Just as global economic and political processes
(supported by intergovernmental economic organizations such as the World
Bank, World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund) under-
went transitions toward neoliberalization in the 1980s and 1990s, so too did
the intergovernmental environmental organizations like the United Nations
Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the environmental treaties that it
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 165

helps facilitate. In other words, and as Michael Goldman (2005) has shown,
scientific knowledge and policy-making processes of global e­ nvironmentalism
became increasingly meshed with neoliberal economic logic, and this has sys-
tematically affected how all global environmental issues are now discussed
and addressed.

The Contested Years: Neoliberalism and the Environment

By 2002, the UNEP had fully adopted the neoliberal economic agenda pushed
both by powerful business actors and Western governments. UNEP reports
on sustainable development used the arguments of free market environmental
economists, such as Harvard Professor of Business and Government Robert
Stavins, to move beyond forms of command-and-control regulation and toward
a comprehensive embrace of free market solutions to deal with environmental
problems. In 2004, the Executive Director of the UNEP, Klaus Töpfer, said at
a UN Conference on Trade and Development meeting that the environment
should be considered “an opportunity for trade promotion” and a chance to
broaden “market access,” and that it should not be seen as “a constraint for
trade liberalization” (http://www.un.org/webcast/unctadxi/speeches/17une_
eng.pdf). At the same time, numerous studies were published that lamented the
negative impact of neoliberalism on both the natural environment and socie-
ties, especially those in the Global South (e.g., Peet, 2003; McCarthy, 2004;
Goldman, 2005; Harvey, 2005; Perreault and Martin, 2005). A bottom-line
message coming from proponents of neoliberalism was that governments do
not work well in the economy, and governance should step back from the state
regulation front to let the economic activity find ways to effectively resolve our
global environmental problems.
The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in
Johannesburg, demonstrated just how far distrust with government inter-
vention had gone. For one, the industrialized countries did not provide the
official development assistance that they had promised to less-developed
countries at the Rio Earth Summit. For another, there was no visible govern-
mental leadership from any of the industrialized countries. The US in par-
ticular argued hard for no tangible commitment to any deadline of any kind.
Instead, the industrialized countries successfully established a politics of non-
commitment and vague support of the 2000 UN Millennium Development
Goals. Environmental NGOs were marginalized. In contrast, business groups
were actively encouraged to take leadership roles to allow great participation
from the private sector.
The 2009 Copenhagen Summit embedded further skepticism about global
governance. Many environmental advocacy groups had been optimistic that
the Obama Administration would lead the way with a commitment to reduc-
ing carbon dioxide emissions, thus forcing other countries to make similar
commitments. None of this materialized into firm commitments in carbon
166 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

reduction at Copenhagen. Rather, a nonbinding agreement was created behind

closed doors by the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that became
known as the Copenhagen Accord. We know from subsequent meetings in
Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011) that the international community has con-
tinued with its lack of commitment, putting off any discussions of a binding
agreement until 2016 at the earliest, with an enforcement prolonged until 2020
at the very earliest.

Neoliberalization of Global Environmental Governance

As we have stated, global environmentalism is not static, but rather dynamic,

not suspended above everyday life, but rather embedded in the ever-shifting
process of policy-making and other social formations taking place in and
around us. As a result, the momentum of even long-established environmental
treaties can be altered as the political and economic environment in which such
treaties are embedded is altered. This alteration does not happen all at once,
and it is not accomplished through some sort of ethereal force that infects
the hearts and minds of actors. Rather, change takes place as actors and cir-
cumstances shift policy into new directions. Sometimes the inclusion of new
actors, driven by new agendas, can significantly reshape international trea-
ties. In this way, actors are a part of the neoliberalization process in concrete
ways, taking the neoliberal agenda to the sites in which they work in order to
obtain what they want from governance. Let us examine here the ways that
the Basel Convention and the Montreal Protocol moved away from command-
and-­control regulation and environmental justice concerns (respectively) and
toward neoliberal concerns with individual competition and profit-making
opportunities in the marketplace.

From Environmental Justice to Expertise: A Look at the Development

of the Basel Convention

Discarded computers, cell phones and other electronics are the world’s fastest
growing stream of hazardous wastes. The “e-waste crisis” has led to a renewed
media and public interest in the global trade in hazardous wastes, because
many of the electronics disposed of in industrialized countries are sent to less-
developed countries where communities attempt to extract materials from
e-waste. While many argue that e-waste “recycling” is the only source of liveli-
hood for these impoverished communities, others emphasize the unjust nature
of this toxic trade. In the 1980s, environmental activists targeted the most
egregious examples of hazardous waste transactions gone awry. For instance,
environmental watchdog Greenpeace launched the campaign “Project Return
to Sender” after toxic incinerator ash from Philadelphia was mislabeled as
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 167

“­fertilizer” and dumped on a Haitian beach under the cover of night. In

campaigns such as this, the activists and officials in waste-importing coun-
tries described this practice in political terms such as “environmental racism,”
“exploitation” and “toxic colonialism.”
It was in this context that the Basel Convention was adopted in 1989 and
became legally binding in 1992. This sentiment of global environmental injus-
tice reached a pinnacle in 1994, when the parties to the Basel Convention
amended the Convention to include a “global ban” on all hazardous waste
shipments from the “global North” to countries in the “global South.” The
inclusion of the ban amendment (which is still not legally binding) has led
activists to label the Basel Convention as the only global treaty with an explicit
environmental justice component.
Predictably, industry groups and countries such as the US that benefit from
this “trade” have successfully sought to create loopholes in the Convention.
Their strategies ranged from mislabeling products for disposal as destined
for “recycling” and getting certain materials excluded from the definition of
hazardous wastes to creating barriers to the entry into legal force of the ban
amendment. However, the explicit discursive shift from waste to resources
represents most clearly that this global environmental convention is undergo-
ing a neoliberalization process. Discursively, this shift means that hazardous
materials are no longer a manifestation of global environmental injustice,
rather, they are valuable resources that must be managed “properly” in ser-
vice of economic growth. This shift was most clearly codified in a “think
tank” convened by the Basel Executive Secretary in 2011, where scientists
and industry experts were invited but environmental activists (NGOs) were
not. In this meeting, the waste to resource paradigm shift was linked with
a proposed policy shift, where the environmental justice–based distinctions
of the ban amendment (i.e., North/South, rich/poor) should be replaced by
expertise-based distinction between those countries that can manage wastes
in an “environmentally sound manner” and those that cannot. This links to
the shift in discourse because the notion of waste implies something undesir-
able that vulnerable populations need to be protected from via strong state
regulation, but when wastes become a resource, they will be traded with
those who have the expertise to manage them “properly,” and this will lead
to the development of markets and economic growth. This means a rethink-
ing of the role of transnational regulations as a facilitator of market expan-
sion, rather than a check on market forces. It also means a centralized role
for those with the technological expertise to turn a hazardous waste into a
resource, namely, the transnational corporate actors who have worked to
undermine the ban amendment in order to maximize profit from the outset
(Lucier and Gareau, 2014).
Will the Basel regime continue to be considered an “environmental justice”
convention despite these fundamental changes? Much will depend on how
successful neoliberal ideas and policies are in making sure that free market
168 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

environmentalism becomes the “new common sense.” It is interesting, though,

to see how alliances can be established between neoliberal activities and eco-
logical modernization discourses. While variants of ecological modernization
theory emphasize the promise of technological innovation and the reflexivity
of governance, they neglect to examine the role of power and ideology in both
defining problems and solutions, as well as in foreclosing on other possibili-
ties. Thus, the reflexive nature of transnational governance may be a tool for
perpetuation of the current neoliberal mentality and existing power relations,
rather than as a tool for transformation or a reigning in of these forces. In
the Basel case, we see how one of the most visceral manifestations of unequal
global dynamics can be redefined as a justification for the creation of markets
and the superior expert knowledge of private corporate interests. Returning
to the e-waste crisis mentioned above, the Basel case even suggests that social
democratic variations of ecological modernization can be co-opted into “prag-
matically” accepting large sections of neoliberal “common sense.” This can be
seen in the new strategy for the e-waste campaign of the Basel Action Network
(BAN), the environmental justice activist NGO most focused on Basel politics.
With the support of TNCs such as Waste Management, BAN has created a pri-
vate certification system for e-waste recyclers, known as “e-Stewards.” Already,
e-waste-generating transnational corporations such as Bank of America,
Samsung, Alcoa and Capital One have been deemed “e-Stewards Enterprises,”
a designation that symbolizes the approval of “more than 70 environmen-
tal and social justice groups,” in exchange for voluntarily preferring certified
­recyclers (www.estewards.org).

From Social Welfare to Individual Profits: A Look at the

Neoliberalization of the Montreal Protocol

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is an

international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer. The ozone layer is
the “sunscreen” that absorbs ultraviolet radiation, thus allowing life to exist
on our planet. The Montreal Protocol was designed to phase out ozone-
depleting substances, such as CFCs that were used in aerosols, refrigeration
and other forms of air conditioning. Signed in 1987 and entering into force
in 1989, the Montreal Protocol is considered one of the most successful
global environmental treaties in history, having successfully eliminated about
95% of total CFC use in the world. Presently, the Protocol has been ratified
by 197 parties, including all members to the UN. In 1987, the Montreal
Protocol was ratified by 29 countries and the European Community, rep-
resenting 83% of world CFC consumption. The Protocol is now signed by
197 countries.
The early years of the Montreal Protocol reflected the political and eco-
nomic conditions of the time, when precaution and command-and-control
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 169

regulation were mainstream. As such, the preamble of the Protocol notes that
signatories are:

Determined to protect the ozone layer by taking precautionary measures

to control equitably total global emissions of substances that deplete it,
with the ultimate objective of their elimination on the basis of develop-
ments in scientific knowledge. (http://ozone.unep.org/new_site/en/Treaties/
treaty_text.php?treatyID=2&secID=27)

It was the usage of the precautionary principle that allowed parties to sign the
Montreal Protocol, because it was determined by the international community
that the effect of CFCs on the ozone layer was not yet conclusive. This is not
to say that the elimination of CFCs went against the needs of the chemical
industry. Certainly, the alternatives to CFCs proved to be quite profitable, and
even helped to consolidate that already top-heavy chemical industry (Gareau,
2010). But it is to say that the chemical industry was compelled to act as
members of the ozone network in a political milieu that put precaution as a
centerpiece on the political table.
Let us look at the language of essential use exemptions implemented in
1992, which allow for certain uses of CFCs. The participants in the Montreal
Protocol were conscious of the need for CFCs in some uses where substitutes
simply could not be found that were as effective. CFCs were used in metered-
dose inhalers for asthma applications, and they also were important chemicals
used in flame-retardant foams used to make everything from military vehicles
to commercial airplanes flame-resistant. Yet, the way the participants dealt with
these situations reflected the political and economic “norms” of the time – with
precaution and strong regulation being brought to the fore. For one, Benedick
explains that the chemical industry found it very difficult to pass CFCs through
the essential use test, making essential uses “administered sparingly and with
discrimination” (Benedick, 1998:239). In addition, the uses themselves needed
to be important for other extra-economic reasons. The Protocol reads that an
essential use must be considered “necessary for the health, safety or critical
for the functioning of society (encompassing cultural and intellectual aspects)”
(UNEP, 2003:10). In other words, the CFC use must be important to all of us,
however “important” may be determined.
Such a high standard is absent in the later years of Montreal Protocol nego-
tiations on the methyl bromide (MeBr) critical use exemptions (Gareau, 2013).
In the early 1990s, parties to the Montreal Protocol included methyl bromide
in the list of substances that need to be controlled. In 1997, countries decided
on a phase-out schedule that would lead to the elimination of the chemical
in the industrialized world in 2005, and in 2015 in the less-developed world.
However, the parties also agreed on a Decision that would allow for certain
uses of methyl bromide to continue. The language of that Decision reflects a
major change in how the Montreal Protocol actors approach environmental
170 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

problems. Criteria for critical use exemptions (CUEs) for MeBr differ greatly
from the criteria for essential use exemptions for CFCs. In many ways, the cri-
teria are much more lenient than the CFC exemption clause, and much more
based on the concerns for individuals’ economic security than the conditions
of the global environment or society. Here, any “significant market d
­ isruption”
potentially caused by MeBr alternatives is enough for parties to grant an
exemption to the MeBr phase-out. Under Decision IX/6 of the Protocol:

a use of methyl bromide should qualify as “critical” only if the nominat-

ing Party determines that: (i) The specific use is critical because the lack
of [MeBr] for that use would result in a significant market disruption; and
(ii) there are no technically and economically feasible alternatives or sub-
stitutes available to the user that are acceptable from the standpoint of
­environment and public health and are suitable to the crops and circum-
stances of the nomination. (UNEP, 1997)

Here, it is clear that conditions of the marketplace, even conditions for indi-
viduals using methyl bromide, are of the utmost importance, not that of the
general society. Indeed, the language is so open to interpretation that 600
strawberry growers in California have been successful in acquiring methyl bro-
mide for use as a fumigant long after the 2005 deadline (Gareau, 2013). The
alternatives were deemed “less economically efficient.” In critical use terms, the
economic concerns of these individuals are more important than the social and
ecological conditions that all of society must live with.

The Challenge of Global Climate Change

Global efforts to tackle climate change have a longer history than many might
realize, but the relative failure of these endeavors will likely be known to most.
As yet, we have achieved no global agreement that has actually led to a reduc-
tion in the global production of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, global warm-
ing remains a major problem. The first major global meeting on climate change
occurred in 1979 at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, sponsored by
the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). A conference consisting pri-
marily of climate scientists, the meeting eventually led to the creation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. A second climate
conference was held in 1990, and at it the IPCC’s first assessment report on risks
associated with global climate change was presented. While this conference did
not lead to any significant commitment from countries to reduce greenhouse
gases, it did help lay the foundations for the creation of the United Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit,
and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which is a part of the UNFCC. The UNFCC
is the institution through which countries may demonstrate ­commitment to
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 171

do something about climate change by entering into agreements (like the

Kyoto Protocol) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The documentation of
the Framework Convention states that all countries have “common but dif-
ferentiated responsibility” to tackle climate change, meaning the industrialized
countries should take a leadership role but that all countries must eventually
reduce their emissions. Specifically, industrialized countries agreed (voluntarily,
not legally) that they were supposed to hold steady their greenhouse gas emis-
sions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Since 1992, countries that ratified the
Framework Convention have met annually at “Conferences of the Parties”
(COPs) to update the agreement. It was decided almost immediately that the
1990 stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 was not going to be
enough to deal with climate change, leading to the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol is a legally-binding agreement that obligates countries
that ratified it to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Some countries, like
the US, have signed the Kyoto Protocol, but have no intention of ratifying it
(in 2011, Canada went so far as to renounce its commitment to the Protocol).
While the exact details of emissions cuts vary across countries, many of the
industrialized countries that have ratified it (in total, 190 countries and the
European Union have ratified the Kyoto Protocol) agreed to reduce their emis-
sions during a commitment period between 2008 and 2012 at or near their
emissions levels of the year 1990. These reductions did not include interna-
tional aviation or shipping emissions, however, and industrialized countries
may reduce their emissions by making use of “flexibility mechanisms” such
as trading emissions with other countries, using the Clean Development
Mechanism (where industrialized countries provide less-developed coun-
tries with emissions-reducing production project), or by investing in a Joint
Implementation Project in another industrialized country. Again, the details are
complex, but the results on the whole have been the same – very little success
in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, greenhouse gas emissions have only increased over the years. In 2006,
energy-related carbon dioxide emissions had increased by 24% (World Bank,
2010). In 2007, Gupta et al. (2007) argued that Kyoto first-round commitments
were merely “modest,” lamenting that they hindered the treaty’s effectiveness. By
the year 2008, countries that committed to a Kyoto-based emissions cap made up
less than one-third of annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combus-
tion. The major issue is that the US does not intend to participate in any agree-
ment that would give it a leadership role in greenhouse emissions reductions. It is
widely acknowledged that the costs would be high for its oil- and coal-dependent
economy, and the US is not prepared to pay that price (Nordhaus and Boyer,
2000; Helm and Hepburn, 2009). Consequently, without US leadership, global
greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise (National Research Council, 2010).
At the same time, the global scientific community that the world looks to for
guidance on how to come to grips with climate change, and the social and eco-
nomic changes that are necessary, is caught in a real bind. The IPCC is the most
172 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

important actor in this regard. As a government-funded institution, the IPCC

does not want to report anything politically or economically “divisive” in its
reports – indeed, it would likely be political suicide to do so. Consider the IPCC’s
2014 report, “Mitigation and Climate Change,” the IPCC’s Working Group III
contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (http://­mitigation2014.org).
In this report, the fossil fuel industry is never mentioned as a major green-
house gas emitter and cause of climate change. Additionally, work conducted
by social scientists that explores the reasons behind climate skepticism, climate
denial campaigns, and political barriers to climate mitigation is absent. From
the social science perspective, only established policy choices are discussed, not
the barriers to groundbreaking policies. Work by sociologists such as McCright
and Dunlap (2010) that highlights the deeply organized efforts of climate deni-
alism, based in the fossil fuel industry and their political representatives, is
completely absent from these reports. The same scenario is found in the 2014
National Climate Assessment (NCA) Report (nca2014.globalchange.gov). It is
not until page 628 of the NCA report that the reader (very weary and worn by
this point) discovers a text box stating that “risk perception is also influenced
by the social characteristics of individuals and groups, including gender, race,
and socioeconomic status.” Then, if the reader makes it to page 683, Table
28.6, they will find that the report notes a lack of political leadership, rigid and
entrenched political structures and polarization are factors serving as adapta-
tion barriers. None of this scant material drawing from only a handful of the
thousands of pieces of social science research on this issue makes it into any
of the report summaries, summaries that most media and government agencies
read instead of the full reports.
In this light, it is important to remember that the proposed solutions to
climate change today are vastly different from the command-and-control types
of regulation that were used during the Stockholm era. Rather, the predomi-
nant solutions involve “flexible market mechanisms” deemed more efficient
because “they allow action to be taken without compromising economic
growth” (Okereke, 2008:53). Rather than command-and-control, cap-and-
trade schemes are the policy prescription du jour and they are created to cap-
ture market-generated prices as much as possible. Many cap-and-trade policy
recommendations exclude any regulation by the government entirely, dismiss-
ing the notion that climate is a public good that requires public input. Instead
these approaches propose private trading instruments exclusively devoid of
any government regulation whatsoever.

Conclusion

What are the prospects for effective global governance of hybrid worlds in
a neoliberal age? We have suggested in this chapter that neoliberal concepts
and approaches have demonstrated a very considerable capacity to seep into
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 173

all manner of global environmental agreements and activities over the last
three decades. The neoliberalization of environmental governance is publicly
visible through attempts to set up quasi-market mechanisms such as ­carbon
markets, the privatization of formerly public commons, or deregulating
­environmental legislation. Rather more troubling have been the ways in which
once fairly robust environmental reforms generated by more social demo-
cratic Brundtland-era environmental governance regimes such as the Basel
Convention or the Montreal Protocol are now under threat by ongoing pro-
cesses of neoliberalization.
The extraordinary plasticity and continued influence of neoliberalism has to
be acknowledged. At the same time, it is also important to note that neoliberal-
ism is not adequately conceptualized as a strange deux ex machina that exists
beyond politics but mysteriously shaping the political. Perhaps it is not ade-
quately understood as simply epiphenomena of “the treadmill” or the “meta-
bolic rift” playing out politically. Rather, it is best seen as a particular political
project that has been forcefully pursued by the elite of key nation–states over
the last four decades (Panitch and Gindin, 2012) and consolidated through
political battles. It is thus a political project and, it is, like all political projects,
a “contingent achievement” (Barry, 2012).
What are the promising lines of research that might open up in thinking
about these issues in the future? Let us conclude here with four areas that are
stimulating future research:

(1) Variegated Neoliberalisms: A large body of work emerging out of environ-

mental geography and political ecology over the last decade (see Heynen
and Robbins, 2005; Castree, 2006, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a, 2010b, 2011;
Heynen et al., 2007; Lockie and Higgins, 2007; Bakker, 2009, 2010; Peck
et al., 2009; Smith, 2009) has sought to draw attention to the ways in
which neoliberalisms (which these thinkers suggest we should perhaps
most accurately talk about as being in the plural), under careful analy-
sis, reveal themselves to be constantly reliant on political support for
their continuation, geographically quite varied, and marked by numerous
economic, political and ecological crisis tendencies demonstrated most
strikingly by the great financial crisis. An earlier phase of this burgeon-
ing literature suggested that much could be gained from paying specific
attention to the place-specific contingencies that can emerge in attempts
to impose neoliberal regimes of environmental governance on particular
ecosystems and peoples (cf. Peck and Tickell, 2002). More recent discus-
sions have sought to argue for the importance of attending more closely
to commonalities across cases as well (see Castree, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a;
Bakker, 2009, 2010). Much of this research has also suggested that we
need to attend more carefully to the ways in which the expansion of neo-
liberal governance regimes have frequently been facilitated by state and
super-state agencies (Lockie and Higgins, 2007). As we saw in Chapter 3,
174 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

if we see green markets as essentially made by political forces, we can start

to think much more comprehensively about how they might be unmade.
(2) Prospects for Diversifying Global Environmental Governance: If present
attempts to achieve global agreements through nation–states on climate
change have largely stalled, a range of researchers have suggested f­urther
attention needs to be given to whether possibilities for environmental
reform and political mobilization may emerge on other spatial scales.
City-regions, cities and mayors have demonstrated some capacity for
­independent action on climate change (Bulkeley and Betsill, 2003; Bulkeley
and Newell, 2010; Bulkeley et al., 2010; Hess, 2012; Sassen, 2014). Civil
society actors in the fashion of pressure brought to bear on governments
by social movements, churches, schools and universities, trade unions and
political parties, through disinvestment campaigns, public mobilizations,
electoral politics and direct action have all played central roles in the past
in unraveling institutions as seemingly formidable as the slave trade and
apartheid. The extent to which such forces and strategies at the moment
can operate as a serious counterpower to national policy on climate or
other matters is clearly open to question. Nevertheless, whether sites could
open up different kinds of political agencies that might facilitate shifts
toward low-carbon regimes in the future (see Harvey, 2012) or whether
strategies to develop links between social movements might open up new
possibilities are also important questions that will require further research.
(3) Cracks in the Global System and Shifting Alliances: The work of Ciplet
et al. (2015) has suggested that even though the global politics of climate
change has stalled, there are also signs of possible cracks emerging in the
global system. Specifically, the emergence of a more multilateral global
system witnessed by the rise of China and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa), shifting alliances occurring in the Global South,
as well as unexpected surprises, all introduce uncertainties into how forms
of global environmental governance will evolve in the decades ahead.
(4) China, Germany and the Question of Regional Ecological Modernization:
If ecological modernization would seem to have lost the global argument
for the moment, it still is an open question where critical “frontrunner”
states can now move forward on environmental reform. German attempts
to embark on the Energiewende, or energy transition, will provide a con-
crete test in the decades ahead of the extent to which serious environmen-
tal reform can be achieved in the context of a single country. Legislative
commitments have been made in Germany to a vast increase in renew-
able energy targets and energy efficiency and to significant greenhouse gas
reductions by 2050. Research emerging out of China would now seem
to suggest that chronic environmental problems experienced in mainland
China are generating serious state interest in pursuing ambitious environ-
mental reform strategies (see Mol, 2006; Zhang et al., 2007; Economy,
2010; Hong et al., 2013). Of course, the critical question that has to be
 Global Environmental Governance and Neoliberalization 175

further asked in both these cases is whether either of these developments

can occur without systematic displacement of environmental problems
(Dryzek, 1987) onto other spaces, other temporalities or other media. In
the Chinese and German cases, there seems to be mounting evidence that
a domestic move to ecological modernization strategies are being pursued
while such economies are as involved as ever in neoimperialist resource
grabs in Africa and outsourced use of fossil fuel resources elsewhere.
 9
Anthropocene Politics I:
Market Natures™

In the final two chapters of this book we sketch out the range of ways in
which hybrid talk is reshaping the politics of the environment. In this chap-
ter we look at some of the most influential mainstream positions for dealing
with the challenges that are thrown up by hybrid worlds. Hybrid neoliberals
present the rise of the anthropocene as a defining moment in the planetary
triumph of free market capitalism. For such currents, hybrid worlds open up
vast new possibilities for green neoliberalism, human “augmentation” (trans-
humanism) to planetary “augmentation” (geoengineering). In contrast, we
will suggest that there has been a palpable shift in how romantic environmen-
talism and deep green politics has engaged with the matter of hybridity where
discussions have moved from denial and anger to despair. For such currents of
end times ecology, the anthropocene as catastrophe necessitates a melancholic
politics of mourning for the world that has been lost and perhaps the need
to embrace a new survivalism as we await collapse. Finally, we consider the
rather different ways in which bright greens and post-environmentalists argue
that current challenges require that we return to the matter of modernity
and modernization. We will see in this chapter that hybrid neoliberals, end
times ecologists, bright greens and post-environmentalists all have different
points of emphasis. They often find themselves in sharp disagreement with
each other. However, we will also see that there are odd points of overlap
and commonality as well. All these currents are particularly preoccupied with
questions concerning the future of technology in the age of the anthropo-
cene. Moreover, all these currents broadly agree that whether “innovation”
or “coping” is identified as the way forward, hybrid natures will indeed be
Market Natures™.

176
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  177

Neoliberal Hybrid Ecologies – Free People Living in Fortress Ecologies

It is interesting to note that if hybrid concepts in social theory have largely

emerged from left-liberal discussions in the academy (see Chapter 6), some
of the earliest adopters of hybrid ontologies for explicitly political purposes
have clustered around US-based contrarians, libertarians, assorted transhu-
manists and green neoliberals. Libertarian technotopian thinkers such as
Virginia Postrel (2004), Ray Kurzweil (2006) and Ron Bailey (2005) provide
some interesting early examples of attempts to link hybrid arguments, non-­
equilibrium views of ecology and strong forms of social constructionism to
bolster a vision of free market futures. All these thinkers have argued that a
hybrid view of the future reveals the inherently subjective role cultural evalu-
ations play in conservation decisions, the plasticity of humans and “natures”
and the multiple ways in which self-organizing free markets can combine with
private technological innovation to deliver optimal hybrid futures.
In Liberation Biology (2005), Bailey provides a provocative defense of a
free market hybrid future. It is argued in this text that the biotechnological
revolutions conceived in broad terms and moving from comprehensive genetic
engineering of agriculture to brain-enhancing neuropharmaceuticals, “designer
babies” to an extended human life span produced by revolutions in medical
technology, all open up new vitas for transforming hybrid natures in more
optimal ways. As such, Bailey offers us glimpses of a hybrid future based on
“libertarian transhumanism” and “technological Prometheanism.” Bailey’s
thinking has certain resonances here with Ray Kurzweil (2006), who similarly
argues that the ongoing exponential increase of computer power coupled with
the rise of nanotechnology has not only ensured that artificial intelligence is
beginning to surpass human intelligence in many fields, but it will increas-
ingly blur the boundaries between mind, brain and computer. We can envisage
nanobots that will move through the capillary system of our brains that will
connect up the neocortext of the human brain with the neocortext of the cloud.
This will facilitate new biological and non-biological hybrid modes of think-
ing. Eventually, this will give rise to the ultimate “hive mind” experience, what
Kurzweil refers to as the singularity (2006). Postrel has argued in The Future
and its Enemies (2004) that such developments demonstrate how the political
spectrum, once understood in terms of a Left that once embraced change ver-
sus a Right that resisted change, has now largely fallen apart. In contrast, she
suggests that hybrid politics in the 21st century will be defined by one’s attitude
to technological innovation. We will see a new political spectrum coming into
view organized around the tension between “stasism” versus “dynamists.” If
dynamists are identified by Postrel as composed of free market liberals, lib-
ertarians, transhumanists and others who celebrate the possibilities of free
178 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

i­ ndividuals making their own decisions through decentralized markets to drive

technological change, socio-ecological innovation, human augmentation and
progress, “stasism” can be seen as all those greens, religious conservatives and
the remnants of the political Left whose only remaining project will be to resist
the rise of hybrid worlds in the name of defending pure Nature.
In terms of environmental questions, earlier moments in hybrid neoliberal
discussions essentially embraced the kind of contrarian and Promethean anti-
environmentalist sentiments of the kind we surveyed in Chapter 3. For exam-
ple, Ron Bailey’s earlier engagement with environmental questions (Bailey,
1993) largely followed the lead of Julian Simon (1981) presenting the envi-
ronmental issue as essentially the product of scaremongering and an irrational
culture of fear that has particularly gripped the populations of the affluent
North (additionally see Furedi, 1997). To the extent to which such hybrid
neoliberals like Bailey have now moved closer toward the scientific consensus
on climate change (see for example Bailey, (2007), it is maintained that green
neoliberalism (see Chapter 8) coupled with technological optimism will see
us through. Private enterprise without heavy-handed government intervention
is fully capable of providing the technological fixes from biotechnology and
nanotechnology, to biofuels and nuclear technology that will resolve climate
difficulties. If worst-case scenarios on global warming prove to be correct, it
is maintained, free markets and creative individuals will provide the optimal
means through which forms of human augmentation and geoengineering and
perhaps even strategies to terraforming planet Earth or other planets will be
available to “move us forward” (see Bailey, 2005, 2007).
Despite the libertarian rhetoric of this literature, it is interesting how the
future urban environments that would seem to be favored by many hybrid
neoliberals would seem to manifest themselves in various high-tech visions of
“fortress urbanisms” and “privatopias” situated within broader “smart cities.”
Here, models of gated, privatized and securitized homes, as well as gardens,
communities and suburbs, high-end exclusive shopping centers, high-rise exclu-
sive real estate and intentional communities for the genetically enhanced afflu-
ent are all viewed as essential. They are essential to protect such “free p ­ eople”
from terrorism, poverty, big government and potential barbarism arising from
those that do not have the wit, will or resources to embark on human augmen-
tation. To the extent that hybrid neoliberals grant value to conservation, it is
equally striking how this seems to take the form of advocating for exclusive,
privately owned and carefully controlled elite sites for sustainable tourism and
various models of “fortress conservation” where luxury “eco-hotels” coexist
in the midst of extreme poverty, and guns, fences and paramilitaries ensure
the two worlds rarely meet. Such ideas have been given an interesting spin by
libertarian think tanks such as The Seasteading Institute. Formed by Wayne
Gramlich and Patri Friedman and supported by the libertarian billionaire Peter
Thiel, Seasteaders have suggested that floating cities and floating homesteads
of various kinds allow us to envisage new urban spaces that are resilient in the
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  179

face of climate change, off the grid and hence energy independent and politi-
cally out of the reach of big government. Hence, they could also become new
centers of technological innovation as well as spaces for free individuals to
live. These speculative ideas have some overlap with the calls of Paul Romer’s
proposal to develop “charter cities.” Romer has argued that poorer countries
could lease land to richer countries or private businesses to develop cities that
would be independent of the nations that they find themselves in. Following
the example of Hong Kong, it is suggested that such cities could become cent-
ers for technological, ecological and political experimentation. People would
not have the right to vote in these cities, but they would have the right of free
entry and exit. As such, if they did not like the results of the charter city, they
could leave (see Fuller and Romer, 2010).

End Times Ecology

We have seen across this book that resistance to hybrid narratives has been a
defining theme of the more naturalistic, romantic and dualist versions of deep
green politics (see Rudy and White, 2013). As hybrid narratives have pushed
forward though, by environmental science itself (in the form of discussions
about global climate change, the anthropocene and the like) and progress on
climate issues has stalled, it is noticeable how a despondent, anxious and reluc-
tant accommodation to hybridity has occurred among many deep green forces,
giving rise to what we will refer here to as end times ecology.
End times ecology presently manifests itself in numerous forms. We might
identify the softer edge of this eco-cultural response to the anthropocene as
presented by a wave of melancholic naturalistic writings that have emerged
over the last decade among former deep ecologists (see Kingsnorth and Hine,
2015) mourning the “death of nature.” Much of this work is defined by deep
cultural pessimism when confronting climate change or biodiversity loss, and
it elicits talk of the need for “coping” or “mourning” for a world that has been
lost and has been irretrievably altered. Much of this work is often informed by
theological-cultural motifs with an underlying theme that “we have destroyed
Eden.” The room for action is thus discussed in terms of “retreat.” At best, it
is argued that we should face a neoliberal hybrid world by making ourselves
more resilient, but we should also “prepare for the worst.”
End times ecology is informed by the kind of environmental determinist
collapse-focused histories that we critically engaged with in Chapter 2. If Jared
Diamond’s Collapse is largely read as a cautionary tale from history, alert-
ing us to the possibility of social breakdown, it is interesting how the harder
edges of end times ecology now manifest as a return to 1970s green survival-
ism. For John Gray, hybrid worlds merely reveal the true nature of humans
as a “rapacious primate.” James Lovelock, in his gloomier moments in Gaia’s
Revenge (2006), has declared that humanity is now heading for extinction.
180 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Clive Hamilton in Requiem for a Species (2012), reviewing recent studies of

climate change, concludes:

… even with the most optimistic set of assumptions – the ending of deforesta-
tion, a halving of emissions associated with food production, global emissions
peaking in 2020 and then falling by 3 per cent a year for a few decades – we
have no chance of preventing emissions rising well above a number of critical
tipping points that will spark uncontrollable climate change. The Earth’s cli-
mate would enter a chaotic era lasting thousands of years before natural pro-
cesses eventually establish some sort of equilibrium. Whether human beings
would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point. One
thing seems certain: there will be far fewer of us. (Hamilton, 2012:21–22)

Stephen Emmott, Head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research in

Cambridge and author of 10 Billion (2013), provides a pithy summary of
the wisdom of end times ecology when he declares: “I think we’re fucked…”
(2013:196), “go buy a gun and teach your son how to shoot.”
Apocalyticism and catastrophism have of course long played a central
role in neo-Malthusian discourses, from Paul Ehrlich’s vision of population
bombs to environmental survivalism, and from anarcho-primitivism to the
neo-Hobbesian visions of William Ophuls (1977). Apocalyptic scenarios have
often been used politically by such currents as the “delivery mechanisms” to
envisage more re-localized, autarky communities that would, it is believed, live
more sustainably as a result or facilitate arguments for a Hobbesian Green
Leviathan. End times ecology, though, would seem to be a turn in deep green
anti-humanisms that has increasingly lost hope with egalitarian, “small is
beautiful,” localist visions or even the possibility of benign modes of global
government emerging. If there is a defining theme of much end times ecology,
it is that most of these modes of analysis are marked by a distinct shift, from
the popular new Left ecotopian literatures of the 1960s and 1970s so well
captured by Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), to the unremitting despair
of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006).

Critical Evaluations 1

How might we evaluate these two responses to unfolding hybrid futures? Both of
these discourses clearly have to be taken very seriously, not least because both these
discourses have a very significant presence in contemporary culture. The fusion
of transhumanist and neoliberal ideas has played an important cultural role in
Right libertarian digital utopianism that has emanated out of Silicon Valley, and
through Wired magazine. End Times Ecology provides the backdrop narrative
informing all kinds of different modes of environmental activism. In some senses
they can be seen as reinstating in new ways the catastrophe/cornucopia binary
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  181

that has run through environmental politics since the early 1970s. Nevertheless,
a great deal of contemporary science fiction, from the work of Octavia Butler’s
Parable of the Sower to films such as Gattica (1997) and Elysium (2013), are
attempts to grapple with worlds confronting both neoliberal hybridities and eco-
logical collapse. Much of this literature thus unsettlingly suggests that these two
discourses could in fact be different sides of the same coin.
As we have seen in this book, existing forms of green neoliberalism have had
a vast influence in shaping global and domestic governance regimens. Green
neoliberalism is now the default “common sense” worldview of all manner of
groups from political and economic elites of the affluent world to “pragmatic
realists” currents in the modern environmental movement. The present impasse
in climate change negotiations and the inability to achieve significant global
cuts in greenhouse gas emissions creates a context where wilder discussions
of technotopian geo-engineering or human augmentation schemes to adapt to
a warming world become progressively more respectable. End times ecology
can be viewed as a discourse that draws further strength from classic motifs of
US, British and German environmental romanticism: humans as environmental
degraders, melancholy in the face of change, a fixation with the end. It is also a
discourse that can dovetail with all manner of other anxieties and fears about
modernity, the cultural and political decline of the West in the face of the ascent
of other regions of the world such as China and so on. It is also a discourse that
clearly derives its power from the simple observations of mainstream scientific
bodies such as the IPCC that climate catastrophe is a very real possibility if
business-as-usual projections come to pass. Even if end times ecology is prem-
ised on a particular tendency to focus on worst-case scenarios, it can be argued
that thinking about such “tipping points” or “Black Swan” outcomes has a
place in future scenario planning, as John Barry has observed (Barry, 2012). Let
us consider some limitations though to these responses to the future.
In prescriptive terms, hybrid neoliberal thinkers maintain they are articulat-
ing the basis of a hybrid politics which places “freedom” at the center, attends
to and values the choices free people have already made in relation to their
lifestyle decisions across the advanced capitalist world and addresses environ-
mental issues in a pragmatic and commonsense fashion, keeping the state and
old discredited forms of “command-and-control” regulations at bay. However,
“freedom” understood in primarily negative terms, as the rights of people
to be left alone, would seem to express itself in the construction of multiple
restricted and highly policed hybrid urban and rural ecologies where all man-
ner of coercive state forms are deployed to protect (some people’s) “private
freedoms” from public encroachment. As the old adage goes: “Freedom for the
pike is death for the minnows.” Since neoliberal hybrid ecologies are expressly
committed to maintaining the existing divisions of power and wealth, in many
respects they can be seen as projects that are explicitly committed to redis-
tribute the social and environmental risk of neoliberal hybrid worlds from
“successful” to “unsuccessful” market actors, spaces and places. As we have
182 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

observed of the writings of Julian Simon in Chapter 3, one of the strange iro-
nies of hybrid neoliberalisms is that they simultaneously denounce the state
as a pernicious innovation-crushing actor, and then happily use and extend
state power to implement and expand modes of privatization, commodifica-
tion, outsources and control over the social and natural worlds. Since most
forms of neoliberal ecology are intentionally or otherwise bringing into being
high-carbon, low-biodiversity futures, they can further be viewed as making
an extraordinary bet on the future. In Chapter 8 we considered the growing
evidence that many “free market solutions” to global environmental problems
are failing to deliver successful environmental treaties or even causing them
to unravel. This would suggest that this is a very dangerous bet to make now.
When we consider end times ecology we can observe that the literature
seems to be bedeviled by what we might call the paradox of deep green agency.
End times ecology is a discourse that is premised on a generic “humanity”
construed as “environmental degrader.” Human agency is thus by definition a
problem and now taking us to the apocalypse. However, the paradox of agency
emerges in that if end times ecologists are correct that we face the apoca-
lypse, the only possible way to avoid this fate is to necessitate an envisaging of
vast human agencies that have to be unleashed with world historical effects to
make things different. In contrast to the political injunction that some currents
of environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s derived from romanticism, neo-
Malthusian demography and equilibrium ecology, that humans should do less,
be less, live lightly on the land, reject anthropocentricism, embrace scarcity,
live in balance to address “ecological crisis” and so on, environmental science
understood through the lens of climate science, complexity theory, postnormal
science, hybridity theory, environmental justice and political ecology demands
we do more, act quickly, transform all. End times ecology could be read as a
strangely paralyzing political discourse. It is premised on the need at every level
for a vast creative project of disruptive change to avoid human extinction. It
calls us to a project of remaking reality at a scale and ambition that makes
the revolutionary politics of the 20th century flaccid by comparison. Yet, the
flattening of human agency that runs through the core of the discourse ensures
it cannot entertain the possibility that “rapacious primates” (Gray, 2013) will
respond to the crisis. Fatalism, anxiety, mourning and despair are the inevitable
results. The critical irony, then, of end times ecology as the dominant green
cultural frame for resisting neoliberal hybridities is that it could well contribute
to the malaise that it seeks to diagnose.

Bright Greens: Natural Capitalism, Cradle to Cradle and Beyond

We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk
about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision.
What if humans design products and systems that celebrate an abundance
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  183

of human creativity, culture, and productivity that are so intelligent and safe
that our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?
(McDonough and Braungart, 2002:16)

Postwar environmental movements have often been presented as broadly

technophobic or technoskeptic movements. Yet, technophile currents of envi-
ronmentalism have long had a strong presence in the discussion. Critically
important here have been visions promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog and
the Rocky Mountain Institute in the US, the Radical Technology Group in
Britain, the work of Walter Stahel in Switzerland pioneering the idea of the
circular economy and the work of the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. The
rise of “bright green” advocacy in the writings of various “natural capital-
ists” (Hawken et al., 1999), abundance-oriented ecodesigners (McDonough
and Braungart, 2002, 2013; Mau and Leonard, 2004; Steffen, 2012), and post-
environmental currents such as Nordhaus and Shellenberger (2004, 2007) in
different ways draws from these currents, and it can be seen as marking a full
frontal and sometimes explicit challenge to the more despondent and survival-
ist currents of “end time ecology” (see Shellenberger and Nordhaus, 2004).
Amory Lovins has long argued, for nearly four decades now, that nearly all
of our social and environmental concerns could be dealt with if we aggressively
embarked on moves to generate an ecotechnological transition in the afflu-
ent world and beyond. Lovins has conceptualized this project in various ways
at various points, but perhaps the classic rendering is still to be found in the
text he wrote collaboratively with Paul Hawken and Hunter Lovins: Natural
Capitalism (1999). Drawing from Amory Lovins’ own pioneering work in
ecotechnologies, yet combining this with ecological economics (Daly, 1994;
Hawken, 1994), developments in industrial ecology and biomimicry (Allenby
and Richards, 1994; Ayres and Ayres, 1996), the resource productivity research
as elaborated in the publications Factor Four and Factor Ten and recent inno-
vations that have occurred in environmental design, engineering and architec-
ture (Wines, 2000), it is maintained that all these elements could lay the basis
for nothing less than a new “green” industrial revolution. Natural Capitalism
argues that while waste of energy, resources and people are endemic features
of contemporary capitalism, a new ecotechnological settlement could be based
on (i) new sustainable energy sources (wind, wave, solar, full electric cars),
(ii) resource efficiency technologies (that allow you to do more with less),
(iii)  waste elimination and clean production strategies and (iv)  the develop-
ment of a “service and flows economy” (where the production of goods and
their environmental impacts is increasingly dematerialized in favor of the pro-
vision of services). It is argued in Natural Capitalism that if such activity were
combined with new forms of urban planning toward embracing dense, lively
urban centers that have good access to public transportation, new modes of
calculating well-being that challenge GDP as the be-all and end-all of life and
“just transitions” for workers in grey capitalism so they can move toward, and
184 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

benefit from, the new industrialism, contra end times ecology we can envisage
a project that contributes to “improving the quality of life for all” rather than
“redistributing scarcity” (Hawken et al., 1999:158).
Such bright green themes have been reiterated and somewhat reworked in
the influential upbeat writings of the architect William McDonough and the
industrial chemist Michael Braungart. In Cradle to Cradle (2002) and more
recently The Upcycle (2013), it is suggested that intelligent forms of ecodesign
can now allow us to reduce the cycle of goods and pollutants moving through
the economy and facilitate design for dissassemblage. Important as this is, but
more important still, it is argued that much more ambitious opportunities exist
to systematically redesign the whole framework of manufacturing, produc-
tion, consumption and the architecture of the built environment to facilitate
the growth of regenerative systems. In Cradle to Cradle, it is suggested that
simply bringing together in more integrated ways existing developments in
green architecture, green building materials, green roofs, aqua-culture and
hydroponics, “living machines,” energy-efficient technologies, solar, wind and
wave power, permaculture, industrial ecology, green chemistry and biomimicry
could open up vast improvements in sustainable innovation. Using case studies
that draw examples from green roofs to compostable books, from factories
that produce clean effluent to buildings that produce more energy than they
use and purify their own waste water, McDonough and Braungart argue the
full range of possible eco-innovations is widely underestimated. Both Cradle
to Cradle and The Upcycle argue products can be made out of substances that
become technical and biological nutrients that can then be used in continuous
cycles of production and do not degrade or end up being down-cycled (recy-
cled into less grade materials). This could move us well beyond recycling to “up
cycling,” that is, producing products, processes and buildings that “replenish,
restore and indeed nourish the rest of the world” (McDonough and Braungart,
2002:78). Indeed, in unabashed utopian terms (and a strange inversion of the
thinking of Murray Bookchin (1971), it is argued a bright green vision can
decisively break with scarcity visions of the future to envisage a new post-
scarcity vision of abundance.
The general sensibilities of bright green ideas have been enormously influen-
tial. It can be observed that bright green thinking presently enjoys something
of a hegemonic status across the design disciplines. From new urbanism to
ecological urbanism, from developments in landscape architecture to the turn
to adaptive re-use and retrofitting that has come to define interior architecture
(see Mostafavi and Doherty et al., 2010 for a good survey) – all of these design
disciplines now can be seen (one way or another) as attempts to entertain
and propose bright green propositions to the neighborhood, district, city and
even regional scale. Such ideas have also come to play a significant role in
broadening and expanding discussions of the possibilities of building green
infrastructure, eco-industrial parks, and eco-industrial processes that are to be
found in industrial ecology. Bright green ideas have come to occupy a central
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  185

role in a revival of interest in green urban planning for economic and urban
revitalization. Even within the science of ecology, they have come to influence
scientific research as ecological science itself has opened up to “road ecology”
and “urban ecology.” In all these subdisciplines an emerging view can be found:
that a systematic redesign of urban forms, more generally, could allow us to
envisage and purposely design postcarbon, biophilic and abundant forms of
green urbanism.

Post-Environmentalism

The post-environmental politics of Shellenberger and Nordhaus present a rather

different, technology-driven, modernist politics to bright green approaches. If
bright greens are recognizably sympathetic to environmental social movements
and generally cognizant of justice and equity issues (albeit rather more enamo-
red of the “transformative powers” of commerce and entrepreneurship that is
a stable theme of American business books), Shellenberger and Nordhaus have
sought to shape a neomodern politics that has become progressively more criti-
cal of environmental movements per se: from romanticism to interest group
bargaining to community-based environmental justice groups. In Breakthough:
From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (2007), a
hybrid ontology drawn from Nietzsche, Latour and Deleuze is used to undercut
romantic versions of American environmentalism, classic conservation policy
and global Malthusian thinking. It is also used to construct a post-humanism
that, in the fashion of Julian Simon and Ray Kurzweil, sees socio-ecological
relations as infinitely malleable and ­plastic. In contrast, though, to the anti-state
libertarianism of hybrid neoliberals, Shellenberger and Nordhaus have articu-
lated their own post-environmentalist politics, drawing inspiration from US
traditions of cold war “muscular liberalism,” American exceptionalism, mod-
ernization theory and Daniel Bell’s postindustrial society thesis. Drawing from
these currents, it is argued that environmentalism is a product of economic
growth and the cultural changes generated by postwar affluence. US environ-
mentalism has failed, though, because it has failed to address the aspirations of
the American middle class, failed to build alliances for prosperity across move-
ments and failed to address the broader material aspirations of the developing
world for material prosperity. Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue, in contrast
to the postmodern left or anti-modern radical ecologists, that modernization
and an aggressive commitment to economic growth will have to be part of
any serious political future that seeks to address these issues. It is acknowl-
edged that growth will have to be based, in the long term, on postcarbon
energy infrastructures. However, in contrast to Lovins et al. and McDonough,
Shellenberger and Nordhaus have maintained that no current mix of existing
energy technologies will facilitate global uplift, a reduction of energy poverty
for a ­majority of the world’s ­population or ­decarbonization. As such, what is
186 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

required is for post-­environmentalists to propose a new Promethean vision.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus have advocated in the past for a new Apollo or
Manhattan Project that would see the state prime pump massive public invest-
ment toward research and development in new “breakthrough” postcarbon
energy technologies that will facilitate the transition to green capitalism. More
recently in the Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015), Shellenberger, Nordhaus and
their colleagues have argued that if we wish to decouple human well-being
from environmental impacts, this will require intensifying energy production,
agriculture and urbanization. This will allow us to live in more compact, effi-
cient ways and it will allow the planet more generally to be rewilded. Most
of the focus of post-environmentalist advocacy has focused on the need for
a comprehensive ratchet up of commitments to energy-dense technologies.
Nuclear power, natural gas and fracking, fossil fuels deploying carbon capture
and storage are the most effective postcarbon paths to follow. It is argued
that most forms of renewable energy, in contrast, are incapable of scaling,
though energy intense solar and hydro-electric power many play some role
with nuclear fusion “in the long run.” It is believed that these energy sources
will generate the basis for a political project that can transcend environmental
difficulties while allowing the American way of life to be maintained and gen-
eralized globally.

Critical Evaluations II

Bright greens and post-environmentalists clearly seek to contest neo-­Malthusian

and scarcity frames of possible hybrid futures. All are committed to thinking
about potentially abundant sustainable futures and do so in ways where classic
nature–culture distinctions held by romantic environmentalists are seen, at a
very material level, as making little sense. All offer technologically focused and
design-oriented visions of the future, varying from the soft technological deter-
minism of Hawken, Lovins and Lovins to the hard technological determinism
of Shellenberger and Nordhaus. All have shaped their discourses in ways that
are somewhat critical of neoliberalism and “market fundamentalism” while
seeking in “TED Talk” fashion to green capitalism by emphasizing the poten-
tial agency of “thought leaders,” “visionary companies” and “entrepreneurs.”
Yet, there are also interesting differences between most bright green literatures
and post-environmentalists.
In terms of the scope of the intervention envisaged, bright green discourse –
such as that offered by Natural Capitalism and Cradle to Cradle – generally
speaking addresses environmental concerns with a range of design-focused
interventions. In contrast, post-environmental currents primarily see environ-
mental problems as energy problems. In terms of basic orientations, bright
greens may be critical of the technophobia of traditional environmental-
ism, but they continue to position themselves as the technophilic wing of the
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  187

e­ nvironmental movement, and most bright greens gesture toward having some
sympathies for left-liberal ideas of justice and equity. In contrast, the post-­
environmentalism of Shellenberger and Nordhaus would seem to increasingly
situate itself between the sociology of ecological modernization (that we exam-
ined in Chapter 5), contrarian anti-environmental currents (that we examined
in Chapter 3), the interest of fossil fuel industry advocates and the post partisan
space of the US center right. As such, politically Shellenberger and Nordhaus’
post-environmentalism has little sympathy for older liberal or leftist attach-
ments to more equal or participatory futures. They firmly maintain – similar
to US conservatives and Republicans – that is it growth, modernization and
development that will help the poor, not misguided leftist calls for a politics of
redistribution and participation.
In terms of limitations, it can be observed that all bright green literatures
tend towards offering design-driven propositions written by technology, engi-
neering and design-oriented professionals that focus on the doable. As such,
these are literatures that are rather susceptible to many of the criticisms that
have been leveled at the sociology of ecological modernization (which we
explored in Chapter 5). For example, the role that bright green discourse plays
in aggregating up and amplifying forms of green innovation occurring in the
studio, the firm or the laboratory is clearly important. It is often the case that
less attention is given to whether certain developments can scale up to be con-
sequential. Broader questions that tend to be left under-investigated in bright
green literatures to date include such issues as who is going to provide the
delivery mechanisms to achieve systematic environmental redesign of society?
How are the locked-in powers of fossil fuel interests and the manufacturing
base of grey capitalism going to be transcended by natural capitalism? How
are treadmill dynamics and rebound effects produced by neoliberal dynam-
ics pursing conventional economic growth as is to be dealt with? How might
the broader cultural backdrop of consumer culture be ameliorated by design
strategies alone?
It is interesting to note that bright green literatures often work with multiple
political narratives. Some of the less compelling interventions are directed at
business leaders who, it is believed, will act out of enlightened self-interest to
implement forms of eco-innovation (see McDonough and Braungart, 2013).
However, other currents (see Mostafavi and Doherty, 2010) provide more lay-
ered accounts of multiple possible entry points available for the dispersal of
such innovations well beyond the conventional “entrepreneur/CEO as hero”
model: from forms of industrial redesign that are promoted by local, munici-
pal, regional or national governments to full scale public urban planning, from
firm-based innovation to innovation driven by government regulation or social
movements. Reading beneath the green business uplift narrative, many bright
green authors acknowledge that much more radical regime change will be
required to make their visions possible. This observation is rarely made explicit
in this literature, but it outlines the necessary terrain of engagement that must
188 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

take place between the critical environmental social sciences and Bright green
sensibilities (see White and Wilbert, 2009; Hess 2012, 2014).
Post-environmentalists such as Shellenberger and Nordhaus have a clearer
view of the agents that should drive a post-carbon future than bright greens.
Notably, this largely US-centered vision sees the post-environmentalist project
as nudged into being by publicly funded and government-facilitated energy
research and development policy and smart coalitions between business groups
(including “smart” fossil fuel and nuclear industry representatives), business
friendly “modernist” environmentalists, sensible conservatives and moderate
“new” Democrats. The sociology and politics of post-environmentalism has
limits though.
As we have seen, Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ post-environmentalism
places something called “modernization” center stage and then uses this con-
cept as a stick to beat romantic environmentalism, Malthusianism and deep
ecology. Following this, a simple Manichean binary runs through virtually all
post-environmental arguments – you must either choose “modernization” or
embrace regressive green anti-modernisms. The very concept of moderniza-
tion is never defined with any precision in post-environmentalist discourse and
the historical and geographical power geometries (Massey, 2005) that “mod-
ernization” emerged out of are never engaged with in any depth. What can be
gathered from Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ writings is that they generally fol-
low orthodox modernization theory. Modern historical development is to be
understood in a stagist, unilear fashion emanating out from the major urban
centers of the West (which has pulled itself up via its own bootstraps) and then
diffuses out from these centers to shape “the rest” who have been positioned in
“the waiting room of history.” As such, post-environmentalist discourse tends
to proceed by championing modernization (industrialization, urbanization,
agricultural intensification) while sidestepping 500 years of Western imperial-
ism and colonialism, ecologically uneven exchange and so on (see Chapter 5).
This body of thought seems to have little to say about the extraordinary level
of violence, dispossession, genocide and regulation that has gone hand in hand
with “making certain kinds of people modern.” The very diverse and often
mutually incompatible modes that “modernizing” projects have taken across
the 20th century is also left curiously unexamined. That “modernization” has
been compatible with fascism and Stalinism, New Deal liberalism, feminism
and social democracy, left and right wing versions of national liberation move-
ments, populism and technocracy and is never explored in any depth. Similarly
there is very little serious engagement with the extent to which many features
of neo-liberal modernization over the last four decades have been shaped by
forms of “accumulation by dispossession,” to use David Harvey’s term (Harvey,
2005). Notably, from China to India, Mexico to Russia, “modernization” has
frequently taken the form of the privatization of public services such as water,
healthcare, education and public utilities, displacement of peasants from their
land and the undermining of common resources. The simple observation that
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  189

“modernizations” might have progressive and regressive features that need a

complex historical and critical unpicking, that modernities could be plural or
that there might be other less bloody ways to envisage modern futures, is per-
sistently closed down by the binary logic of post-environmentalism.
It could also be observed that Shellenberger and Nordhaus provide a partial
understanding of why different kinds of modernization projects (or different
parts of the modern) might have been resisted by different kinds of people at
different points in historical time – many of whom will never have heard of
environmentalism. Post-environmentalists invariably argue that prevarications
with actual existing modernization have to be put aside in aggregate and over
the long run “modernization processes” gives rise to better outcomes for all.
To admit otherwise, Shellenberger and Nordhaus maintain, is to give ground
to regressive anti-modernist green positions. Yet, once again this simple binary
and power-blind view of the world does very little to help us understand why
so many communities around the planet have refused to “modernization” by
crucifix, gun or bulldozer. It does not help us understand why public enthu-
siasm for large-scale modernist infrastructure, energy or architecture waned
significantly in the latter half of the 20th century. It does not help us under-
stand why high modernism (from Corbusier’s visions of bulldozing Paris to
produce “cities in the sky,” to Robert Moses’ forced removal of working-class
neighborhoods in the Bronx) ran out of steam. This blind spot in relation to
the power relations of class/race and gender in post-environmental discourse
is epitomized by the dismissal that Shellenberger and Nordhaus have made of
the politics of environmental justice in the US. In a very narrow, unsympathetic
and often inaccurate portrayal, the whole environmental justice issue is dis-
missed as simply offering a vaguely conspiratorial NIMBY “complaint based”
identity politics (see Nordhaus and Shellenberger, 2007:68). The idea that envi-
ronmental justice movements could actually productively inform visions of a
green energy transition (as we will see in the next chapter) or that environ-
mental justice activism might actually provide much broader socio-ecological
visions of other possible futures, as Agyeman (2005) and Jones (2008) have
suggested, is dismissed. It could be said, then, that since Shellenberger and
Nordhaus’ writings provide a very simplistic account of why modernization
projects have been resisted, as a result their post-environmentalist discourse
provides a poor guide for thinking about how the more progressive legacies of
modernism could be recovered.
A third observation that can be made of the positive “Breakthrough” project
that Shellenberger and Nordhaus champion is that this is a Promethean poli-
tics that is almost entirely defined in techno-centric and energy-centric terms.
Now, energy is clearly vital to human development. Energy poverty is unques-
tionably a blight on the lives of 1.6 billion people around the planet who do
not have access to electricity, or the further 2.7 billion people reliant on vari-
ous polluting forms of bio-mass (woodfuel, dung, crop waste, etc.). There are
many merits to the argument that we need to consider the broadest portfolio
190 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

of energy technologies if we are to have a hope of simultaneously cutting 2010

levels of global greenhouse gases by 40% to 70% (IPCC, 2014) while radically
increasing access to post-carbon energy sources. Public investment in research
and development for post-carbon energy technologies is clearly critical.
Yet post-environmental rhetoric fails to engage with other research sug-
gesting much more expansive possibilities for renewable powered futures (see
Jacobson and Delucchi, 2011a, 2011b). And it is strikingly reluctant to explore
the sociology and politics of energy transitions in any depth. Steinberger and
Roberts (2009), focusing on OECD energy use, have suggested that above cer-
tain levels of energy use, saturation points emerge and that it is possible to have
high living standards and lower energy consumption and emissions. Within the
OECD, for example, the US uses over twice the amount of energy as Japan,
France or Germany but achieves lower ranking on many human development
indicators from health care and education to life satisfaction. The work of
Shove (2010a, 2010b) demonstrates that even within the lower energy using
nations of the OECD, a great deal of energy is wasted because of social norms,
marketing strategies or cultural expectation that have little to do with quality
of life. Equally, the assumption that the energy needs of the global South can
only be met by big state modernization programs imposed from above a new
mass nuclearization agenda would seem to skirt over the disappointing history
of many big state mega-projects attempted in the Global South. If the dilemma
of energy poverty is not related to broader questions of education, health-
care, land ownership, and democratic empowerment we could have a repeat
of high modernist white elephants, non-functioning energy infrastructures and
consumers that do not have the means to purchase the said improvements in
energy in the first place (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013; Scoones, Leach and
Newell, 2015).
This draws us to some final observations that can be made between the
visions of what an “ecological modernity” might consist of between post-
environmental “modernization” and the evolving trajectories of bright green
discussions. Bright green thinking clearly has its limits – as we have seen.
However, over the last decade discussions around socio-technical transitions,
the circular economy, the great transformation and, most recently, green
transitions – particularly in the European context – have sought to think in
increasingly encompassing, ambitious and multi-tiered ways about how shifts
towards post-carbon infrastructures, economies, polities and cultural lives
might be imagined (see Scoones, Leach and Newell, 2015). In such discussions,
the need for new energy technologies and new energy infrastructures is taken
as vitally important. So too is the need for the kinds of transformations in man-
ufacturing and building advocated by Amory Lovins or William McDonough.
But these developments are situated within a broader vision of transition
moving from new forms of domestic consumption to sustainable urban trans-
port systems, urban densification to increasingly ambitious propositions for
“closed loop” circular economies, transformed agro-food systems, as well as
 Anthropocene Politics I: Market Natures™  191

­ ropositions to attend to work life balance, equity and participations in green

p
futures. In contrast, and as we have seen, the post-environmentalist “politics of
possibility” championed by Shellenberger and Nordhaus tends towards a much
narrower view of political possibility. Indeed, it could be observed that a great
deal of Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ thinking tends toward a post-­political
technocratic reworking of many green debates (see Swyngedouw 2009, 2011).
This is particularly apparent in the way they treat a whole range of US-centered
practices as largely given, non-negotiable features of any conceivable future
politics. These practices include work-and-spend culture, political and eco-
nomic inequality, patterns of transport and energy use, military spending, the
existing corporate structure and so on. All are expected to not only stay the
same, but also be globalized because they offer objective “modern” visions of
“the good life.” The idea that other societies might contain equally modern
visions of the good life (that the US could perhaps learn from), that ecological
modernities might be plural or that the rest of the world could possibly leap-
frog beyond US models of modernization toward other conceptualizations of
abundant futures, is firmly foreclosed.
Given the technocentric and power-free nature of much post-­
environmentalist analysis, it is easy to see how the post-environmentalist
vision of a “good anthropocene” could converge and merge with the hybrid
neoliberal vision. A post-environmentalist ecomodernist future can be envis-
aged where the affluent live in high security, Dubai-style dense, green “smart
cities.” Such forms of fortress urbanism could be underpinned by corporatist
public-private governance structures, mega-energy technologies, hyper-indus-
trial agriculture and global industrial supply chains that are all serviced by
dispossessed classes living densely and eco-efficiently in the urban periphery.
This decoupled, carbon-­constrained, ecomodern world would, of course, exist
within a broader “re-wilded” planet where perhaps “non-moderns” and those
who have refused to be “modern” or those who have escaped from the neo-
corporatist ­ecomodern smart city live off their wits, taking their chances while
plotting different futures.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have sought to survey a range of different visions of hybrid

futures. We have tried to suggest in this chapter that all these discourses have
insights but they all have limits as well. If end times ecology looks upon our
unfolding hybrid worlds with horror and resignation, we have also seen that
diverse hybrid neoliberals, bright green and post-environmental currents –
whatever their differences – have sought to reframe the environmental debate
as questions of technological innovation and inventiveness. All these dis-
courses present technological innovation as defining invention. As a result of
this, there are strong tendencies to present social life and politics as the realm
192 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

of inertia. More generally, it could be observed that the primary voices that
are seen as drivers of change are “entrepreneurs,” policy makers, technocratic
experts and design professionals. The public, or publics, as potentially sentient,
creative, informed and knowledgeable political actors with their own insights,
are absent.
Andrew Barry (2002) has observed quite usefully that this conceit, that we
live in technological societies that are driven by technologies, has become cen-
tral to the understanding of many people in the affluent world. Barry suggests
that “technological societies” are not necessarily any more technological than
past societies, but they are societies that take technological change as the model
of invention. The irony here, Barry suggests, is that the endless technological
churn that contemporary “technological” economies generate do not necessar-
ily give rise to particularly inventive worlds. Barry indeed observes that peri-
ods of rapid technological change can drive anti-inventive forms and behavior.
Patenting knowledge or making endless upgrades of software or hardware
packages can merely facilitate forms of defensive innovation generating tech-
nological changes that are conservative in their implications, “maintaining
or rigidifying existing arrangements between persons, activities, devices, and
habits of thought; they may restrict and displace the possibility of alternative
developments” (Barry, 2002:212). We should not then simply equate techno-
logical novelty with inventiveness. Rather, Barry suggests:

Inventiveness should not be equated with the development of novel arti-

facts, or indeed with novelty or innovation in general. Rather, inventiveness
can be viewed as an index of the degree to which an object or practice is
associated with opening up possibilities. In this view, scientific and technical
objects and practices are inventive precisely in so far as they are aligned with
inventive ways of thinking and doing and configuring and reconfiguring
relations with other actors. From this perspective it is possible to identify
forms of invention that are not technical but rather involve the use of a
device in more creative ways. In short, just because an object or device is
new does not make it an invention. What is inventive is not the novelty of
artifacts and devices in themselves, but the novelty of the arrangements with
other objects and activities within which artifacts and instruments are situ-
ated and might be situated in the future. (Barry, 2002:211–212)

Barry’s observations prompt the question as to whether there are ways of

thinking about an inventive politics, an experimental environmentalism and
a public ecology (Luke, 2009) which could open up the making of our hybrid
worlds to many more perspectives and voices.
 10
Anthropocene Politics II:
Democratic Natures,
Public Ecologies

Who speaks for the anthropocene? Who is authorized to bring about “the
good anthropocene”? Who gets to decide the path of our hybrid futures? In
the last chapter we saw that some of the most influential contemporary mani-
festations of hybrid politics have been dominated by approaches that stress the
central role that technologies and markets will play in “moving us forward.”
But where does civil society, politics, social movements or the state fit into this
vision? What role and what say should diverse publics not simply conceptual-
ized as “consumers” or “users” but as active citizens and political agents have
in constituting hybrid worlds to come?
In the final chapter of this book, we will sketch out a rather different set
of attempts to imagine a critical hybrid politics beyond business as usual. All
the currents we will look at in this chapter argue that if a defining feature of
our hybrid worlds is that these are worlds that have to be composed, then the
making of this anthropocene is inherently a political act. All the currents we
will engage with here believe that questions of equity and justice have to be
foregrounded in discussions about hybrid futures. Finally, to one degree or
another, all these currents believe that publics have to be closely involved in
the composition of our common home, that in short we need something like a
public ecology (Luke, 2009). We will see in this chapter though that there is a
considerably broad range of ideas as to how we might imagine the flourishing
of public ecologies.
This chapter identifies four sometimes-overlapping discussions that attempt
to think and enact a critical hybrid politics. Perhaps the dominant form that
critical hybrid discussions have taken of late has centered on efforts to imagine
an ontological politics of democratic experimentalism and an ­epistemological

193
194 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

politics concerned with pluralizing knowledge claims. We will use Isabelle

Stengers’ term (i) cosmopolitics here to tie together a range of projects stretch-
ing from hybrid science to popular epidemiology and reconciliation ecology.
All these currents argue that a socially and environmentally just anthropocene
needs to enroll many more humans and even nonhumans in the composition
of our hybrid world. A second set of interventions are identified as exploring
the themes of (ii) plenitude, redirective practices and experiments in sustain-
able living. We will suggest here that all these currents have argued that a new
environmental politics may be emerging from attempts to prefigure, imagine
and design alternative infrastructures, cultural practices and institutions. We
identify a third tier of critical hybrid discussions that are circulating around
discussions of (iii) reconstructive political economy. We will suggest that such
discussions now stretch from proposals for green collar economies to postcapi-
talist proposals to queer the economy. Finally, we consider how (iv) discussions
of the role of the state as a transformative political actor and the possible role
that planning may have in directing hybrid futures have returned to political
discourse after a long period of absence. We will see in these later discussions
there are sharp differences that exist between neo-statist currents that argue
a serious political vision that is commensurable to the scale of the climate
crisis must bring the central or federal state back. In contrast we will see that
many advocates of popular assemblies and municipal politics insist bottom-up
change is the only way to proceed.

Cosmopolitics: Democratic Experiments to Make Things Public

Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway and Ulrich Beck have long understood the
implications of hybrid politics as entailing the need for a radical expansion
and democratization of science, technology and inventiveness that goes well
beyond anything imagined by post-environmentalists or bright greens. As
we saw in Chapter 6, Beck largely sees this democratizing process unfolding
as part of an already emergent “reflexive modernity.” As science expands its
claims of relevance to ever-greater domains of our hybrid worlds, Beck argues
we can see the rise of counter-publics, counter-experts and counter-movements
demanding the democratization of scientific and technological innovation,
policy generation and implementation. Latour has suggested in rather different
terms that we need to move beyond envisaging democracy as just involving a
parliament of speaking (i.e., human) subjects but rather we need to enrich this
with a “parliament of things” (1993, 2004).
Latour has proposed some quite abstract models over the years for how the
parliament of things could be imagined, with the most developed version in
The Politics of Nature (Latour, 2004). The underlying aspiration (as we saw in
Chapter 6) is to extend and deepen the recognition that we are living in a hybrid
world and that the ongoing composition of this world must be open to far
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  195

richer democratic debates and far more complex “matters of concern.” Latour
argues that we need to introduce a much broader range of voices, objects, enti-
ties and relations than ever considered proper under modern parliamentary
practice. Latour has found inspiration in and expresses sympathies for the ways
in which the philosopher Isabelle Stengers has conceptualized the ontological
grounds of this political project in terms of the need for a “cosmopolitics”
or an “ecology of practices.” The cosmopolitical argument made by Stengers
draws inspiration from her written collaborations with the Nobel Laureate Ilya
Prigogine on chaos theory and her own further explorations of the writings of
A.N. Whitehead and Deleuze. Stengers maintains that our socionatural worlds
are nondeterminist open systems full of lively objects and hybrid processes (see
Stengers, 2002). In such worlds, the apocalypticism, scientism and moral abso-
lutism that informs many traditional manifestations of environmental argu-
ments needs to move on. Rather than “Nature” being a disciplining force for
politics, Stengers suggests we need new creative modes of environmental poli-
tics that are attentive to craft, sensuousness and the making of natures. We need
to think in much more imaginative ways about how to open up the making of
nature to multiple democratic practices – from the local to the global – that will
allow new kinds of “adventures with nature,” new types of “encounters with
nonhumans,” and new kinds of sociotechnical and socioecological relations
(Stengers, 2002). But how can this be conceptualized further?
One central theme that emerges from cosmopolitically-oriented thinkers is
the view that grand theories of publically funded ecomodernizing technologi-
cal transitions are all very well but they fail to recognize that we no longer live
in worlds that can be simply directed and controlled by technocratic experts.
Lay voices and knowledge need to be heard, and the realities and “voices”
of nonhumans must be considered. Moreover, we need to attend carefully to
specificities in thinking about how to generate modes of sustainable sociotech-
nical and lively socio-ecological change. One inference from this work is that
a serious cosmopolitics needs to constantly question one-size-fits all programs
and reductionist means for reaching socio-environmental goals. A hybrid envi-
ronmental politics thus has to be interactive with and attendant to multiple
knowledges, entities, and practices that compose our worlds.
To take an example, the conditions for social ecologically sustainable for-
estry in Northern California are not only very different (socially, ecologically,
technically, culturally, etc.) from the conditions for social ecologically sustain-
able forestry in rubber tapping regions of Amazonia, but they are different
again from teak forests in Indonesia, which are dissimilar to bamboo planta-
tions in that same nation. Much the same could be said of attempts to envisage
post-carbon alternative energy networks, more socially and ecologically just
modes of agriculture and food provisioning, and so on. Across the differences,
different publics (near and far) would have to be involved in shaping, choos-
ing and composing hybrid futures. But how, exactly, can publics be involved in
­science and in forms of scientific and technological innovation?
196 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Cosmopolitical imaginaries as expressed by Latour and Stengers can often

seem quite abstract and elusive. Latour himself has focused a great deal on
the possibilities for “making things public” through avante-garde art-science
exhibitions and collaborations between natural scientists, social scientists, art-
ists and designers (Latour and Weibel, 2005), collectively written digital books
(Latour, 2013) or multimedia essays (Latour and Hermant, 2004) that can
intellectually and visually display the nature of our hybrid worlds. Yet there are
more concrete expressions of cosmopolitics that can be pointed to.
For example, cosmopolitical arguments can be seen as broadly compatible
with a range of experiments in citizens’ science and public participation in
scientific controversies conducted over the last few decades. We can point here
to consensus conferences and citizens’ juries (where publics have been selected
by lot to deliberate on environmental or other scientific controversies of con-
cern) to science shops and participatory systems of technology assessment and
conservation. More recently one can point to experiments in crowd-sourced
science. Examples of the latter would include the public engagement in the
Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, the involvement of amateur astrono-
mers in helping to analyze data collected by the SETI Institute, or the use of the
public’s smartphone technologies to monitor and record data on wildlife, such
as Project Noah, and so on.
These aspirations to envisage more democratic modes of science in cos-
mopolitical conversations clearly have resonance with certain visions of how
research in both political ecology and environmental justice have been prac-
ticed. In Chapter 7 we mentioned how researchers such as Phil Brown, Rachel
Morello-Frost and others have drawn attention to the rise of popular epidemi-
ology in environmental justice and health struggles in the US. These researchers
argue that social movement activists have often played a critically important
role in alerting scientific experts to the nature of a problem, in framing scien-
tific issues and hypothesis. Such citizen scientists have in some contexts helped
with data collection and dissemination and help environmental scientists make
connections between environmental health issues where people work, play and
live. We also observed in Chapters 4, 5 and 7 how diverse political ecologists
have shown that the only way to avoid fortress or coercive conservation is
to ensure that the local socio-environmental knowledges of peasant farmers,
pastoralists, urban folk and other lay citizens across the Global South have a
voice in the definition, research, analysis and solutions centered around envi-
ronmental problems (see Forsyth, 2003; Robbins, 2010). As we have noted
previously, Ostrom’s work (1990) has suggested that participatory forms of
natural resource management can provide effective alternatives to state regula-
tion and marketization.
Cosmopolitical interventions can also potentially resonate with the idea of
reconciliation ecology. Michael Rosenzweig (2003) developed the idea of rec-
onciliation ecology to take the demands of classic conservation seriously in the
protection of biodiversity hotspots and the like but extend it in hybrid ­fashion.
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  197

Rosenzweig maintains that in the age of the anthropocene and planetary

urbanism, rich levels of biodiversity can only be protected if we consider ways
of creating and maintaining species-friendly habits in the places “where people
live, work and play,” notably in cities and suburbs. Reconciliation ecology as
such explores the full potential of a landscape for maximizing or actively cul-
tivating spaces for high biodiversity – in and around air force bases, disused
and old industrial sites, old railway lines, informal urban pathways and so
on. Such sites have been championed by reconciliation ecologists not only as
important and unique but also as places where nonrural species can be found
and fostered. In this light, the geographer Jamie Lorimer (2012) has observed
that, in the UK, studies of urban biodiversity have found that some of the rarest
species in the UK are to be found living in urban brownfield sites. Such studies
have even shown that average biodiversity can be higher in brownfields than
in rural areas dominated by intensive agriculture.
In this context the German environmental sociologist Matthias Gross has
argued that ecological restoration projects have great potential for generat-
ing cosmopolitical experiments. As the hybridity of nature has become recog-
nized, and the idea of a stable “objective” baseline that can be returned to as
a steady guide for restoration projects has slowly slipped away, Gross argues
that ecological restoration is a field that is latent with democratic potential.
In Ignorance and Surprise (2010), Gross suggests that ecological restoration
and landscape design projects cannot help but deal with uncertain knowledge,
high levels of complexity and historical and cultural disputes over optimal
outcomes. Using case studies drawn from Chicago and Germany, he found
that building public participation into restoration models can facilitate modes
of public experimentation and debate about diverse possible conservation
futures. Indeed, “ignorance” and “surprise” can lead to new knowledge gener-
ated by expert–lay engagements, greater participation and improved outcomes.
Similar kinds of cosmopolitical experiments have been developed by British
Geographers such as Sarah Whatmore and Steve Hinchliffe. Whatmore and
Hinchliffe have argued that broader forms of conservation and environmen-
tal management from urban gardening, wildlife preservation, building struc-
tures and forms that protect urban biodiversity such as landscape corridors
to debates about flood defenses in the light of climate change can open up all
manner of spaces for cosmopolitical encounters (see Hinchliffe and Whatmore,
2009; Whatmore, 2013).

Redirective Practices, Plenitude and Experiments in Sustainable Living

Developing more sustainable societies is not just something that can happen
through a few top-down decisions. It is something that will involve changes
to nearly every thing every one of us does each day: what we have for break-
fast and how it got into our homes, how we clean our teeth and where our
198 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

waste water goes, what we wear and how we care for our clothes, where we
need to go to work and how, how those work environments are heated and/
or cooled and lit, etc. The bigness of unsustainability comes from how many
small things are going to need to change. (Tonkinwise, 2013:1)

Cosmopolitical discussions have tended to cluster around questions related to

the democratic governance of science, technology, science–art and conserva-
tion matters. They have, in addition, championed largely procedural rather
than substantive views of politics. A broader understanding of sustainable cul-
tural and democratic experimentation has recently opened up in discussions
of plenitude (Schor, 2010), alternative hedonism (Soper, 1999), experiments in
sustainable living (Manzini, 2015) and the concept of of redirective practices
(Fry, 2009, 2011; Tonkinwise, 2013). In contrast to the technocentric imagi-
nary of much bright green or post-environmentalist thinking, many of these
currents have been to try and envisage how the drive for more pleasure and
leisure, the eradication of vast amounts of waste, the opening up of cultural
and creative social design possibilities or even our desire for less isolated and
more communal social forms might become drivers for, and offer potential
prefigurative solutions to, a range of socio-environmental issues.
The writings of Juliet Schor (2010) and Kate Soper (1999) have long argued
that an environmental politics focused on moving political demands from
more to better, from quantitative to qualitative transformations, might actu-
ally allow us to rethink not just pleasure but open up broader debate about
the distribution of work, home life, culture and public space. Soper has argued
that a green cultural politics that directly challenged “work and spend” with
an alternative hedonism that demanded abundance of time, pleasure and lei-
sure could open up many more paths for new ecologies of abundance. Radical
designers such as Pelle Ehn (see Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, 2014) and Ezio
Manzini (2015) have similarly sought over the last four decades to map, docu-
ment and explore various experiments in sustainable living: from household or
neighborhood experiments in energy conservation to slow food movements,
examples of bartering and gifting from free cycle and tool libraries, to ways
in which new collectivities might be built from street parties, neighborhood
restaurants, networks of mutual aid and the like. Such explorations have
even stretched into the workplace through Ehn’s explorations of the potential
of work-orientated design (Ehn, 1988) and, more recently, explorations of the
potential of maker spaces and living labs (Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, 2014).
Much of this work has suggested that viewed individually, these developments
can be dismissed as ephemeral and insubstantial. Yet, it is suggested that if
aggregated up, connected and networked they could open up vastly different
paths for different kinds of material participation in social life.
The philosopher and radical designer Tony Fry has sought to give form
to this field of activities in rather more militant terms. Fry argues that much
conventional green design is limited not only because it is technocentric but
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  199

because it is essentially apolitical, marked by an inability to acknowledge the

deep-seated structural forces that are underpinning unsustainable ­activities –
instrumental Western rationalism and global capitalism. This inability to think
structurally ensures that bright greens and post-environmentalists fail to see
that unsustainability or de-futuring is ontologically structured into the very
“habitus” we occupy. Fry nevertheless argues that design is of critical impor-
tance if “our future is to have a future” and this is because design “names our
ability to prefigure what we create before the act of creation” (Fry, 2009:2).
As such, all humans design and it is core to what makes us human. But design
is also critical because “Nature alone cannot sustain us…we have become
too dependent upon the artificial worlds that we have designed, fabricated
and occupied” (Fry, 2009:3). Unlike bright greens or post-environmentalists
and much like Latour, Fry argues design is profoundly political. It is a mate-
rial politics that needs to be brought into view in our designed world and
then systematically redirected. We need to embrace and embark on nothing
less than a systematic project of socio-ecologically retrofitting, redirecting
and redesigning our personal habits, our homes, our cities and our broader
­political-economic systems to reclaim the future. This is what Fry calls a
­politics of “redirective practices.”
For Fry, redirective practices should move from considering different ways
in which we might live better and more sustainably through new modes of
care of the self to new material interventions at much more comprehensive
levels. This may well involve embracing a “quality economy” and new modes
of service design (that attempt to create closed loop production systems). But,
in addition, it is argued we will need to practice “eliminative design” that finds
ways to intelligently get rid of, or replace, a whole range of environmentally
damaging products and services with less environmentally intensive but bet-
ter quality alternatives. We will need to think about “platforming,” ways in
which new green businesses, social institutions and even educational systems
can emerge out of the shell of older forms of grey capitalism. In an age of cli-
mate change Fry also argues redirective practices will have to think at much
broader scales of change. We will need to imagine how we might “metrofit”
cities. This may entail retrofitting for resilience; it may involve thinking about
ways in which cities can be moved or even abandoned and rebuilt elsewhere.
More generally, redirective practices require the development of a new design
intelligence, “a mode of literacy acquired by every educated person” that
would “deliver the means to make crucial judgments about actions that would
increase or decrease future potential” (Fry, 2009).
Cameron Tonkinwise (2013) has similarly emphasized that ideas of
redirective practices can and should be extended to focus on the economy and
cultural consumption more generally. We already know that vast amounts
of energy and material are used in our current economy to produce goods
than end up in landfill after a very short period of time. We also know that
vast amounts of the goods that remain are hugely underutilized. It is most
200 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

famously estimated that the family drill is used for five minutes across the
course of its life. Such observation clearly opens up vast potential to develop
not only service and flows economies (as bright greens, such as Hawken
et al., 1999 have argued for, seeking to promote lend–lease relationships
between customers and providers), but also much more extensive forms of
collaborative consumption. Can we envisage then a shift from an ownership
economy to an access economy where the focus is less on owning more mate-
rial stuff and more on having access to high-quality goods and services that
could be used more efficiently because they are shared? Indeed, Tonkinwise,
Terry Irvin and Gideon Kossoff (see Kossoff, 2011; Irwin, Tonkinwise and
Kossoff, 2014), inspired by the rise of Transition Town movements, have
recently suggested that what is required to knit all these projects together is
a form of transition design. Transition design can be seen as an attempt to
cluster and augment multiple forms of social innovation, bright green inno-
vations and democratic experimentalism, so these developments can begin to
operate at scale.

Critical Evaluations I

All the literatures and socio-material practices we have surveyed in the preced-
ing section clearly have many merits. One way or the other they bring back
into focus the active, creative and entangled human agent. They potentially
do so in rather more democratic and differentiated ways to the technocratic
visions of hybrid neoliberals or post-environmentalists. They also bring back
into focus environmental politics as a creative material project and in this
respect they have the potential to recuperate, socialize and render more rich
and interesting the focus of bright green discourse. These are discourses that
are of further importance for their insistence that we challenge the politics of
low expectations that defines end times ecology. Rather than building socio-
ecological futures that are just resilient, that at best aspire to just return to a
pre-given state, such currents argue we should be able to build futures that are
better. In contrast to classic romantic environmentalisms that have long under-
stood environmental politics as a form of risk avoidance, defense, protection
or limit, Isabella Stengers (2002) is interesting and provocative in suggesting
that the adventure of cosmopolitics may entail that we have to now entertain
new modes of environmentalism that are prepared to put things at risk to
bring about a sustainable future. They are discourses that also open up poten-
tial points of convergence between design-led social movements, neighborhood
and communal movements, environmental social movements and cultural/­
lifestyle-oriented social movements. The links that Kossoff, Tonkinwise and
Irvin (2014) seek to establish between transition town movements and transi-
tion urbanism are a case in point. However, there are some issues that emerge
from this literature as well.
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  201

Much work in cosmopolitical and related literatures are presently con-

ducted at micro-meso levels of analysis with a particular focus on civil society
ventures. It is very difficult to know, though, from much of this work, how rep-
resentative practitioners involved in cosmopolitical experiments are. Who, for
example, has the time to be involved in activities like citizen science or popular
epistemology? To what extent can these projects actually challenge or disrupt
existing relations of exclusion and subordination? Alternatively, could it be
the case that cosmopolitical experiments in the large part give voice to affluent
time-rich groups that already have high degrees of social and cultural capital?
One limitation of the kinds of cosmopolitical experiments inspired by Latour’s
work to date (see Braun and Whatmore et al., 2010) is that the celebration of
ontological openness in many of these discussions generate tendencies to avoid
investigating systematically structured social inequalities and forms of politi-
cal and economic subordination that prevent fully inclusive modes of demo-
cratic experimentation to take place. Matters are not helped by the manner in
which Latourian inspired cosmopolitical thinking almost goes out of its way
to avoid talking about capitalism and class, the failing of liberal democracy or
the working of neoliberalism.
Similarly, it could be observed that current cosmopolitical discussions are
marked by rather exclusionary geographies. For example, many cosmopolitical
inquiries are very interested in forms of cosmopolitics going on in the gentri-
fied urban spaces, households, neighborhoods and leisure spaces of the affluent
North, with museums and public art installations providing particularly domi-
nant fora for “making things public” (see Latour and Weibel, 2005). There has
been a surprising lack of interest in extending modes of “democratic experi-
mentalism” to the workplace, the sweatshop or the plantation, the internment
camp or the battered women’s shelter.
Work on popular epistemology, plenitude and experiments in sustain-
able living would seem to be much more keen to address issues of structural
inequality. Indeed such issues are much more explicitly addressed in all these
literatures as posing constant and persistent challenges to bottom-up social
innovation. Still, questions can additionally be asked here as to whether small-
scale explorations in social innovation can scale up or can be ultimately dis-
ruptive of the systems they seek to critique? For example, in the case of ideas
of plenitude or Manzini’s call for experiments in sustainable living, how do we
ensure that “Do-It Yourself” activities do not simply get co-opted and reincor-
porated back into existing state strategies that facilitate DIY austerity and the
further withdrawal of welfare state provisioning? Once again, these are clearly
not easy dilemmas to address but they have to be posed and carefully worked
through. The quick colonization of the sharing economy in the US by neolib-
eral logics and venture capital demonstrates some of the challenges at hand.
Moreover, if it is granted that many of these forms of local democratic experi-
ments can open up local spaces to more democratic encounters, it has to be
asked whether such strategies open up possibilities for challenging, contesting
202 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

or generating reform of regional, national and international bodies. How can

democratic experiments help to democratize the vast areas of economic and
state activities that are only marginally under democratic control?
It is interesting how advocates of redirective practices have tended to approach
many of these questions in rather different terms. Fry argues that socio-ecological
transformations are inevitable because the impacts of climate can already be seen
through increased weather instability, flood, drought and so on. We are, in short,
entering a time of radical unsettlement, and this will ensure that redirective prac-
tices will have to unfold en masse regardless of whether the beleaguered liberal
democratic state or capitalist economy acknowledges this situation. Forces will
have to emerge that are continuously involved in making “a radical, affirma-
tive and continuous making of a home in the world” (Fry, 2011:252). The great
potential of the idea of redirective practices is that in viewing publics at large as
potential designers, it has the potential to open up a public ecology of makers and,
indeed, ideas of socio-ecological innovation in a much more expansive fashion.
However, it is not clear how a politics of redirective practices will negotiate differ-
ences and disputes that are going to become an inevitable feature of the making
and remaking of our world. It is also not as yet clear how a politics of redirective
practices can scale up so as to redirect large scale infrastructures, urban systems
or broader political economies. Let us explore this issue a little more.

A Hybrid and Post Free Market Economy?

Can we envisage modes of ecological and democratic experimentalism that

might bring work and production as well as consumption and culture into
view? Can hybrid discussions inform and transform our understanding of
political economy? There are a number of interventions that can be identified
here that are productive to engage with.
The writings of the feminist political economists J.K. Gibson-Graham (1996,
2006) and the Green political economist John Barry (2012) present interesting
attempts to break down conventional totalized views of “The Economy” and,
through this, open up possible routes for imagining futures beyond the free
­market. Both Barry and Gibson-Graham observe that in many male-stream dis-
cussions of “the economy” one can see modes of analysis that all but bracket out
the household and the worlds that women predominately occupy, the forms of
provision of peasants and, indeed, the “free gifts” of nature (see Barry, 2012:45
and in addition Mellor, 1997; Salleh, 1997; MacGregor, 2006). Conventional
economics has tended to render invisible the vast array of unpaid labor done
by women that sustains formal economic activity, labor that Gibson-Graham
(2006:57) estimate contributes anything from 30% to 50% of productive
activity. Even in critical theory, these thinkers suggest that we can see a mirror
image of this myopic view of the economy produced through “capitalocentric”
ways of seeing and representing the economy. Capitolocentricism is defined
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  203

as “the hegemonic representation of all economic activities in terms of their

relationship to capitalism” (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Barry, 2012:163). Both
Gibson-Graham and Barry believe it is important to understand capitalism as
a system defined by contradictions and exploitation. However, they argue that
if the entire focus of discussion of “the economy” only sees wage labor, mar-
ket exchanges and what goes on in the capitalist enterprise, it leaves out not
simply the political and regulatory frameworks that states provide to facilitate
accumulation, but it also leaves out a huge range of economic activities that are
not fully embedded in formal market relations. In short, they suggest a great
deal of radical political economic approaches allow “capitalism” to achieve
“discursive dominance,” and this contributes to the inability of progressives of
many stripes to produce an “expansive and generative politics of non-capitalist
construction” (Gibson Graham 2006:53).
Gibson-Graham suggests if we “queer” the economy, if we view “the econ-
omy” in more hybrid ways, we can actually see that the formal capitalist econ-
omy is really the tip of a much broader iceberg of economic activity going on
in society (see Figure 10.1: The Iceberg). Gibson-Graham, as critical feminists
and neo-Marxist thinkers are of course well aware, stresses that economic
relations outside the formal economy cannot be envisaged in some simple

wage labor
produce for a market
in a capitalist firm

in schools on the street

in neighborhoods
within families unpaid

in church/temple
the retired between friends

gifts volunteer
self-employment
barter moonlighting children

informal lending illegal

not for market

not monetized self-provisioning

producer cooperatives
under-the-table
consumer cooperatives non-capitalist firms

Figure 10.1  T
he Iceberg. J.K. Gibson-Graham. Drawing by Ken Byrne.
Reprinted with permission.
204 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

way as spheres of autonomy and freedom. Many of these spheres of economic

activity – from the family firm to slavery, to the black market – are marked
by their own distinct relationships of power, forms of exploitation and suf-
fering (Gibson-Graham, 2006). However, Gibson-Graham suggests the point
of this strategy of “deconstructing” and “queering” conventional accounts of
“the economy” is to denaturalize and repoliticize “the economic.” Through
this maneuver, Gibson-Graham argues we can not only bring into view the
complex messiness of the formal economy (bringing into view more fully the
Pollyannian relationship between states, social institutions and markets) but
also the range of economic relations conventionally placed beyond or situated
in between the formal economy. Reading for “difference rather than domi-
nance” (Gibson-Graham, 2006:54), Gibson-Graham demonstrates that even
under neoliberalism there are a wide-range of ever-present experiments in
building alternative and community economies. Exploring these exogenous
and interstitial engagements can pre-figure other ways of imagining postcapi-
talist hybrid futures. For example, see Table 10.1.
Assembling a range of working people, unionists, activists, homeworkers
and third sector advocates together, the concept of “the diverse economy”

Table 10.1  The Diverse Economy (Gibson-Graham, 2006). Reprinted with

permission.
Transactions Labor Enterprise
MARKET WAGE CAPITALIST
ALTERNATIVE ALTERNATIVE PAID ALTERNATIVE
MARKET Sale of public Self-employed CAPITALIST
goods Cooperative State enterprise
Ethical “fair-trade” Indentured Green capitalist
markets Reciprocal labor in kind Socially responsible firms
Local trading systems Work for welfare Non-profits
Alternative currencies
Underground markets
Co-op exchange
Barter
Informal markets
NON-MARKET UNPAID NON-CAPITALIST
Household flows Housework Communal
Gift giving Family care Independent
Indigenous exchange Neighborhood work Feudal
State allocations Volunteering Slave
State appropriations Self-provisioning labor
Gleaning Slave labor
Hunting, fishing, gathering
Theft, poaching
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  205

is used in Gibson-Graham’s applied research to explicitly promote the

­potential of a demystified and democratized economy. In rather similar terms,
John Barry’s vision of Green political economy suggests that bringing into
view the hybridity of the modern economy allows us to think about:

the appropriate ordering and respective roles and relationships between

what I take to be the three basic institutions of modern societies, namely
the state, the market, and community in terms of the transition away from
unsustainability. (Barry, 2012:7)

Such work then allows much more room to think about policy interventions
and institutions from revitalized welfare states and unconditional basic income
schemes to green systems of production and consumption that can promote
‘quality of life,’ ‘well-being,’ and ‘happiness’ (Barry, 2012:163).
The writings of Gibson-Graham and John Barry clearly have some overlap
with discussions of green collar economies and the green new deal. The finan-
cial crisis of 2008 generated a range of broadly neo-Keynesian proposals for
a green new deal (see New Economics Foundation, 2010) the Green Collar
Economy (Jones, 2008) and the Green Energy transition (see Hess, 2007, 2009,
2012). The green collar economy for Van Jones is part of a broader need for a
“new social uplift environmentalism” that is productivist and aspirational but
also socially and environmentally just. Jones acknowledges the importance of
large-scale public investment in clean technology to achieve a sustainable tran-
sition. However, he has argued that the ways in which post-environmentalists
focus on such metaprojects down the road does not open up a large job pool
or a path to prosperity for working-class communities in the here and now.
The focus on waiting for the high-tech solution also fails to recognize that “the
main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun” (Jones, 2008:9).
Taking climate change seriously and taking poverty, inequality and economic
depression seriously, it is argued, requires us to recognize that this is a vast
project of making. As he notes:

If we are going to beat global warming, we are going to have to weatherize

millions of buildings, install millions of solar panels, manufacturer millions
of wind turbine parts, plant and care for millions of trees, build millions of
plug in hybrid vehicles, and construct thousands of solar farms, wind farms
and wave farms. That will require thousands of contracts and millions of
jobs – productive billions of dollars of economic stimulus. (Jones, 2008:10)

In contrast to Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ focus on energy breakthroughs

(2007), the kind of green collar economy envisaged by Jones and David Hess
is not simply an energy-focused politics. Rather, both argue the demand for
clean energy needs to be linked with demand for green employment and the
demand for the development of further green industries, involved in material
206 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

use and recycling, local organic food production, mass transit and light rail and
so on (see Hess, 2012). It is observed that simply weatherproofing and energy
retrofitting every home and building in the US could cut energy use by 30%.
What exactly is a green collar job though? For Jones it is “a family-supporting,
career track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environ-
mental quality” (Jones, 2008:12). Jones defines these jobs variously as being
in the areas of solar panel installation, retrofitting buildings, refining waste oil
into biodiesel, repairing hybrid cars, installing green roof tops, planting trees
or constructing transit lines. The green collar economy for Jones constitutes
less a direct challenge to capitalism but rather a classic Keynesian strategy for
creating new markets, new workforces, new technologies and new industries.
It is also a vision through which smart governments are seen as potentially
playing an important role in not only shifting subsidies away from fossil fuel
industries and regulating them but also in proactively steering jobs to disad-
vantaged communities, realigning the public sector and a politics that would
demand assistance to people in the Global South.
If neo-Keynesian discussions of green new deals and green collar economies
have largely emerged in the affluent world context as potential strategies to
deal with economic malaise in the Global North, at a global level it has been
the climate justice movement that has sought to suggest that real change will
require comprehensive transformations of the basic workings of the global
economy. Climate justice emerges out of the environmental justice movements
that we explored in the last chapter. They can be seen as attempts to generate
a globalization from below of forces, currents and voices that address climate
change and environmental injustices and also the broader social injustices pro-
duced by war, state violence and untethered markets. It has also become one
of the primary global social movements seeking to contest green neoliberalism
(see Ciplet, Roberts and Khan, 2015). With a focus on the ecological debt that
the Global North is seen to owe the Global South, it is argued nothing less than
global action on climate emissions, a sharp global change to rising inequality
and a global attempt to implement real meaningful democracy will help us
move forward on these issues. Less concerned with Keynesian reflation strate-
gies, what is required, according to Patrick Bond (2014), are structural trans-
formations of the world economy. Bond has observed that the Climate Justice
Now! Network made the following core demands at its founding meeting in
Bali in December 2007, notably:

• huge financial transfers from North to South based on historical respon-

sibility and ecological debt for adaptation and mitigation costs paid for
by redirecting military budgets, innovative taxes and debt cancellation;
• leaving fossil fuels in the ground and investing in appropriate energy-
efficiency and safe, clean and community-led renewable energy;
• rights-based resource conservation that enforces indigenous land rights and
promotes peoples’ sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water; and
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  207

• sustainable family farming, fishing and peoples’ food sovereignty.

(Bond, 2014)

Bond argues though that climate justice movements will only ever have a hope
of success if they can bring together much broader coalitions that do not simply
demand technological or institutional change but suggest concrete and specific
ways in which we might change broader social relations to bring about more
egalitarian, democratic and, indeed, postcapitalist visions of possible future
worlds. To do this, ownership of resources, the distribution of wealth and
the distribution of political power all have to be part of the conversation about
our hybrid futures.

Municipalist and NeoStatist Political Strategies for Developing a Hybrid

Politics
Let us consider here a final cluster of proposals for envisaging a transition
to a socially and environmentally just anthropocene. In a striking passage in
Justice, Nature and the Politics of Difference, following a discussion of the lim-
its of actual existing ecological modernization, David Harvey suggests the need
to articulate a much more explicitly material vision of a sustainable future. A
“moral politics” that is committed to “protecting the sanctity of mother Earth
will not do,” he tells us. Rather, it is maintained a viable politics will have to:

deal in the material and institutional issues of how to organize production

and distribution in general, how to confront the realities of global power
politics and how to displace the hegemonic powers of capitalism not sim-
ply with dispersed, autonomous, localized, and essentially communitarian
solutions … but with a rather more complex politics that recognizes how
environmental and social justice must be sought by a rational ordering of
activities at different scales … For that to happen, the environmental jus-
tice movement has to radicalize the ecological modernization discourse. …
Alternative modes of production, consumption and distribution as well as
environmental modes of environmental transformation have to be explored
if the discursive space of the environmental justice movement and the thesis
of ecological modernization are to be joined in a program of radical politi-
cal action. (Harvey, 1996:400–401)

It is interesting how, in this paragraph, Harvey suggests the possibility of an

entirely different kind of material prefigurative critique is possible. Notably,
he recommends that political forces need to find ways of co-opting what we
referred to as bright green strategies well beyond their current natural capital-
ist formations. The clear suggestion is that political movements need to embark
on immanent critique of actual existing material activities occurring in the here
and now. Yet, how do we envisage this further?
208 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

The political writings of Murray Bookchin (see Bookchin, 2015) provide

one set of possible answers that have attracted increasing attention of late
(see Harvey, 2012). While Bookchin’s political thinking has had different foci
at different moments (see White, 2008), a defining feature of his thinking has
been the claim that green-Left movements must work at the grassroots munici-
pal level to reclaim human beings as active citizens. Bookchin has argued that
radical social movements should focus on building a libertarian or confed-
eral municipalist movement from below that should aim to take over or build
local democratic forums with the aim of turning these into popular assem-
blies. Popular assemblies may well embark on projects to build communally
owned enterprises and new political institutions. But most crucially, Bookchin
argues, such assemblies should confederate with each other at local, municipal,
regional and, ultimately, global levels. The aim of this political project then is
to develop a multi-layered form of direct democracy that can form a counter-
power to the state and capital. For Bookchin, a decentralist and anti-statist
political strategy is the only way to directly challenge capital and the state and
avoid co-optation (Bookchin, 2015).
In rather sharp contrast to Bookchin’s municipal focus, Christian Parenti
(2013) and Naomi Klein (2014) have suggested that the climate crisis cannot
wait for the final model of the good society to emerge or for a moment of
bottom-up insurrectionary revolutionary transformation. Rather, the urgency
of the climate crisis clearly requires a drastic cutting of greenhouse gas emis-
sions immediately. They suggest that if we think through this project in its full
complexity it will entail making “massive investments” in clean energy sources,
smart grids and carbon-capture and sequestration technologies as quickly as
possible. It will involve technical adaptations: from building sea wall defenses
to new climate-adaptive agriculture. Parenti (2013) also argues it will entail
“political adaptation” in the form of a new redistributive welfare state, more
sustainable models of development and a shift toward a new diplomacy of
peacebuilding (Parenti, 2013, but also see Klein, 2014). Most critically though,
both argue we will ultimately have to shut down the largest and most pow-
erful set of industries on the planet – the fossil fuel industries – if we are to
have any hope of building a survivable anthropocene. Both these thinkers have
argued  that while all manner of democratic pressure from below is vitally
important, the only existing institution that has the power to achieve this
­project is the state.
Parenti (2013), focusing on the US, has argued that we have to recognize
that with the political will, decisive state action, the deployment of existing
technologies and smart legislation could indeed achieve significant and imme-
diate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A tax on carbon, for example,
provides the most immediately simple and easy way to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. However, he also argues that the fastest way to kick start a clean
energy economy is “to reorient government procurement away from fossil fuel
energy and toward clean energy and technology.” If one brings into view here
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  209

“the massively important but often overlooked role of government planning,

­investment, subsidy, procurement, and ownership in the economic develop-
ment of American capitalism” it becomes apparent, Parenti argues, that the US
federal government “is the world’s largest consumer of energy and vehicles,
and the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.” For Parenti, then, in the first
instance the energies of social movements should be less focused on building
a green economy in civil society or popular assemblies and more focused on
building a mass political base of support for social change that can start to
make political demands on the existing state. More generally though, such
movements should aspire to open up the relative autonomy of the quasi-­
democratic state from the shadow state and capital by seizing state power.
The point of this activity would be to wield state power to leverage green pro-
curement, implement new forms of taxation, embark on long-term sustainable
planning and kick start a green industrial revolution (Parenti, 2013).

Critical Evaluations II

How do the clusters of approaches we have reviewed in this section move dis-
cussions forward? Many of the political economic arguments we have surveyed
are certainly open to criticism and contestation. Gibson-Graham’s vision of a
diverse and plural hybrid economy will have to address all the same issues that
we posed against advocates of cosmopolitics. The central question that emerges
time and again is how can co-operative political-economic experiments push-
ing against the grain of neoliberalism be sustained? What are the mechanisms
and institutions that could allow such projects to not only resist co-optation
but allow sectors – such as a green co-operative sector – to grow and expand?
Neo-Keynesian discussions of green collar economies and green collar jobs
have other challenges. Notably, neo-Keynesian strategies may well have their
merits but they are clearly ameliorate strategies which leave most elements of
the existing mode of production intact. It has to be further acknowledged that
at present, many green jobs in low-carbon industries may well prefigure larger
changes to come but they can also be difficult, dirty and exploitative jobs. To
take one example, as the environmental sociologist David Pellow (2002) has
noted, the recycling industry might be in some senses a “green industry” but,
at present, it is a sector that contains many of the same dangers to workers as
in many other industrial sectors. Green collar jobs need to be not only well-
paid jobs, but also jobs where workers are protected from hazards and jobs
where workers have some control over their employment contexts. David Hess
provides a nice supplement here, arguing for carefully considered good green
jobs, jobs that have the potential of both improving the lives of working-class
people as well as strengthening local economies that support certain sections of
the green energy field via state–corporate–education links (Hess, 2012). What
is often missing from a range of current neo-Keynesian red-green discussions
210 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

are any extended thoughts about how one might move from social democratic
adjustments to the existing market economy to open up a much more diverse
set of discussions about ownership and control of the economy.
The writings of Erik Olin Wright (2010) paired alongside the writings of
Gibson-Graham could perhaps have much to offer here. Wright argues that if one
thinks about political economies in hybrid terms, it reveals that in terms of mod-
ern economies “no actual living economy has ever been purely capitalist, statist
or socialist, since it is never the case that the allocation, control, and use of eco-
nomic resources is determined by a single source of power. Such pure cases live in
only the fantasies (or nightmares of theorists)” (Wright, 2010:123). Perhaps the
point then of a critical hybrid politics can be seen as not to have to make a simple
choice between the statism of Parenti or the civil-society focus of Gibson-Graham.
Rather, one might articulate the project as the search for nonreformist reforms
(Gorz, 1964) that systematically shift the diverse logics of political economic gov-
ernance (see Table 10.2) from the present dominance of market fundamentalism
or emerging forms of green neoliberalism toward a new political economic settle-
ment which subordinates the logics of a green market to the will of the democratic
state and a green social economy embedded in civil society (see Barry, 2012).

Table 10.2  Diverse Logics of Political Economic Governance for Diverse

Ecological Modernities
1. Green Financial Capital Aims: To generate a new mode of accumulation through
the innovation of new green financial innovations and mechanisms – carbon
markets and carbon emissions trading schemes, new green derivatives, “debt for
nature swaps,” bioprospecting, trade in genetically modified organisms and human
body parts, outsourcing, privatization.
2. Green Biotechnological, Biomedical & Agro-Food Capital Aims: To develop new
modes of new “green” innovations in biotech, biomed and agro-food, often working
alongside the public university, which can open up new terrains of social nature to
accumulation and ownership through patenting, bioprospecting, developing and
trading various genetically modified organisms, etc. Mostly involves examples of
green neoliberalism but also many examples of state-funded biotechnology, etc.
3. Green Manufacturing and Industrial Capitalism Aims: The term describes
sections of industrial or manufacturing capitalism focused on tentatively
experimenting with green buildings, alternative low-carbon vehicles, new energy
systems, industrial ecologies, green chemistry, biomimicry, etc., service and flows
type ecofirms. Some elements of this sector of the economy are captured by the
worlds described by Hawken et al. (1999), “natural capitalism” (see Chapter 9).
Private sector, public sector, public–private partnerships.
4. Green Entrepreneurs and Social Entrepreneurs Aims: To develop for-profit or not-
for-profit ventures that seek to expand green innovation/experiments in sustainable
living from sharability systems to new transport advocacy.
 Anthropocene Politics II: Democratic Natures, Public Ecologies  211

5. Green Professionals and Advocacy Groups Aims: To cultivate “radical” and

“progressive” professional groups, from architects and industrial designers, to green
engineers to landscape designers, to urban planners to green chemists to see “cracks
in the system” that allow them to experiment with anticipatory forms of “good
practice.” All these professional groups have complicated and diverse relations
to capital, markets, not-for-profits, NGOs and social movements. They range
in personal politics from pure “get rich opportunists” to social radicals opening
up different spaces and different alternative visions of possible futures through
advocacy and professional work. Examples of such projects might include attempts
to build socially inclusive green buildings, projects for adaptive reuse and retrofitting
buildings, blocks, neighborhoods, whole cities, projects to develop emotionally and
ecologically durable design, social design, bottom-up community design, design for a
better world, participatory design, self-built housing, partial self-build housing. etc.
6. Green Regional, Municipal and Urban Planning Aims: To use local, regional and
state governments, major and other state agencies to develop different kinds of
urban regeneration, planning (new urbanism, etc.), green industrial districts, eco-
industrial parks, new low-carbon transportation alternatives, etc.
7. Green Mutualism, Co-Operative and Civil Societarian Ventures: Aims: To
cultivate social activists, community organizations, social movements and trade
unions as drivers to develop alternative economic institutions. Such currents have
diverse and complex relations to “markets,” etc., experimenting in diverse and
complicated ways with other different kinds of eco-innovation. At the most political
end of this, this will involve the full range of anarcho/environmental/pre-figurative
ventures, urban farms, tool libraries, barter, local currencies, “off the grid” strategies
for preparing for “peak everything,” neopopulist urban radical social and ecological
innovation, community-based energy retrofits, local currencies, community centers,
labor–environment centers pushing for green collar jobs, etc.; other developments
would include various co-operative structures from NGOs to social entrepreneurs
involved in other kinds of “social and ecological innovation.” Attitudes to
market and local state often highly varied depending on practice, open or closed
opportunity structures, etc.
8. Green Statism Aims: To expand the power of the state to shape environmental
legislation and energy/innovation/technology/industry, etc. Examples would
include in the US “command and control” environmental legislation brought
in during the 1960s and 1970s such as The Clean Air Act (1962). More recent
examples would include government-directed environmental “front runner” states
(Germany, Northern European States) using various neocorporatist, Schumperterian
innovation policies or neo-liberal measures like public–private partnerships to
underpin frameworks of innovation, whether in energy or manufacturing sectors,
or create new green regimes of accumulation to help develop support for the rise of
green capitalism. More radically, such strategies might include attempts by the state
to encourage green collar economies and/or a green new deal. It can be observed
that the relationship between green statism and neoliberalism is complicated and
varies considerably in different regions of the OECD through restructuring markets
in favor of moving green capitalists further forward.
(Continued)
212 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

Table 10.2  (Continued)

9. The Collaborative Commons, Sharability and Networked Coordination Aims: To
develop sharing economies, new forms of mutual aid, attempt to network up and
connect “prosumers” (producer/consumers) or pro-ams (professional amateurs),
through the internet to provide either free goods (free cycle, Linux operating
systems) or new modes of neoliberal economics (e.g., Uber).
10. Green Worker Self-Management, Green Unionism Aims: To subject sectors or
the economy as a whole to the control of “workers.” This might minimally involve
workers’ councils as legislatively recognized stakeholders in pay negotiations,
bottom-up attempts to build green collar economies, the use of trade union pension
funds to attempt to gain greater worker control and ultimately socialize production,
worker-run factories and syndicalist strategies.
11. Experiments in Popular Planning Aims: To subject economic and socio-
ecological processes to popular and possibly directly democratic community
control. Concrete examples might include participatory budgeting processes in
Porto Alegre, or more comprehensive attempts to subject the economy to directly
democratic control as has been advocated by Alpert through the Parecon system
and Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism.

When we consider the range of possible modes of coordination that can

shape socio-ecological processes, it becomes apparent that a critical hybridity
can allow us to see that ecological modernities could take on many different
forms than orthodox modes of analysis would grant. It can be demonstrated
in Table 10.2 that the traditional efforts to build successor relations to “grey”
capitalism through a vision of a neoliberal green economy are certainly very
influential. Green neoliberalism is ascendant as a response to neoliberalism’s
ecological contradictions, and it has proven remarkably capable of colonizing
other alternative movements and spheres. However, this is not the only story
that can be told. All political projects are contingent achievement (Barry, 2012)
and there are all manner of counter-hegemonic relations and coalitions that
may still give shape to different kinds of hybrid futures. Much of this work
further suggests that seriously challenging the sunk interests of fossil fuel capi-
talism, the military state and forms of old grey capitalism may well require
continued creative thinking and creative improvising. It could be the case that
hybrid futures will have to combine bright green projects with cosmopoliti-
cal experiments to “make things public.” Perhaps movements will emerge in
the future advocating experiments in popular planning with explorations of
redirective practices and experiments in sustainable living. Of course, there
is no simple solution to all these issues of how we can think about desirable
hybrid futures. Different strategies and tactics will work in different parts of
the world, depending on the dominant socio-ecological issues at stake, the
political balance of forces, different political histories, traditions and cultural
contexts and the different resources and opportunities available to actors.
Conclusion: Hybrid Arguments,
Hybrid Flourishing, Hybrid
Futures

This book has tried to convince our readers that social theory and the ­critical
social sciences matter, and they matter a great deal, to the environmental debate.
We have suggested that the core contribution that the critical social sciences
make to the environmental debate is the observation that the social and the
environmental are profoundly intertwined, that environmental problems are
inescapably social problems. Building on this simple point, we have attempted
to show that power relations play a very significant role in how broadly or
narrowly “socio-environmental problems” are defined, how the histories of
socio-environmental relations are narrated, how they are experienced, who they
impact and how solutions are approached.
Environments, Natures and Social Theory has further explored the many
currents within the contemporary social and natural sciences grappling with
the reality that we live in hybrid worlds. Our studies of historical ecology and
environmental history have shown that hybrid worlds have to varying degrees
always existed. But we have also seen in our engagements with Bookchin
and Harvey, Latour and Haraway that quite specific kinds of hybrid worlds
are now emerging from the vast expansion of markets, state agencies, new
forms of regulation and control and new forms of production, consumption
and disposal that have followed in the wake of the globalization of capital-
ist modernity. Whether one names this world “the anthropocene,” “the man-
thropocene,” “the capitalocene,” “planetary urbanism” or simply talks of rise
of “neoliberal natures,” we have suggested that the social ecologies we inhabit
are now best seen as the product of multiple political struggles and multiple
agencies (human and non-human) being enrolled at a planetary scale. What is
most troubling about this grand experiment in socio-ecological change is that
there are clearly vast inequalities of power surrounding the networks or assem-
blages that are involved in making this hybrid world. We have seen throughout
this book that some networks are better able to define some problems, hazards
and risks as real threats than others. Some networks are more able to move
institutions that generate policy programs to address those problems as defined

213
214 Environments, Natures and Social Theory

by those groups – and they are able to disaggregate and disorganize others.
Indeed, whole aspects of the making of current hybrid natures – whether this
occurs through military power, finance capital, corporate activities or the
activities of the shadow state – are almost entirely closed to any popular or
democratic discussion. It is here where environmental crisis and social crisis
are intimately intertwined.
In terms of the environmental social sciences, this book has also argued
that our capacity to address these dilemmas and crises in a productive,
reconstructive way is severely limited by various binary ways of thinking
about socio-­ecological relations. We have examined and critiqued the c­ lassic
two-dimensional neo-Malthusian/Promethean binary that has defined the
modern environmental debate. We have also seen that various other unhelpful
­binaries – the growth/no growth binary, the humanism/post humanism binary,
the view that we must either uncritically embrace or entirely reject something
called “modernity,” the view that we must chose technological or social change
(rather than demand socio-technical transformations) – continue to litter envi-
ronmental discussions. Even across the critical landscape, we have argued there
are modes of critical thinking that disempower or lead to intellectual dead
ends. If all we have to work with are romantic or apocalyptic environmental
narratives of generic “humans as environmental degraders,” pessimistic ­leftist
narratives of a catastrophic runaway capitalism which will only be tamed by
global insurrection or highly academic celebrations of “vital natures,” and
“lively objects” that leave hybrid human subjects passive and reactive, we are
left with poor resources to think creatively about contemporary action, future-
oriented possibilities or the prospect of social ecological flourishing.
In contrast, we have suggested that the best critical hybrid imaginaries
found running across the better moments of sociology and geography, political
ecology and STS, critical design studies and ecology potentially open up dif-
ferent paths. Such imaginaries demonstrate emergent and existing capacities to
unpack socio-environmental questions in more productive ways, and they may
open up ways of seeing that help facilitate participation across movements. An
environmental politics that lets go of “nature in the large” and instead focuses
on what O’Connor formulated as the intertwined links between the ecological,
personal and communal conditions of production and life (O’Connor, 1993),
or what Guattari (1989) envisaged as the three ecologies – environment, social
relations, human subjectivity – potentially opens up very different understand-
ings of possible hybrid futures. As we have seen in our discussions of urban
political ecology, environmental justice, queer ecology and other similar move-
ments, the task ahead must be to connect global environmental problems to
the domains of where we live, work and play.
This book has finally suggested that if we are to move beyond the dead ends
of Malthusian survivalism, end times ecology or neoliberal natures, we need to
produce not simply deconstructive but much more boldly reconstructive politi-
cal ecologies and reconstructive environmental sociologies. There is no way
 Conclusion 215

back to a mythical pure, balanced, organic “Nature.” There is no way back to

“the wild.” There are many ways forward for making, gardening and inventing
hybrid social natures. As we have seen through this book, from social ecolo-
gists to bright greens, advocates of environmental justice to feminist science
studies, critical designers to cosmopolitical advocates, there are many ­different
ways in which we could embark on different creative “adventures” with our
hybrid nature–cultures. There are truly exciting, engaging and empowering
ways we could compose more sumptuous, sustainable, democratic and equi-
table hybrid worlds. We, of course, need the courage to do this, the forms of
interdisciplinary inquiry and political praxis to get us there and perhaps a little
luck. So, let’s get on with it.
 Bibliography

Agarwal, Anil and Narain, Sunita (1991) Global Warming in an Unequal World (New
Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment).
Agrawal, Arun (2005) Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making
of Subjects (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Agyeman, Julian (2005) Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental
Justice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Agyeman, Julian, Bullard, Robert and Evans, Bob (2002) “Exploring the Nexus:
Bringing Together Sustainability, Environmental Justice and Equity” Space and
Polity 6, 1, 70–90.
Ai-Hua, Long, Xu, Zhong-Min, Wang, Xin-Hua and Shang-Hai-Yang (2006)
“Impacts of Population, Affluence and Technology on Water Footprinting in
China” Acta Ecologica Sinica 10. http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-
STXB200610026.htm.
Aldrich, Tim and Sinks, Thomas (2002) “Things to Know and Do About Cancer
Clusters” Cancer Investigations 20, 810–816.
Allen, Barbara (2003) Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana’s Chemical
Corridor Disputes (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).
Allenby, Braden R. and Richards, Deanna J. (eds) (1994) The Greening of Industrial
Ecosystems (Washington, DC: National Academy Press).
Arendt, Hannah (1970) On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace and World).
Asafu-Adjaye, John et al (2015) The Ecomodernist Manifesto http://www.ecomodernism.org/
authors/
Asher, Kiran (2004) “‘Texts in Context’: Afro-Colombian Women’s Activism in the
Pacific Lowlands of Colombia” Feminist Review 78, 1–18.
Ayres, Robert U. and Ayres, Leslie W. (1996) Industrial Ecology: Towards Closing the
Materials Cycle (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar).
Ayres, Robert U. and Kneese, Allen V. (1989) “Externalities: Economics and
Thermodynamics” pp. 89–118 in Franco Archibugi and Peter Nijkamp (eds)
Economy & Ecology: Towards Sustainable Development (Dortrecht, NL: Kluwer
Academic Publishers).
Bacon, Francis (1989 [1627]) New Atlantis (Wheeling, IL: Crofts Classics).
Badiou, Alain (2008) “Live Badiou – Interview with Alain Badiou” pp. 136–139 in
Oliver Feltham (ed.) Live Theory (London: Continuum).
Bailey, Ronald (1993) Ecoscam: The False Prophets of the Ecological Apocalypse (New
York: St. Martin’s Press).
Bailey, Ronald (2005) Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech
Revolution (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books).

216
 Bibliography 217

Bailey, Ronald (2007) “Global Warming – Not Worse Than We Thought, But Bad
Enough” Reason.com. http://reason.com/archives/2007/02/02/global-warming-not-
worse-than.
Bakker, Karen (2009) “Neoliberal Nature, Ecological Fixes, and the Pitfalls of
Comparative Research” Environment and Planning A 41, 1781–1787.
Bakker, Karen (2010) “The Limits of ‘Neoliberal Natures’: Debating Green
Neoliberalism” Progress in Human Geography 34, 6, 715–735.
Bakker, Karen and Bridge, Gavin (2006) “Material Worlds? Resource Geographies and
the ‘Matter of Nature’” Progress in Human Geography 30, 1–23.
Balée, William and Erikson, Clark (2006) Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology
(New York: Columbia University Press).
Barad, Karen (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Barry, Andrew (2001) Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (London:
Athlone Press).
Barry, Andrew (2013) “The Translation Zone: Between Actor-Network Theory and
International Relations” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41, 3, 413–429.
Barry, John (2012) The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing
in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press).
Bartley, Tim and Bergesen, Albert (1997) “World-System Studies of the Environment”
Journal of World-Systems Research 3, 3, 369–380.
Bauman, Zygmunt and Haugaard, Marj (2008) “Liquid Modernity and Power: A
Dialogue with Zygmunt Bauman” Journal of Power 1, 2, 111–130.
Beck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage
Publications).
Beck, Ulrich (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (New York: Wiley).
Beck, Ulrich (1999) What Is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press).
Beck, Ulrich (2000) “Risk Society Revisited: Theory, Politics and Research Programmes”
pp. 211–229 in Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck and Joostvan Loon (eds) The Risk
Society and Beyond (London: Sage Publications).
Beck, Ulrich (2010) “Climate for Change, or How to Create a Green Modernity?”
Theory, Culture and Society 27, 2–3, 254–266.
Beck, Ulrich (2012) “Redefining the Sociological Project: The Cosmopolitan Challenge”
Sociology 46, 1, 7–12.
Beckfield, Jason (2003) “Inequality in the World Polity: The Structure of International
Organization” American Sociological Review 68, 401–424.
Beckfield, Jason (2010) “The Social Structure of the World Polity” American Journal of
Sociology 115, 1018–1068.
Benedick, Richard Elliot (1998) Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the
Planet (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press).
Benton, Ted (1989) “Marxism and Natural Limits: An Ecological Critique and
Reconstruction” New Left Review 178, 51–86.
Benton, Ted (1991) “Biology and Social Science: Why the Return of the Repressed
Should be Given a (Cautious) Welcome” Sociology 25, 1, 1–29.
218 Bibliography

Benton, Ted (1993) Natural Relations: Ecology, Animals and Social Justice (London:
Verso).
Benton, Ted (1994) “Biology and Social Theory” pp. 1–26 in Michael Redcliff and Ted
Benton (eds) Social Theory and the Global Environment (London: Routledge).
Benton, Ted (1996) The Greening of Marxism (New York: Guilford Press).
Bernstein, Steven (2002) “Liberal Environmentalism and Global Environmental
Governance” Global Environmental Politics 2, 3, 1–16.
Berry, Lisa M. (2008) “Inequality in the Creation of Environmental Harm: Looking
for Answers from Within” pp. 239–265 in Robert C. Wilkinson and William R.
Freudenburg (eds) Equity and the Environment (Bingley, UK: Emerald).
Bhaskar, Roy (1989) Reclaiming Reality (London: Verso).
Biersack, Aletta and Greenberg, James (eds) (2006) Re-Imagining Political Ecology
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Blaikie, Piers (2003) “Social Nature and Environmental Policy in the South: Views from
Verandah and Veld” pp. 133–150 in Noel Castree and Bruce Braun (eds) Social
Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics (London: Wiley-Blackwell).
Blaikie, Piers (1994) Political Ecology in the 1990s: An Evolving View of Nature and
Society (East Lansing, MI: Centre for Advanced Study of International Development,
Michigan State University).
Blaikie, Piers and Brookfield, Harold (1987) Land Degradation and Society (London:
Longman).
Blok, Anders (2010) “Topologies of Climate Change: Actor-Network Theory, Relational-
Scalar Analytics, and Carbon-Market Overflows” Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 28, 5, 896–912.
Blok, Anders (2011) “Clash of the Eco-Sciences: Carbon Marketization, Environmental
NGOs, and Performativity as Politics” Economy and Society 40, 3, 451–476.
Blok, Anders and Jensen, Torben Elgaard (2011) Bruno Latour: Hybrid Thoughts in a
Hybrid World (New York: Routledge).
Boli, John and Thomas, George M. (1997) “World Culture in the World Polity”
American Sociological Review 62, 2, 171–190.
Bookchin, Murray (as “Lewis Herber”) (1952) “The Problem of Chemicals in Food”
Contemporary Issues 3, 12, 206–241.
Bookchin, Murray (1962) Our Synthetic Environment (New York: Harper Colophone).
Bookchin, Murray (1965) Crisis in Our Cities (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).
Bookchin, Murray (1971) Post-scarcity Anarchism (Berkeley, CA: Ramparts Press).
Bookchin, Murray (1974) Our Synthetic Environment (New York: Harper & Row).
Bookchin, Murray (1980) Towards an Ecological Society (Montreal, QC: Black
Rose).
Bookchin, Murray (1982) The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of
Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books).
Bookchin, Murray (1990) Remaking Society: Paths to a Green Future (Boston, MA:
South End Press).
Bookchin, Murray (1993) “What Is Social Ecology?” pp. 462–478 in Michael E.
Zimmerman et al. (eds) Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical
Ecology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall).
Bookchin, Murray (2015) The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise
of Direct Democracy (London: Verso).
Bond, Patrick (2014) “Carbon Rush or Climate Justice?” in A. Miller (ed.) Carbon Rush:
The Truth Behind the Carbon Market Smokescreen (Montreal: Red Books Press).
 Bibliography 219

Boswell, Terry and Chase-Dunn, Christopher (2000) The Spiral of Capitalism and
Socialism: Toward Global Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).
Botkin, Daniel (1990) Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First
Century (London: Oxford University Press).
Botsman, Rachel and Rogers, Roo (2010) What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of
Collaborative Consumption (New York: HarperBusiness).
Boucher, Douglas H. (1998) “Newtonian Ecology and Beyond” Science as Culture 7,
4, 493–517.
Boucher, Douglas H., James, Sam and Keeler, Kathleen H. (1982) “The Ecology of
Mutualism” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 13, 315–347.
Boucher, Doug, et al. (2003) “Another Look at the End of the World” Capitalism Nature
Socialism 14, 3, 123–131.
Boykoff, Maxwell (2011) Who Speaks for Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting
on Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Boykoff, Maxwell T. and Boykoff, Jules M. (2004) “Balance as Bias: Global Warming
and the US Prestige Press” Global Environmental Change 14, 125–136.
Braun, Bruce (2002) The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture and Power on
Canada’s West Coast (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).
Braun, Bruce. (2008) “Inventive Life” Progress in Human Geography 32, 5, 667–679.
Braun, Bruce and Castree, Noel (eds) (1998) Remaking Reality: Nature at the
Millennium (London: Routledge).
Braun, Bruce and Whatmore, Sarah (eds) (2010) Political Matter: Technoscience,
Democracy and Public Life (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press).
Braun, Bruce (2015) “New Materialisms and Neo-Liberal Natures” Antipode 47, 1, 1–14.
Brenner, Neil and Schmid, Christian (2012) “Planetary Urbanization” pp. 10–13 in
Matthew Gandy (ed.) Urban Constellations (Berlin: Jovis).
Bridge, Gavin (2010) “Past Peak Oil: Political Economy of Energy Crises” pp. 307–324
in Richard Peet, Paul Robbins and Michael Watts (eds) Global Political Ecology
(Cambridge, UK: Routledge).
Bridge, Gavin and Fredriksen, Tomas (2012) “Order Out of Chaos’ Resources, Hazards
and the Production of a Tin-Mining Economy in Northern Nigeria in the Early
Twentieth Century” Environment and History 18, 367–394.
Bridge, Gavin and Wood, Andrew (2010) “Less is More: Spectres of Scarcity and the
Politics of Resource Access in the Upstream Oil Sector” Geoforum 41, 565–576.
Brown, Lester (1978) The Twenty-Ninth Day: Accommodating Human Needs and
Numbers to the Earth’s Resources (New York: W.W. Norton).
Brown, Phil (1987) “Popular Epidemiology: Community Response to Toxic Waste-
Induced Disease in Woburn, Massachusetts and Other Sites” Science, Technology,
and Human Values 12, 3–4, 76–85.
Brown, Phil, Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Zavestoski, Stephen (2012) Contested
Illnesses: Citizens, Science and Health Social Movements (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press).
Brulle, Robert J. (2014) “Institutionalizing Delay: Foundation Funding and the Creation
of U.S. Climate Change Counter-Movement Organizations” Climatic Change 122,
4, 681–694.
Brulle, Robert J. and Pellow, David N. (2006) “Environmental Justice: Human Health
and Environmental Inequalities” Annual Review of Public Health 27, 1, 103–124.
Bryant, Bunyan (ed.) (1995) Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions
(Washington, DC: Island Press).
220 Bibliography

Bryant, Raymond L. and Bailey, Sinead (1997) Third-World Political Ecology (London:
Routledge).
Bryant, Bunyan and Mohai, Paul (eds) (1992) Race and the Incidence of Environmental
Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Bulkeley, Harriet and Betsill, Michele (2003) Cities and Climate Change: Urban
Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance (London: Routledge).
Bulkeley, Harriet and Newell, Peter (2010) Governing Climate Change (New York:
Routledge).
Bulkeley, Harriet, et al. (eds) (2010) Cities and Low Carbon Transitions (London:
Routledge).
Bullard, Robert D. (1983) “Solid Waste Sites and the Black Houston Community”
Sociological Inquiry 53, 2–3, 273–288.
Bullard, Robert D. (1990) Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Bullard, Robert D. (1993) Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the
Grassroots (Boston, MA: South End Press).
Bunker, Stephen G. (1984) “Modes of Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Progressive
Underdevelopment of an Extreme Periphery” American Journal of Sociology 89, 5,
1017–1064.
Bunker, Stephen G., et al. (2003) “Theorizing and Rethinking Linkages between the
Natural Environment and the Modern World-System: Deforestation in the Late 20th
Century” Journal of World-Systems Research 9, 2, 357–390.
Buttel, Frederick H. (2000) “Ecological Modernization as Social Theory” Geoforum
31, 1, 57–65.
Buttel, Frederick H. (2003) “Environmental Sociology and the Explanation of
Environmental Reform” Organization & Environment 16, 3, 356–400.
Buttel, Frederick H. (2004) “The Treadmill of Production: An Appreciation, Assessment,
and Agenda for Research” Organization & Environment 17, 3, 323–336.
Callenbach, Ernest (1975) Ecotopia (New York: Bantam Books).
Capek, Stella (1993) “The ‘Environmental Justice’ Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and
an Application” Social Problems 40, 1, 5–24.
Carolan, Michael S. (2009) ‘Process Sub-Politics: Placing Empirical Flesh on
Whiteheadian Thought’ Ethics, Place and Environment 12, 2, 187–203.
Carson, Rachel (1962) Silent Spring (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin).
Cary, Henry C. (1858) Principals of Social Science (Philadelphia, PA: J.P. Lippincott).
Cassels, Richard (1984) “The Role of Prehistoric Man in the Faunal Extinctions of New
Zealand and Other Pacific Islands” pp. 741–767 in Paul S. Martin and Richard G.
Klein (eds) Quarternary Extinctions (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press).
Castree, Noel (1995) “The Nature of Produced Nature: Materiality and Knowledge
Construction in Marxism” Antipode 27, 1, 12–48.
Castree, Noel (2001) “Marxism, Capitalism, and the Production of Nature” pp. 189–
207 in Noel Castree and Bruce Braun (eds) Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and
Politics (Malden, MA: Blackwell).
Castree, Noel (2002) “False Antitheses? Marxism, Nature and Actor-Networks”
Antipode 34, 1, 111–146.
Castree, Noel (2005) Nature: The Adventures of a Concept (London: Routledge).
Castree, Noel (2007) “Neoliberal Ecologies” pp. 282–286 in Nik Heynen et al. (eds)
Neoliberal Environments (London: Routledge).
 Bibliography 221

Castree, Noel (2008a) “Neo-Liberalising Nature: The Logics of Deregulation and

Reregulation” Environment and Planning A 40, 1, 131–152.
Castree, Noel (2008b) “Neo-Liberalising Nature: Processes, Outcomes and Effects”
Environment and Planning A 40, 1, 153–173.
Castree, Noel (2010a) “Neoliberalism and the Biophysical World 1: What ‘Neoliberalism’
Is and What Difference Nature Makes to It” Geography Compass 4, 12, 1725–1733.
Castree, Noel (2010b) “Neoliberalism and the Biophysical World 2: Theorising the
Neoliberalisation of Nature” Geography Compass 4, 12, 1734–1746.
Castree, Noel (2011) “Neoliberalism and the Biophysical World 3: From Theory to
Practice” Geography Compass 5, 1, 35–49.
Castree, Noel and Braun, Bruce (2001) Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics
(London: Basil Blackwell).
Catton, William R. (1980) Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press).
Catton, William R. (2002) “Has the Durkheim Legacy Misled Sociology?” pp. 90–115
in Riley E. Dunlap et al. (eds) Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical
Foundations and Contemporary Insights (New York: Rowman & Littlefield).
Catton, William R. (1998) “Malthus: More Relevant Than Ever” http://www
.­greatchange.org/ov-catton,malthus.html.
Catton, William R. (2000) “Worse than Foreseen by Malthus (even if the living do not
outnumber the dead)” http://desip.igc.org/malthus/Catton.html.
Catton, William R. and Dunlap, Riley E. (1978) “Environmental Sociology: A New
Paradigm” The American Sociologist 13, 1, 41–49.
Catton, William R. and Dunlap, Riley E. (1980) “A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-
Exuberant Sociology” American Behavioral Scientist 24, 1, 15–47.
Chang, Ha-Joon (2010) 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism (London:
Allen Lane Group).
Chew, Sing (2001) World Ecological Degradation: Accumulation, Urbanization, and
Deforestation (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press).
Chew, Sing (2007) The Recurring Dark Ages: Ecological Stress, Climate Changes, and
System Transformation (Lanham, MD: AltaMiraPress).
Childs, John Brown (2008) Hurricane Katrina (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books).
Christoff, Peter (1996) “Ecological Modernisation, Ecological Modernities”
Environmental Politics 5, 3, 476–500.
Ciplet, David, Roberts, J. Timmons and Khan, Mizan R. (2013) “The Politics of
International Climate Adaptation Funding: Justice and Divisions in the Greenhouse”
Global Environmental Politics 13, 1, 49–68.
Ciplet, David, Roberts, J. Timmons and Khan, Mizan R. (2015) Power in a Warming
World: The New Global Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Clark, Brett and Foster, John Bellamy (2009) “Ecological Imperialism and the Global
Metabolic Rift: Unequal Exchange and the Guano/Nitrates Trade” International
Journal of Comparative Sociology 50, 3–4, 311–334.
Clark, John and Martin, Camille (eds) (2013) Anarchy, Geography, Modernity: Selected
Writings of Elisée Reclus (Oakland, CA: PM Press).
Clark, Nigel (2011) Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet (London,
Sage).
Coady, David et al. (2015) “How Large are Global Energy Subsides?” The International
Monetary Fund Working Paper No. 15/105.
222 Bibliography

Cole, H.S.D., Freeman, Christopher, Jahoda, Marie and Pavitt, K.L.R. (eds) (1973)
Thinking about the Future: A Critique of the Limits to Growth (London: Sussex
University Press).
Collins, Jane L. (1987) “Labor Scarcity and Ecological Change” pp. 19–37 in Peter D.
Little, Micheal M. Horowitz and A. Endre Nyerges (eds), Lands at Risk in the Third
World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Collins, Harry (2010) Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press).
Collins, Harry M. and Robert, Evans (2002) “The Third Wave of Science Studies:
Studies of Expertise and Experience” Social Studies of Science 32, 2, 235–296.
Commoner, Barry (1971) The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (New
York: Knopf).
Commoner, Barry (1990) Making Peace with the Planet (New York: Pantheon Books).
Conca, Ken and Dabelko, Geoffrey D. (2004) Green Planet Blues: Environmental
Politics from Stockholm to Johannesburg (Oxford, UK: Westview Press).
Cook, John,  et al. (2013) “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global
Warming in the Scientific Literature” Environmental Research Letters 8, 2.
Cramer, James C. (1996/1997) “A Demographic Perspective on Air Quality: Conceptual
Issues Surrounding Environmental Impacts of Population Growth” Human Ecology
Review 3, 2, 191–196.
Cronon, William (1991) Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York:
W.W. Norton).
Cronon, William (1992) “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative” Journal
of American History 78, 4, 1347–1376.
Cronon, William (1993) “The Uses of Environmental History” Environmental History
Review 17, 1–22.
Cronon, William (1995) “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature” pp. 69–90 in William Cronon (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the
Human Place in Nature (New York: W.W. Norton).
Crosby, Alfred W. (1986) Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900–1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Crouch, Colin (2011) The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press).
Crumley, Carole (ed.) (1993) Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing
Landscapes (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press).
Crutzen, Paul J. (2002) “Geology of Mankind: The Anthropocene” Nature 415, 23.
Crutzen, Paul J. and Stoermer, Eugene F. (2000) “The ‘Anthropocene’” Global Change
Newsletter 41, 17–18.
Dahl, Robert A. (1957) “The Concept of Power” Behavioral Science 2, 202–210.
Daly, Herman E. (1994) For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward
Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston, MA: Beacon
Press).
Davis, Mike (2007) Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class
(New York: Verso).
DeFries, Ruth S., et al. (2012) “Planetary Opportunities: A Social Contract for Global
Change Science to Contribute to a Sustainable Future” Bioscience 62, 6, 603–606.
Demeritt, David (2005) “Hybrid Geographies, Relational Ontologies, and Situated
Knowledges” Antipode 37, 4, 818–823.
 Bibliography 223

Denevan, William M. (1992) “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in
1492” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 3, 369–385.
Descartes, Renee (2009 [1637]) The Discourse on Method and the Meditations (New
York: Classic Books).
Descola, Philippe (1996) “Constructing Natures: Symbiotic Ecology and Social
Practice” pp. 82–102 in Philippe Descola and Gísli Pálsson (eds) Nature and Society:
Anthropological Perspectives (London: Routledge).
Descola, Philippe and Gísli, Pálsson (eds) (1996) Nature and Society: Anthropological
Perspectives (London: Routledge).
Diamond, Jared (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (New York:
Viking Press).
Dickens, Peter (1992) Society and Nature: Towards a Green Social Theory (Philadelphia,
PA: Temple University Press).
Dickens, Peter (1996) Reconstructing Nature: Alienation, Emancipation and the
Division of Labour (London: Routledge).
Dietz, Thomas and Kalof, Linda (1992) “Environmentalism among Nation-States”
Social Indicators Research 26, 353–366.
Dietz, Thomas and Rosa, Eugene A. (1994) “Rethinking the Environmental Impacts of
Population, Affluence and Technology” Human Ecology Review 1, 277–300.
Dietz, Thomas and Rosa, Eugene A. (1997) “Effects of Population and Affluence on
CO2 Emissions” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94, 175–179.
Dobson, Andrew (1990) Green Political Thought. London, Routledge.
Dorling, Danny (2013) Population 10 Billion: The Coming Demographic Crisis and
How to Survive It (London: Constable).
Dryzek, John (1987) Rational Ecology: Environment and Political Economy (New
York: Basil Blackwell).
Dryzek, John (1997) The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press).
Dryzek, John S., et al. (2003) Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism
in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press).
Dunlap, Riley E. (2010) “The Maturation and Diversification of Environmental
Sociology: From Constructivism and Realism to Agnosticism and Pragmatism”
pp. 15–32 in Michael Redclift and Graham Woodgate (eds) International Handbook
of Environmental Sociology, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar).
Dunlap, Riley E. (ed.) (2013) “Climate Change Skepticism and Denial” American
Behavioral Scientist 57, 691–837.
Dunlap, Riley E. and Catton Jr., William R. (1979) “Environmental Sociology” Annual
Review of Sociology 5, 243–273.
Dunlap, Riley E. and Marshall, Brent K. (2007) “Environmental Sociology” pp. 329–340
in Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck (eds) 21st Century Sociology: A Reference
Handbook, vol. 2 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications).
Dunlap, Riley E. and McCright, Aaron M. (2010) “Climate Change Denial: Sources,
Actors, and Strategies”  pp. 240–259 in  Constance Lever-Tracy (ed.) Routledge
Handbook of Climate Change and Society (New York: Routledge).
Durkheim, Emile (1997 [1893]) The Division of Labor in Society (New York: The Free Press).
Earth System Research Laboratory (2013) “CarbonTracker”. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/
gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/.
224 Bibliography

Easterbrook, Gregg (1995) A Moment on the Earth (London: Penguin).

Eckersley, Robyn (1992) Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric
Approach (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).
Economy, Elizabeth (2010) The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to
China’s Future (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Ehn, Pelle (1988) Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts (Hillsdale, New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates)
Ehn, Pelle, Nilsson, Elisabet, and Topgaard, Richard (2014) Making Futures: Marginal
Notes on Innovation, Design and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Ehrlich, Paul R. (1968) The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine).
Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H. (1990) The Population Explosion (New York:
Simon and Schuster).
Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H. (1996) Betrayal of Science and Reason: How
Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Ellen, Roy F. (1986) “What Black Elk Left Unsaid: On the Illusory Images of Green
Primitivism” Anthropology Today 2, 6, 8–12.
Ellis, Erle C. (2012) “Environments are Not Constraints” This is Africa Online (Financial
Times) June 20. http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/Analysis/Environments-are-not-
constraints.
Ellis, Erle C., et al. (2010) “Anthropogenic Transformation of the Biomes, 1700 to
2000” Global Ecology and Biogeography 19, 5, 589–606.
Emmott, Stephen (2013) Ten Billion (New York: Vintage Books).
Engels, Friedrich (2009 [1887]) Conditions of the Working Class in England (London:
Penguin Classics).
Erickson, Clark L. (2000) “An Artificial Landscape-Scale Fishery in the Bolivian
Amazon” Nature 408, 190–193.
Escobar, Arturo (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the
Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Escobar, Artuo (1999) “After Nature: Steps to an Anti-Essentialist Political Ecology”
Current Anthropology 40, 1, 1–30.
Faber, Daniel (ed.) (1998) The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental
Justice Movements in the United States (New York: Guilford Press).
Faber, Daniel (2008) Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice: The Polluter-Industrial
Complex in the Age of Globalization (New York: Rowman & Littlefield).
Fairhead, James and Leach, Melissa (1996) Misreading the African Landscape: Society and
Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Fairhead, James and Leach, Melissa (eds) (1998) Reframing Deforestation: Global
Analyses and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa (London: Routledge).
Fairhead, James and Leach, Melissa (2000) “Challenging Neo-Malthusian Deforestation
Analyses in West Africa’s Dynamic Forest Landscapes” Population and Development
Review 26, 1, 17–43.
Fest Gabriel, D. (2007) “Crucial Crossroads” pp. 20–21 in Our Planet: The Art of
Diplomacy, Celebrating 20 Years of The Montreal Protocol, Special Issue (New
York: United National Environmental Program).
Fisher, Dana R. (2000) “Indicators of Sustainability as a Tool for Cross-Cultural
Community Needs Assessment” pp. 99–110 in Elohimjl, Elmar A. Stuhler and
Francisco Parra-Luna (eds) Research on Cases and Theories, Special Issue on
Sustainable Development, vol. 8 (Freising, GR: Rainer Hampp Verlag).
 Bibliography 225

Fisher, Dana R. and Freudenburg, William R. (2004) “Postindustrialization and

Environmental Quality: An Empirical Analysis of the Environmental State” Social
Forces 83, 1, 157–188.
Fisher, Dana R. and Svendsen, Erika S. (2013) “Hybrid Arrangements within the
Environmental State” pp. 179–189 in Stuart Lockie, David Sonnenfeld and Dana
R. Fisher (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental
Change (New York: Routledge Press).
Forbes Magazine (2012) “China Increasing Oil Reserves with New Discoveries”
February 24. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/02/24/china-increasing-
oil-reserves-with-new-discoveries/.
Foreman Jr., Christopher H. (1998) The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press).
Forsyth, Tim (2003) Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science
(London, Routledge).
Forsyth, Tim (2008) “Political Ecology and the Epistemology of Social Justice”
Geoforum 39, 756–764.
Foster, John Bellamy (1994) The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the
Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Foster, John Bellamy (1999) “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations
for Environmental Sociology” American Journal of Sociology 105, 2, 366–405.
Foster, John Bellamy (2000) Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York:
Monthly Review Press).
Foster, John Bellamy (2002) Ecology Against Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review
Press).
Foster, John Bellamy, Clark, Brett and York, Richard (2010) The Ecological Rift:
Capitalism’s War on the Earth (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Foster, John Bellamy and Holleman, Hannah (2012) “Weber and the Environment:
Classical Foundations for a Post-Exemptionalist Sociology” American Journal of
Sociology 117, 6, 1625–1673.
Fox, Julia (1999) “Mountaintop Removal in West Virginia: An Environmental Sacrifice
Zone” Organization & Environment 12, 2, 163–183.
Frank, David John (1997) “Science, Nature, and the Globalization of the Environment,
1870–1990” Social Forces 76, 409–435.
Frank, David, Hironaka, Anne and Schofer, Evan (2000) “The Nation State and the
Natural Environment over the Twentieth Century” American Sociological Review
65, 96–116.
Freudenburg, William R. (2000) “Social Construction and Social Constrictions: Toward
Analyzing the Social Construction of ‘the Naturalized’ as Well as ‘the Natural’”
pp. 103–119 in Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P.J. Mol and Frederick H. Buttel (eds)
Environment and Global Modernity (London: Sage).
Freudenburg, William R. (2005) “Privileged Access, Privileged Accounts: Toward a
Socially Structured Theory of Resources and Discourses” Social Forces 84, 1, 89–114.
Freudenburg, William R. and Gramling, Robert (2011) Blowout in the Gulf: The BP
Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press).
Freudenburg, William R. and Nowak, Peter (2000) “Disproportionality and Disciplinary
Blinders: Understanding the Tail that Wags the Dog” Paper presented at 8th International
Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Bellingham, WA, June.
226 Bibliography

Frey, R. Scott (1998) “The Export of Hazardous Industries to the Peripheral Zones of
the World-System” Journal of Developing Societies 14, 1, 66–81.
Frey, R. Scott (2003) “The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to
the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery: The Maquiladora Centers of Northern
Mexico” Journal of World-Systems Research 9, 2, 317–354.
Frey, R. Scott (2006) “The Flow of Hazardous Exports in the World-System” pp. 133–
149 in Andrew Jorgenson and Edward Kick (eds) Globalization and the Environment
(Boston, MA: Brill Academic Press).
Fry, Tony (2009) Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice (Berg.
Oxford and New York).
Fry, Tony (2011) Design as Politics. (Berg Oxford and New York).
Fuller, Brandon and Romer, Paul (2010) “Cities from Scratch A New Path for Development”
City Journal. http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_4_charter-cities.html
Furedi, Frank (1997) Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectations
(London: Continuum).
Furedi, Frank (2005) Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right (London: Bloomsbury
Continuum).
Galloway, Alex (2013) “The Poverty of Philosophy: Realism and Post-Fordism” Critical
Inquiry 39, 2, 347–66.
Gandy, Matthew (2003) Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
García-Barrios, Raúl and Garcias Barrios, Luis (1990) “Environment and Technological
Degradation in Peasant Agriculture: A Consequence of Development in Mexico”
World Development 18, 11, 1569–1585.
Gareau, Brian J. (2005) “We Have Never Been ‘Human’: Agential Nature, ANT, and
Marxist Political Ecology” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16, 4, 127–140.
Gareau, Brian J. (2010) “A Critical Review of the Successful CFC Phase-Out versus
the Delayed Methyl Bromide Phase-Out in the Montreal Protocol” International
Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law, and Economics 10, 3, 209–231.
Gareau, Brian J. (2013) From Precaution to Profit: Contemporary Challenge to
Environmental Protection in the Montreal Protocol (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press).
Gareau, Brian J. and Borrego, John (2012) “Global Environmental Governance,
Competition, and Sustainability in Global Agriculture” pp. 357–365 in Salvatore
Babones and Christopher Chase-Dunn (eds) Handbook of World-Systems Analysis
(New York: Routledge).
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996)  The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist
Critique of Political Economy (Oxford, UK: Blackwell).
Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press).
Gibson-Graham, J.K., Resnick, Stephen, and Wolff, Richard (eds) (2001) Re/presenting
Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Gibson, Katherine, Graham, Julie and Roelvink, Gerda (2013) “Social Innovation for
Community Economies: How Action Research Creates `Other Worlds’” pp. 454–465
in Frank Moulaert et al. (eds) The International Handbook on Social Innovation:
Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research (Cheltenham,
UK: Edward Elgar Publishing).
Gilroy, Paul (2000) Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race (London:
Allen Lane).
 Bibliography 227

Goldfrank, Walter L., Goodman, David and Szasz, Andrew (eds) (1999) Ecology and
the World-System (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press).
Goldman, Michael (2005) Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social
Justice in the Age of Globalization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Goldsmith, Edward, et al. (1972) A Blueprint for Survival (London: Penguin Books).
Gorz, André (1964) Stratégie Ouvrière et Néocapitalisme (Paris: Editions du Seuil).
Gorz, André (1994) Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology (London: Verso).
Gottlieb, Robert (2005). Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American
Environmental Movement, revised ed. (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Goudie, Andrew (1986) The Human Impact (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
Gould, Kenneth A., Pellow, David N. and Schnaiberg, Allan (2008) The Treadmill of
Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm).
Gould, Kenneth A., Schnaiberg, Allan and Weinberg, Adam S. (1996) Local
Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Gould, Stephen Jay (1990) “This View of Life” Natural History 99, 9, 24.
Gould, Stephen Jay (1997) “Kropotkin was No Crackpot” Natural History 106, 12–21.
Gould, Stephen Jay (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press).
Grant, Don, Jorgenson, Andrew and Longhofer, Wesley (2013) “Targeting Electricity’s
Extreme Polluters to Reduce Energy Related CO2 Emissions” Journal of
Environmental Studies and Sciences 3, 4, 376–380.
Gray, John (2002) Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (London:
Granta Books).
Gray, John (2013) The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Grayson, Donald K. and Meltzer, David J. (2003) “A Requiem for North American
Overkill” Journal of Archaeological Science 30, 585–593.
Grimes, Peter E. and Kentor, Jeffrey (2003) “Exporting the Greenhouse: Foreign Capital
Penetration and CO2 Emissions 1980–1996” Journal of World-Systems Research 9,
2, 261–275.
Gross, Matthias (2001) “Unexpected Interactions: Georg Simmel and the Observation
of Nature” Journal of Classical Sociology 1, 3, 395–414.
Gross, Matthias (2003) Inventing Nature: Ecological Restoration by Public Experiments
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books).
Gross, Matthias (2010) Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Gross, Paul R. and Levitt, Norman (1994) Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and
Its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Grundmann, Reiner (1991) “The Ecological Challenge to Marxism” New Left Review
187, 103–120.
Guha, Ramachandra (2000) Environmentalism: A Global History (New York:
Longman).
Guha, Ramachandra and Martinez-Alier, Joan (1997) Varieties of Environmentalism:
Essays North and South (London: Routledge).
Gupta, Sanjeev, et al. (2007) “13.3.1 Evaluations of Existing Climate Change
Agreements” p. 768 in Bert Metz, et al. (eds) Climate Change 2007: Mitigation
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
228 Bibliography

Guthman, Julie (2007) “The Polanyian Way? Voluntary Food Labels as Neoliberal
Governance” Antipode 39, 3, 456–478.
Habermas, Jürgen (1975) Legitimation Crisis (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).
Hackel, Angela (2006) “Citizen Perspective on Environmental Hazards in Cancer Alley”
Unpublished Master Thesis, Environmental Studies Department, Brown University.
http://envstudies.brown.edu/theses/AngelaHackelmasterthesispdf.pdf.
Haila, Yrjö (1999) “Biodiversity and the Divide between Culture and Nature”
Biodiversity and Conservation 8, 165–181.
Haila, Yrjö and Levins, Richard (1992) Humanity and Nature: Ecology, Science and
Society (London: Pluto Press).
Hajer, Maarten A. (1995) The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological
Modernisation and the Policy Process (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press).
Hajer, Maarten (1996) “Ecological Modernization as Cultural Politics” pp. 246–268 in
Lash, Scott et al. (eds) Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology
(London, Sage).
Hall, Stuart (1992) “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power” pp. 195–227 in
Stuart Hall and Bram Geiben (eds) Formations of Modernity (Cambridge, UK: The
Open University Press).
Hamilton, Peter (1992) “The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science” pp. 18–58
in Hall, Stuart and Bram Gieben (eds) Formations of Modernity (Cambridge, UK:
Open University Press).
Hanna, Elizabeth (2011) “Health Hazards” pp. 217–231 in John Dryzek, Richard
Norgaard and David Schlosberg (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change
and Society (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press).
Hannigan, John A. (1995) Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist
Perspective (London: Routledge).
Haraway, Donna J. (1976) Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in
Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Haraway, Donna J. (1985) “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980s” Socialist Review 80, 65–107.
Haraway, Donna J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(London: Free Association).
Haraway, Donna J. (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_
Meets_Onco-Mouse (London, Routledge).
Haraway, Donna J. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and
Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press).
Haraway, Donna J. (2008) When Species Meet (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press).
Hardin, Garret (1968) “The Tragedy of the Commons” Science 162, 1243–1248.
Harvey, David (1974) “Population, Resources and the Ideology of Science” Economic
Geography 50, 256–277.
Harvey, David (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell).
Harvey, David (1998) “Marxism, Metaphors and Ecological Politics” Monthly Review
49, 11, 50–60.
Harvey, David (2000) Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Harvey, David (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press).
 Bibliography 229

Harvey, David (2012) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
(London: Verso).
Havel, Václav (1997) The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, Speeches
and Writings, 1990–1996 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Hawken, Paul (1994) Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (New
York: HarperCollins).
Hawken, Paul, Lovins, Amory and Lovins, Hunter (1999) Natural Capitalism: The
Next Industrial Revolution (London: Earthscan).
Hayward, Tim (1997) “Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem” Environmental
Values 6, 1, 49–63.
Hayek, Frederick A. (1998 [1944]) The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, W.W.
Bartley (ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Head, Lesley (2014) “Contingencies of the Anthropocene: Lessons from the ‘Neolithic’”
The Anthropocene Review. Online early.
Head, Lesley and Gibson, Chris (2012) “Becoming Differently Modern: Geographic
Contributions to a Generative Climate Politics” Progress in Human Geography 36,
6, 699–714.
Head, Lesley, et al. (2011) “A Fine-grained Study of the Experience of Drought, Risk
and Climate Change among Australian Wheat Farming Households” Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 101, 5, 1089–1108.
Heartfield, James (2008) Green Capitalism: Manufacturing Scarcity in an Age of
Abundance (London: Mute).
Heckenberger, Michael and Neves, Eduardo Goes (2009) “Amazonian Archeology”
Annual Review of Anthropology 38, 251–266.
Helm, Dieter and Hepburn, Cameron (eds) (2009) The Economics and Politics of
Climate Change (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
Henwood, Doug (2012) “Foreward” pp. ix-xv in Sasha Lilley, et al., (eds) Catastrophism:
The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth (Oakland, CA: PM Press).
Hess, David J. (2012) Good Green Jobs in a Global Economy: Making and Keeping
New Industries in the United States (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Hess, David J. (2014) “Political Ideology and the Green-Energy Transition in the
United States” pp. 277–291 in Daniel Kleinman and Kelly Moore (eds) Routledge
Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (New York: Routledge).
Heynen, Nik and Robbins, Paul (2005) “The Neoliberalization of Nature: Governance,
Privatization, Enclosure and Valuation” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16, 1, 5–8.
Heynen, Nik, Kaika, Maria and Swyngedouw, Eric (eds) (2006) In the Nature of Cities
Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (London: Routledge).
Heynen, Nik, et al. (eds) (2007) Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural
Consequences (London: Routledge).
Hinchliffe, Steve (2007) Geographies of Nature (London: Sage).
Hinchliffe, Steve and Whatmore, Sarah (2009) “Living Cities: Towards a Politics of
Conviviality” pp. 105–123 in Damian white and Chris Wilbert (eds) Technonatures:
Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-First Century
(Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press).
Hoffman, Richard C. (2001) “A Longer View: Is Industrial Metabolism Really the
Problem? Innovations 14, 2, 143–155.
Holling, C.S. (1973) “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems” Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 4, 1–23.
230 Bibliography

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. (2006) The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the
Renewal of Civilization (Toronto, ON: Alfred A. Knopf).
Hong, Dayollg, Xiao, Cllenyang and Lockie, Stewart (2013) “China’s Economic Growth
and Environmental Protection: Approaching a ‘Win-Win’ Situation? A Discussion of
Ecological Modernization Theory” in Stewart Lockie, David A. Sonnenfeld and Dana
R. Fisher (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental
Change (London: Routledge).
Hong, Sungmin, et al. (1994) “Greenland Ice Evidence of Hemispheric Lead Pollution
Two Millennia Ago by Greek and Roman Civilizations” Science 265, 5180, 1841–
1843.
Hooks, Gregory and Smith, Chad L. (2004) “The Treadmill of Destruction: National
Sacrifice Areas and Native Americans” American Sociological Review 69, 4,
558–575.
Hopewell, Kristen (2014) “Different Paths to Power: The Rise of Brazil, India and
China at the WTO” Review of International Political Economy. Published online
June 16. DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.927387.
Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodore (1988 [1944]) Dialectic of Enlightenment
(New York: Continuum).
Hornborg, Alf and Crumley, Carole L. (eds) (2007) The World System and the Earth
System: Global Socioenvironmental Change and Sustainability Since the Neolithic
(Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press).
Hornborg, Alf, McNeill, John Robert and Martínez-Alier, Joan (2007) Rethinking
Environmental History: World-system History and Global Environmental Change
(Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira).
Howard, Ebenezer (1965 [1902]) Garden Cities of To-Morrow (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press).
Huber, Joseph (1982) Die Verlorene Unschuld der Ökologie. Neue Technologien und
Superindustrielle Entwicklung (Frankfurt am Main: Fisher).
Huber, Joseph (1985) Die Regenbogengesellschaft. Ökologie und Sozialpolitik
(Frankfurt am Main: Fisher Verlag).
Hughes, J. Donald (2002) An Environmental History of the World (London: Routledge).
Hughes, J. Donald and Thirgood, Jack V. (1983) “Deforestation in Ancient Greece and
Rome: A Cause of Collapse” The Ecologist 12, 5, 196–208.
Hulme, Mike (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change Understanding
Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Hulme, Mike (2010) “The Year Climate Science was Redefined” The Guardian, UK,
November 16. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/nov/15/year-climate-
science-was-redefined.
Hurley, Andrew (1995) Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution
in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).
Hynes, H. Patricia (1999) “Taking the Population Out of the Equation: Reformulating
IPAT” pp. 39–73 in Jael Miriam Silliman and Ynestra King (eds) Dangerous
Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development
(Boston, MA: South End Press).
Hird, Myra J. (2009) The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies
(London: Palgrave Macmillan).
IPCC (2013) “Summary for Policymakers” pp. 3–29 in Thomas F. Stocker, et al. (eds)
Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group
 Bibliography 231

I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working
Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds)]
(Geneva: IPCC).
Irwin Terry, Tonkinwise, Cameron and Kossoff, Gideon (2014) Provocation and
Briefing, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, November.
Jacobson, Mark C. and Delucchi, Mark A. (2011a) “Providing All Global Energy with
Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities
and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials” Energy Policy 39, 3, 1154–1169.
Jacobson, Mark C. and Delucchi, Mark A. (2011b) “Providing All Global Energy with
Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part II: Reliability, System and Transmission Costs,
and Policies” Energy Policy 39, 3, 1170–1190.
Jackson, Tim (2009) Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet
(London: Earthscan).
Jaeger, Carlo C., et al. (2001) Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action (London: Earthscan).
Jamieson, Dale (2001) “Climate Change and Global Environmental Justice” pp. 287–
307 in Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards (eds) Changing the Atmosphere: Expert
Knowledge and Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Jamieson, Dale (2011) “The Nature of the Problem” pp. 38–54 in John S. Dryzek,
Richard B. Norgaard and David Schlosberg (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Climate
Change and Society (New York: Oxford University Press).
Jänicke, Martin (ed.) (1978) Umweltpolitik – Beiträge zur Politologie des Umweltschutzes
(Opladen: Leske und Budrich).
Jänicke, Martin (1984) Umweltpolitische Prävention als ökologische Modernisierung
und Strukturpolitik, Discussion paper (Berlin: IIUG).
Jasanoff, Sheila (2010) “A New Climate for Society” Theory, Culture & Society 27,
2–3, 233–253.
Jia, J.S., Deng, H.B., Duan, J. and Zaho, J.Z. (2009) “Analysis of the Major Drivers of
the Ecological Footprint Using the STIRPAT Model and the PLS Method – A Case
Study in Henan Province, China” Ecological Economics 68, 2818–2824.
Jones, Van (2008) Green Collar Economy (New York: Harper One).
Jorgenson, Andrew K. (2003) “Consumption and Environmental Degradation” Social
Problems 50, 3, 374–394.
Jorgenson, Andrew K. (2006) “Unequal Ecological Exchange and Environmental
Degradation: A Theoretical Proposition and Cross-National Study of Deforestation,
1990–2000” Rural Sociology 71, 685–712.
Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Brett Clark (eds) (2009) “Ecologically Unequal Exchange
in Comparative Perspective. Theme Issue” International Journal of Comparative
Sociology 50, 3–4.
Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Kuykendall, Kenon A. (2008) “Globalization, Foreign
Investment Dependence and Agriculture Production: Pesticide and Fertilizer Use in
Less-Developed Countries, 1990–2000” Social Forces 87, 1, 529–560.
Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Rice, James (2005) “Structural Dynamics of International
Trade and Material Consumption: A Cross-National Study of the Ecological
Footprints of Less-Developed Countries” Journal of World-Systems Research 11,
1, 57–77.
232 Bibliography

Kaika, Maria (2005) City of Flows (London: Routledge).

Kartha, Sivan (2011) “Discourses of the Global South” pp. 504–518 in John S. Dryzek,
Richard B. Norgaard and David Schlosberg (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Climate
Change and Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
Katz, Cynthia (1994) “Playing the Field: Questions of Fieldwork in Geography” The
Professional Geographer 46, 1, 67–72.
Kossoff, Gideon (2011) “Holism and the Reconstitution of Everyday Life” pp. 122–
142 in Stephan Harding (ed.) Grow Small, Think Beautiful: Ideas for a Sustainable
World from Schumacher College (Edinburgh, UK: FLoris).
Klein, Naomi (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate (New York:
Simon & Schuster).
Kingsbury, Noel (2009) Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
Kingsnorth, Paul and Hine, Dougald (2009) Uncivilization: The Dark Mountain
Manifesto. http://www.dark-mountain.net.
Knight, Kyle and Rosa, Eugene A. (2011) “The Environmental Efficiency of Well-Being:
A Cross-National Analysis” Social Science Research 40, 931–949.
Knight, Kyle and Rosa, Eugene A. (2012) “Household Dynamics and Fuelwood
Consumption in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis” Population and
Environment 33, 365–378.
Koeppel, Barbara (1999) “A 100-Mile Stretch Is Home to Numerous Industrial Sites –
And Many Sick People: Cancer Alley, Louisiana” The Nation 269, 15, 16–23.
Kropotkin, Petr (1901) Fields, Factories and Workshops or Industry Combined with
Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons).
Kuper, Adam (1988) The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion
(London: Routledge).
Kurzweil, Ray (2006) The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (New
York: Penguin).
Langmuir, Charles H. and Broecker, Wally (2012) How to Build a Habitable Planet:
The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press).
Lappé, Frances Moore (2012) EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the
World We Want (Cambridge, MA: Small Planet Media).
Lappé, Frances Moore and Schurman, Rachel (1990) Taking Population Seriously (San
Francisco, CA: Institute for Food and Development Policy).
Latour, Bruno (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers
through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Latour, Bruno (1992) “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane
Artifacts” pp. 225–258 in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds) Shaping Technology/
Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Latour, Bruno (1993) We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press).
Latour, Bruno (2000) “When Things Strike Back: A Possible Contribution of Science
Studies” British Journal of Sociology 51, 1, 105–123.
Latour, Bruno (2004) The Politics of Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press).
Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-
Theory (New York: Oxford University Press).
 Bibliography 233

Latour, Bruno (2012) ‘“The Whole is Always Smaller than Its Parts’ A Digital Test of
Gabriel Tarde’s Monads” British Journal of Sociology 63, 4, 591–615.
Latour, Bruno (2013) An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the
Moderns (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Latour, Bruno with Peter Weibel (eds) (2005) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of
Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve (1979) Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of
Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications).
Laurier, Eric and Philo, Chris (1999) “X-morphising: Review Essay of Bruno Latour’s
‘Aramis, or the Love of Technology’” Environment and Planning A 31, 6, 1047–1071.
Lawrence, Kirk S. (2009) “The Thermodynamics of Unequal Exchange: Energy Use,
CO2 Emissions, and GDP in the World-System, 1975–2005” International Journal
of Comparative Sociology 50, 3–4, 335–359.
Leach, Melissa and Mearns, Robin (1996) The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received
Wisdom on the African Environment (Oxford, UK: James Currey).
Leach, Melissa, Scoones, Ian and Stirling, Andy (2010) Dynamic Sustainabilities:
Technology, Environment, Social Justice (London: Routledge).
Lefebvre, Henri (1993) The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell).
Leff, Enrique (1995) Green Production: Toward an Environmental Rationality (Boulder,
CO: Guilford Press).
Leiss, William (1972) The Domination of Nature (New York: G. Braziller).
Lélé, Sharachchandra M. (1991) “Sustainable Development: A Critical Review” World
Development 19, 6, 607–621.
Lerner, Steve (2005) Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s
Environmental Corridor (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).
Levins, Richard and Lewontin, Richard C. (1985) The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press).
Lewontin, Richard C. and Levins, Richard (2007) Biology under the Influence:
Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health (New York: Monthly Review
Press).
Liddle, Brant and Lung, Sidney (2010) “Age-Structure, Urbanization, and Climate
Change in Developed Countries: Revisiting STIRPAT for Disaggregated Population
and Consumption-Related Environmental Impacts” Population and Environment
31, 317–343.
Lilley, Sasha et al. (eds) Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth
(Oakland, CA: PM Press).
Lindblom, Charles E. (1977) Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic
Systems (New York: Basic Books).
Lockie, Stuart and Higgins, Vaughn (2007) “Roll-Out Neoliberalism and Hybrid
Practices of Regulation in Australian Agri-Environmental Governance” Journal of
Rural Studies 23, 1, 1–11.
Loftus, Alex (2012) Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).
Lohmann, Larry (2005) “Marketing and Making Carbon Dumps: Commodification,
Calculation and Counterfactuals in Climate Change Mitigation” Science as Culture
14, 3, 203–235.
Lomborg, Bjorn (2001) The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press).
234 Bibliography

Longo, Stefano and York, Richard (2008) “Agricultural Exports and the Environment:
A Cross-National Study of Fertilizer and Pesticide Consumption” Rural Sociology
73, 1, 82–104.
Lorimer, Jamie (2012) “Multinatural Geographies for the Anthropocene” Progress in
Human Geography 36, 5, 593–612.
Lovelock, James (2006) Gaia’s Revenge (London: Allen Lane).
Lucier, Cristina A. and Gareau, Brian J. (2014) “Obstacles to Precaution and Equity
in Global Environmental Governance: Applications to the Basel Convention”
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law, and Economics. DOI:
10.1007/s10784-014-9261-6.
Luke, Timothy W. (1999) “Environmentality as Green Governmentality” pp. 122–151
in Eric Darier (ed.) Discourses of the Environment (Malden, MA: Blackwell).
Luke, Timothy W. (2000) “Toward a Green Geopolitics: Politicizing Ecology at the
Worldwatch Institute”  pp. 353–371 in Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson (eds)
Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geographic Thought (London: Routledge).
Luke, Timothy W. (2009) “Inventing the Future: The Property Boundaries/Boundary
Properties in Technonature Studies” pp. 193–213 in Damian White and Chris Wilbert
(eds) (2009) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the
Twenty-First Century (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press).
Lukes, Steven (1974) Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan Press).
MacGregor, Sherilyn (2006) Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the
Politics of Care (Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press).
MacNaghten, Phil and Urry, John (1998) Contested Natures (London: Sage
Publications).
Mallavarapu, Srikanth and Prasad, Amit (2006) “Facts, Fetishes, and the Parliament
of Things: Is There any Space for Critique?” Social Epistemology 20, 2, 185–199.
Manzini, Ezio (2015) Design, When Everybody Designs Cambridge, MIT Press.
Mann, Charles C. (2005) 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
(New York: Vintage Books).
Mann, Charles C. (2011) 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New
York: Vintage Books).
Margulis, Lynn (1992). Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Microbial Communities in the
Archean and Proterozoic Eons, W.H. Freeman.
Marris, Emma (2011) Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World
(New York: Bloomsbury USA).
Marshalls, Peter (1992) Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London:
HarperCollins).
Martinez-Alier, Joan (1995) “The Environment as a Luxury Good or ‘Too Poor to Be
Green’?” Ecological Economics 13, 1, 1–10.
Martinez-Alier, Joan (2002) The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological
Conflicts and Valuation (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar).
Martinez-Alier, Joan (2012) “Environmental Justice and Economic Degrowth: An
Alliance between Two Movements” Capitalism Nature Socialism 23, 1, 51–73.
Marx, Karl (1973 [1857–1858]) Grundrisse (New York: Vintage).
Marx, Karl (1977 [1867]) Capital, vol. I (New York: Vintage).
Marx, Karl (1981) Capital, vol. III (New York: Vintage).
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friederick (1970 [1846]) The German Ideology. Part One, With
Selections from Parts Two and Three, and Supplementary Texts (London: Lawrence
and Wishart).
 Bibliography 235

Massey, Doreen (2005) For Space (London: Sage).

Mayfield, Erin N. and Norman, Catherine S. (2012) “Moving Away from Methyl
Bromide: Political Economy of Pesticide Transition for California Strawberries Since
2004” Journal of Environmental Management 106, 93–101.
Mazzucato, Mariana (2011) The Entrepreneurial State (London: Demos).
McAnany, Patricia A. and Yoffee, Norman (eds) (2010) Questioning Collapse: Human
Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press).
McCarthy, Cormac (2006) The Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
McCarthy, James (2004) “Privatizing Conditions of Production: Trade Agreements as
Neoliberal Environmental Governance” Geoforum 35, 327–341.
McCright, Aaron M. and Dunlap, Riley E. (2010) “Anti-Reflexivity: The American
Conservative Movement’s Success in Undermining Climate Science and Policy”
Theory, Culture & Society 27, 2–3, 100–133.
McCright, Aaron M. and Dunlap, Riley E. (2011) “Cool Dudes: The Denial of Climate
Change among Conservative White Males” Global Environmental Change 21,
1163–1172.
McDonough, William and Braungart, Michael (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the
Way We Make Things (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press).
McDonough, William and Braungart, Michael (2013) The Up-Cycle: Beyond
Sustainability – Designing for Abundance (New York: North Point Press).
McKibben, Bill (1989) The End of Nature (New York: Random House).
Meadows, Donella, et al. (1972) The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books).
Meadows, Donella, Meadows, Dennis and Randers, Jorgen (1991) Beyond the Limits:
Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future (Toronto, ON:
McClelland & Stewart).
Mellor, Mary (1997) Feminism & Ecology (New York: New York University Press).
Melosi, Martin (2010) “Humans, Cities, and Nature: How Do Cities Fit in the Material
World?” Journal of Urban History 36, 1, 3–21.
Merchant, Carolyn (1982) The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific
Revolution (New York: Harper & Row).
Meyer, John W., et al. (1997) “World Society and the Nation-State” American Journal
of Sociology 103, 1, 144–181.
Michael, Mike (2000) “These Boots Are Made for Walking...: Mundane Technology,
the Body and Human–Environment Relations” Body & Society 6, 3–4, 107–126.
Michael, Mike (2009) “‘The-Cellphone-In-The-Countryside’: On Some Ironic
Spatialities of Technonature” pp. 85–104 in Damian White and Chris Wilbert (eds)
Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-first
Century (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press).
Milani, Brian (2000) Designing the Green Economy: The Post Industrial Alternative to
Corporate Globalization (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield).
Mills, C. Wright (1959) The Sociological Imagination (Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press).
Mitchell, Robert B. (2003) “International Environmental Agreements: A Survey of Their
Features, Formation, and Effects” Annual Review of Environment and Resources
28, 429–461.
Mitchell, Timothy (2009) “Carbon Democracy” Economy and Society 38, 3, 399–432.
Mitchell, Timothy (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
(London: Verso).
236 Bibliography

Mohai, Paul and Bryant, Bunyan (1992) “Environmental Racism: Reviewing the
Evidence” pp. 163–176 in Bunyan Bryant and Paul Mohai (eds) Race and the Incidence
of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Mohai, Paul, David N. Pellow and Timmons Roberts. (2009) “Environmental Justice”
Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34, 405–430.
Mol, Arthur P. J. (1995) The Refinement of Production. Ecological Modernization
Theory and the Chemical Industry (Utrecht: International Books).
Mol, Arthur P. J. (1996) “Ecological Modernisation and Institutional Reflexivity:
Environmental Reform in the Late Modern Age” Environmental Politics 5, 2, 302–323.
Mol, Arthur P.J. (2003) Globalization and Environmental Reform (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press).
Mol, Arthur P. J. (2006) “Environment and Modernity in Transitional China: Frontiers
of Ecological Modernization” Development and Change 37, 1, 29–56.
Mol, Arthur P. J. (2010) “Social Theories of Environmental Reform: Toward a Third
Generation” pp. 19–38 in Matthias Gross and Harald Heinrichs (eds) Environmental
Sociology: European Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Challenges (Heidelberg:
Springer).
Mol, Arthur P. J. and Jänicke, Martin (2009) “The Origins and Theoretical Foundations
of Ecological Modernisation Theory” pp. 17–27 in Arthur P.J. Mol, David A.
Sonnenfeld and Gert Spaargaren (eds) The Ecological Modernisation Reader:
Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice (London; New York: Routledge).
Mol, Arthur P. J., Sonnenfeld, David A. and Spaargaren, Gert (eds) (2009) The Ecological
Modernisation Reader: Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice (New York:
Routledge).
Mol, Arthur P. J., Spaargaren, Gert and Sonnenfeld, David A. (2009) “Ecological
Modernisation: Three Decades of Policy, Practice and Theoretical Reflection”
pp. 3–14 in Arthur P.J. Mol, David A. Sonnenfeld and Gert Spaargaren (eds) The
Ecological Modernisation Reader: Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice
(New York: Routledge).
Molina, Mario, Ramanathan, V. and Zaelke, Durwood (2014) “As Climate Impacts
Accelerate, Speed of Mitigation Becomes Key” Huffington Post, The Blog,
July 15. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/durwood-zaelke/as-climate-impacts-
accele_1_b_5588113.html.
Monbiot, George (2013) “A Manifesto for Rewilding the World” May 27. http://www
.monbiot.com/2013/05/27/a-manifesto-for-rewilding-the-world/.
Montrie, Chad (2011) A People’s History of Environmentalism in the United States
(New York: Continuum).
Moore, George Edward (1903). Principia Ethica (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press).
Moore, Jason W. (2000) “Environmental Crises and the Metabolic Rift in World-
Historical Perspective” Organization & Environment 13, 2, 123–157.
Moore, Jason W. (2003) “The Modern World-System as Environmental History?
Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism” Theory & Society 32, 3, 307–377.
Moore, Jason W. (2011) “Transcending the Metabolic Rift: A Theory of Crises in the
Capitalist World-Ecology” Journal of Peasant Studies 38, 1, 1–46.
Moore, Jason W. (2014a) “The Capitalocene: Part I: On the Nature & Origins of Our
Ecological Crisis” http://www.jasonwmoore.com/uploads/The_Capitalocene__
Part_I__June_2014.pdf.
 Bibliography 237

Moore, Jason W. (2014b) “The Capitalocene: Part II: Abstract Social Nature and the
Limits to Capital” http://www.jasonwmoore.com/uploads/The_Capitalocene___
Part_II__June_2014.pdf.
Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Jesdale, Bill M. (2006) “Separate and Unequal: Residential
Segregation and Air Quality in the Metropolitan US” Environmental Health
Perspectives 114, 386–394.
Morello-Frosch, Rachel, Pastor, Manuel, Sadd, James, Porras, Carlos and Prichard,
Michael (2012) “Citizens, Science and Data Judo: Leveraging Secondary Data
Analysis to Build a Community-Academic Collaborative for Environmental Justice
in Southern California” pp. 371–392 in Barbara Israel, et al. (eds) Methods for
Conducting Community-Based Participatory Research in Public Health, 2nd ed.
(Ann Arbor, MI: Jossey-Bass Press).
Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Shenassa, Edmund D. (2006) “The Environmental
‘Riskscape’ and Social Inequality: Implications for Explaining Maternal
and Child Health Disparities” Environmental Health Perspectives 114, 8,
1150–1153.
Morozov, Evgeny (2013) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
Solutionism (Philadelphia, PA: Public Affairs Press).
Morton, Timothy (2010). The Ecological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press).
Morton, Timothy (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the
World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).
Mostafavi, Mohsen and Doherty, Gareth (2010) Ecological Urbanism (Cambridge,
MA: Lars Muller Publishers).
Mulvaney, Dustin (2013) “Opening the Black Box of Solar Energy Technologies:
Exploring Tensions between Innovation and Environmental Justice” Science As
Culture 22, 3, 214–221.
Mulvaney, Dustin (2014) “Are Green Jobs Just Jobs? Cadmium Narratives in the Life
Cycle of Photovoltaics” Geoforum 54, 178–186.
Murphy, Raymond (1994) Rationality and Nature (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Murphy, Raymond (2013) “Uncertainty and Claims of Uncertainty as Impediments
to Risk Management” pp. 221–230 in Stuart Lockie, David Sonnenfeld, and Dana
Fisher (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental
Change (London: Routledge).
Nederveen Pieterse, Jan (2004) Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (Oxford,
UK: Rowman & Littlefield).
Nelson, Sara (2014) “Resilience and the Neoliberal Counterrevolution: From Ecologies
of Control to Production of the Common” Resilience: International Policies,
Practices and Discourses 2, 1, 1–17.
Newell, Peter and Mulvaney, Dustin (2013) “The Political Economy of the ‘Just
Transition’” The Geographical Journal, 179: 132–140.
Nordhaus, William D. and Boyer, Joseph (2000) Warming the World: Economic Models
of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Nordhaus, Ted and Shellenberger, Michael (2007) Break Through: From the Death of
Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (New York: Houghton Press).
Nordhaus, Ted, Shellenberger, Michael and Blomqvist, Linus (2012) The Planetary
Boundaries Hypothesis: A Review of the Evidence (Oakland, CA: The Breakthrough
Institute).
238 Bibliography

Norton, Bryan (1996) “Change, Constancy, and Creativity: The New Ecology and
Some Old Problems” Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum 7, 49–70.
Nowak, Pete, Bowen, Sarah and Cabot, Perry E. (2006) “Disproportionality as a
Framework for Linking Social and Biophysical Systems” Society and Natural
Resources 19, 153–173.
O’Connor, Martin (1991) “The Material/Communal Conditions of Life Capitalism”
Capitalism Nature Socialism 2, 3, 1–8.
O’Connor, James (1973) Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin’s Press).
O’Connor, James (1988) “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction”
Capitalism Nature Socialism 1, 11–38.
O’Connor, James (1998) Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York:
Guilford Press).
OECD (2008) Measuring Material Flows and Resource Productivity: Inventory of
Country Activities (Paris: OECD).
Okereke, Chukwumerije (2008) Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental
Governance: Ethics, Sustainable Development and International Cooperation (New
York: Routledge).
Olson, Storrs L. and James, Helen F. (1984) “The Role of Polynesians in the Extinction
of the Avifauna of the Hawaiian Islands” pp. 768–780 in Paul S. Martin and Richard
G. Klein (eds) Quaternary Extinctions (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press).
Ophuls, William (1977) Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prologue to a Political
Theory of the Steady State (San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman).
Oreskes, N., Conway, E.M. and Shindell, M. (2008) “From Chicken Little to Dr.
Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of
Scientific Knowledge” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38, 109–152.
Osborn, Fairfield (1948) Our Plundered Planet (London: Faber and Faber).
Oosterveer, Peter (2009) “Governing Global Environmental Flows: Ecological
Modernization in Technonatural Space-Times” pp. 35–62 in Damian White and
Chris Wilbert (eds) (2009) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and
Places in the Twenty-First Century (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press).
Ostrom, Elinor (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Palmer, Geoffrey (1992) “New Ways to Make International Environmental Law”
American Journal of International Law 86, 2, 259–283.
Panitch, Leo and Gindin, Sam (2012) The Making of Global Capitalism (London:
Verso).
Parenti, Christian (2012) Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of
Violence (New York: Nation Books).
Parenti, Christian (2012) “A Radical Approach to the Climate Crisis” Dissent 60, 5,
51–57.
Parks, Bradley C. and Roberts, J. Timmons (2010) “Climate Change, Social Theory and
Justice” Theory Culture Society 27, 2–3, 134–166.
Parks, Bradley C. and Robert, J. Timmons (2010) “Climate Change, Social Theory and
Justice” Theory Culture Society 27, 134.
Pastor, Manuel, Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Sadd, James (2006) “Breathless: Air
Quality, Schools, and Environmental Justice in California” Policy Studies Journal
34, 3, 337–362.
Paulson, Susan and Gezon, Lisa (eds) (2004) Political Ecology Across Spaces Scales and
Social Groups (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
 Bibliography 239

Peck, Jamie and Tickel, Adam (2002) “Neoliberalizing Space” Antipode 34, 3, 380–404.
Peck, Jamie, Theodore, Nik and Brenner, Neil (2009) “Neoliberal Urbanism: Models,
Moments, Mutations” SAIS Review XXIX, 1, 49–66.
Peet, Richard (2003) Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank, and WTO (London: Zed
Press).
Peet, Richard and Watts, Michael (1993) “Introduction: Development Theory and
Environment in an Age of Market Triumphalism” Economic Geography 69, 3, 227–253.
Peet, Richard, Robbins, Paul and Watts, Michael (eds) (2011) Global Political Ecology
(London: Routledge).
Pellow, David N. (2000) “Environmental Inequality Formation: Toward a Theory of
Environmental Injustice” American Behavioral Scientist 43, 4, 581–601.
Pellow, David N. (2002) Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in
Chicago (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Pellow, David N. (2004) “The Politics of Illegal Dumping: An Environmental Justice
Framework” Qualitative Sociology 27, 4, 511–525.
Pellow, David N. (2006) “Transnational Alliances and Global Politics: New Geographies
of Urban Environmental Justice Struggles” pp. 226–244 in Nikolas Heynen, Maria
Käika and Erik Swyngedouw (eds) In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology
and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (London: Routledge).
Pellow, David N. (2007) Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for
Environmental Justice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Peluso, Nancy Lee (1994) Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance
in Java (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Peluso, Nancy Lee and Watts, Michael (2001) Violent Environments (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press).
Perreault, Thomas and Martin, Patricia (2005) “Geographies of Neoliberalism in Latin
America” Environment and Planning A 37, 2, 191–201.
Phillips, Martin and Mighall, Tim (2000) Society and Nature through Exploitation
(Harlow, UK: Prentice Hall).
Pickering, Andrew (1995) The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
Pieck, Sonja J. (2006) “Opportunities for Transnational Indigenous Eco-Politics: The
Changing Landscape in the New Millennium” Global Networks 6, 3, 309–329.
Plumwood, Val (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Cambridge, UK:
Routledge).
Porritt, Jonathan (2007) Capitalism as If the World Matters (London: Routledge).
Postrel, Virginia (2004) The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is
Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness (New York: Harper).
Pulido, Laura (1996) “Ecological Legitimacy and Cultural Essentialism: Hispano
Grazing in the Southwest” Capitalism Nature Socialism 7, 4, 37–58.
Rackham, Oliver (1987) The History of the Countryside: The Full Fascinating Story of
Britain’s Landscape (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
Radkau, Joachim (2008) Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Reid, Julian (2013) “Interrogating the Neoliberal Biopolitics of the Sustainable
Development- Resilience Nexus” International Political Sociology 7, 4, 353–67.
Rice, James (2007) “Ecological Unequal Exchange: Consumption, Equity, and
Unsustainable Structural Relationships within the Global Economy” International
Journal of Comparative Sociology 48, 1, 43–72.
240 Bibliography

Ridley, Matt (2010) The Rational Optimist (New York: Harper Perennial).
Robbins, Paul (2010) Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York:
John Wiley and Sons).
Roberts, J. Timmons, Grimes, Peter E. and Manale, Jodie L. (2003) “Social Roots
of Global Environmental Change: A World-Systems Analysis of Carbon Dioxide
Emissions” Journal of World-Systems Research 9, 2, 277–315.
Roberts, J. Timmons and Parks, Bradley C. (2006) A Climate of Injustice: Global
Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Roberts, J. Timmons and Toffolon-Weiss, Melissa M. (2001) Chronicles from the
Environmental Justice Frontline (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Robinson, Colin (2008) “Climate Change, Centralized Action and Markets” pp. 42–69
in Colin Robinson (ed.) Climate Change Policy: Challenging the Activists (London:
Institute of Economic Affairs).
Rocheleau, Dianne, Thomas-Slayter, Barbara and Wangari, Esther (eds) (1996) Feminist
Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences (London: Routledge).
Rockström, Johan, et al. (2009) “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating
Space for Humanity” Ecology and Society 14, 2, 32.
Romm, Joseph (2010) Straight Up: America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the
Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions (New York: Island Press).
Rosenzweig, Michael L. (2003) “Reconciliation Ecology and the Future of Species
Diversity” Oryx 37, 2, 194–205.
Ross, Eric B. (1998) The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist
Development (London: Zed Books).
Rudy, Alan P. (2002) “Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature” Society & Natural
Resources 15, 6, 555–558.
Rudy, Alan P. (2005) “On ANT and Relational Materialisms” Capitalism Nature
Socialism 16, 4, 109–125.
Rudy, Alan P. and Gareau, Brian J. (2005) “A Symposium on Actor-Network Theory,
Marxist Economics, and Marxist Political Ecology” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
16, 4, 85–90.
Rudy, Alan P. and White, Damian F. (2013) “Hybridity” pp. 121–132 in Carl Death
(ed.) Critical Environmental Politics (London: Routledge).
Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.) (1988) Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict
(London: Zed).
Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism (New York: Vintage).
Salleh, Ariel (1991) “From Centre to Margin” Hypatia 6, 206–214.
Salleh, Ariel (1997) Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern
(London: Zed Books).
Samways, David (1996) “Ecological Wisdom and the Noble Savage: Assessing the
Foundations of Eco-Fundamentalism” Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of
Government, University of Essex.
Sandbach, Franz (1978) “The Rise and Fall of the Limits to Growth Debate” Social
Studies of Science 8, 495–520.
Sarah Whatmore (2013) “Earthly Powers and Affective Environments: An Ontological.
Politics of Flood Risk” Theory, Culture & Society 30, 7–8, 33–50.
Sassen, Saskia (2014) Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Sayer, Andrew (2000) Realism and Social Science (London: Sage).
 Bibliography 241

Scoones, Ian, Leach, Melissa and Newell, Peter (2015) The Politics of Green
Transformations (London: Routledge).
Schor, Juliet (2010) Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (New York: The
Penguin Press).
Schnaiberg, Allan (1980) The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity (New York:
Oxford University Press).
Schofer, Evan and Granados, Francisco J. (2006) “Environmentalism, Globalization
and National Economies, 1980–2000” Social Forces 85, 2, 965–991.
Schwartzman, David (1996) “Solar Communism” Science & Society 60, 3, 307–331.
Schwartzman, David (1998) “Reply” Science & Society 62, 2, 272–274.
Sen, Amartya (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation
(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press).
Sending, Ole J. and Neuman, Iver B. (2006) “Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing
NGOs, States, and Power” International Studies Quarterly 50, 3, 651–672.
Shaffer, Simon and Shapin, Steven (1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle,
and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Shandra, John M., et al. (2004) “International Non-Governmental Organizations and
Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the Developing World: A Quantitative, Cross-National
Analysis” Sociological Inquiry 74, 4, 520–545.
Shellenberger, Michael and Nordhaus, Ted (2004) The Death of Environmentalism:
Global Warming Politics in a Post-environmental World. www.thebreakthrough
.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf.
Shonkoff, Seth, et al. (2012) “The Climate Gap: Environmental Health and Equity
Implications of Climate Change and Mitigation Policies in California – A Review of
the Literature” Climatic Change 109, 1, 485–503.
Shove, Elizabeth (2010a) “Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of
Social Change” Environment and Planning A 42, 1273–1285.
Shove, Elizabeth (2010b) “Social Theory and Climate Change: Questions Often,
Sometimes, and Not Yet Asked” Theory, Culture & Society 27, 203, 277–288.
Simon, Julian (1981) The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Simon, Julian (1995) The State of Humanity (London: Blackwell Publishers).
Skocpol, Theda (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of
France, Russia, and China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Skocpol, Theda (1980) “Political Response to Capitalist Crisis: Neo-Marxist Theories
of the State and the Case of the New Deal” Politics & Society 10, 155–201.
Smith, Neil (1984) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space
(New York: Blackwell).
Smith, Neil (1990) “Geography Redux? The History and Theory of Geography”
Progress in Human Geography 14, 4, 547–559.
Smith, Neil (1994) “Geography, Empire and Social Theory” Progress in Human
Geography 18, 550–560.
Smith, Neil (1996) “The Production of Nature” pp. 35–53 in George Robertson et al.
(eds) FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture (London: Routledge).
Smith, Neil (1998) “Nature at the Millenium: Production and Re-enchantment”
pp. 269–282 in Bruce Braun and Noel Castree (eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the
Millenium (London: Routledge).
Smith, Neil (2006) “There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster” http://understanding
katrina.ssrc.org/Smith/.
242 Bibliography

Smith, Neil (2009) “Nature as Accumulation Strategy” The Socialist Register 43.
Sonnenfeld, David A. (2002) “Social Movements and Ecological Modernization: The
Transformation of Pulp and Paper Manufacturing” Development and Change 33,
1, 1–27.
Soper, Kate (1995) What Is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human (Oxford,
UK: Blackwell).
Soper, Kate (1999) “Of OncoMice and Female/Men: the Cyborg Feminism of Donna
Haraway” Women: a Cultural Review 10, 167–172.
Spaargaren, Gert (1997) The Ecological Modernisation of Production and Consumption
(Wageningen: Wageningen Agricultural University).
Speth, Gustave (1980) “The Global 2000 Report to the President” Boston College
Environmental Affairs Law Review 8, 4, 695–703.
Speth, James Gustave (2005) Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global
Environment, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
Speth, Gustave and Haas, Peter (2006) Global Environmental Governance (San
Francisco, CA: Island Press).
Steffen, Alex (2006) World Changing, A User’s Guide for the 21st Century (New York:
Abrams).
Steffen, Will et al. (2004) Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure
(Berlin: Springer-Verlag).
Steffen, Will, Crutzen, Paul and McNeill, John R. (2007) “The Anthropocene: Are
Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Ambio 36, 614–621.
Steinberger, Julia K. and Roberts, J. Timmons (2009) “Across a Moving Threshold:
Energy, Carbon and the Efficiency of Meeting Global Human Development Needs”
Social Ecology Working Paper 114, Vienna, May 2009.
Stengers Isabelle (2002) “A ‘Cosmo-politics’ – Risk, Hope, Change” pp.244–73 in Mary
Zournazi (ed) Hope: New Philosophies for Change (Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press).
Stern, Nicholas (2006) The Stern Review Report: the Economics of Climate Change
(London: HM Treasury).
Stern, Paul C. and Easterling, William E. (eds) (1999) Making Climate Forecasts Matter
(Washington, DC: National Academies Press).
Stigson, Björn (2004) “Walking the Talk: The Business Case for Sustainable
Development” pp. 265–274 in Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko (eds) Green
Planet Blues: Environmental Politics from Stockholm to Johannesburg (Oxford, UK:
Westview Press).
Stiner, Mary C. and Feeley-Harnik, Gillian (2011) “Energy and Ecosystems” pp. 78–102
in Andrew Schryock and Daniel Lord Smail (eds) Deep History: The Architecture of
Past and Present (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Stradling, David (1999) Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers,
and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press).
Sunderline, William D. (1995) “Managerialism and the Conceptual Limits of Sustainable
Development” Society & Natural Resources 8, 6, 481–492.
Swyngedouw, Erik (1996) “The City as Hybrid: On Nature, Society and Cyborg
Urbanization” Capitalism Nature Socialism 7, 2, 65–80.
Swyngedouw, Erik (2004) Social Power and the Urbanisation of Water: Flows of Power
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press).
 Bibliography 243

Swyngedouw, Erik (2006) “Metabolic Urbanization: The Making of Cyborg Cities”

pp. 21–40 in Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw (eds) In the Nature
of Cities – Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (London:
Routledge).
Swyngedouw, Erik (2009) “The Antinomies of the Post-Political City: In Search of a
Democratic Politics of Environmental Production” International Journal of Urban
and Regional Research 33, 3, 601–620.
Swyngedouw, E. (2011) “Whose Environment? The End of Nature, Climate Change
and the Process of Post-Politicization” Ambiente and Sociedate XIV, 2, 69–87.
Swyngedouw, Erik (2013) “The Non-Political Politics of Climate Change” ACME: An
International E-Journal for Critical Geographers 12, 1, 1–8.
Szasz, Andrew (1994) Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental
Justice (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).
Szasz, Andrew and Meuser, Michael (1997) “Environmental Inequalities: Literature
Review and Proposals for New Directions in Research and Theory” Current
Sociology 45, 3, 99–120.
Tainter, Joseph A. (2000) “Global Change, History, and Sustainability” pp. 331–356
in Roderick J. McIntosh, Joseph A. Tainter and Susan K. McIntosh (eds) In The
Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action (New York: Columbia
University Press).
Taylor, Dorceta (2009) The Environment and the People in American Cities 1600–1900
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
Taylor, Peter J. and Buttel, Frederick H. (1992) “How Do We Know We Have Global
Environmental Problems? Science and the Globalization of Environmental
Discourse” Geoforum 23, 3, 405–416.
Taylor, Peter J. and Haila, Yrjö (1998) “Natural Contradictions: Links between
Ecological Science and Environmental Politics” Science as Culture 7, 4, 445–448.
Tierney, John (1990) “Betting the Planet” The New York Times December 2.
Tierney, Richard (2009) “Use Energy, Get Rich, and Save the Planet” New York Times,
April 21.
Tonkinwise, Cameron (2011a) “A Taste For Practices: Unrepressing Style in Design
Thinking” Design Studies, 32, 6, 533–545.
Tonkinwise, Cameron (2011b) “Only a God Can Save Us – Or at Lease a Good
Story: I (Heart) Sustainability (Because Necessity No Longer has Agency)” Design
Philosophy Papers 9, 2, 69–80.
Tonkinwise, Cameron (2013) “It’s Just Going to be a Lotta Hard Work – Four
Problematic and Five Potential Ways of Accomplishing Radical Sustainability
Innovation” Draft Paper. https://www.academia.edu/3844727/Its_Just_Going_to_
be_a_Lotta_Hard_Work_Radical_Sustainability_Innovation.
Turner, Billie L., et al. (eds) (1990) The Earth as Transformed by Human Action:
Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press).
Ungar, Roberto M. (2014) The Religion of the Future (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press).
Urry, John (2002) The Tourist Gaze (London: Sage).
Urry, John (2010) “Consuming the Planet to Excess” Theory, Culture and Society 27,
2–3, 191–212.
244 Bibliography

Urry, John (2011) Climate Change and Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press).
Vogt, William (1948) Road to Survival (New York: William Sloane).
von Weizsäcker, Ernst, Lovins, Amory and Lovins, Hunter (1998) Factor Four: Doubling
Wealth, Halving Resource Use (London: Earthscan).
Wainwright, Hilary 1994. Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right
(London, Blackwell).
Wallerstein, Immanuel M. (1974). The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New
York: Academic Press).
Wapner, Paul (2004) “Politics Beyond the State” pp. 122–144 in Ken Conca, Michael
Alberty and Geoffrey D. Dabelko (eds) Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics
from Stockholm to Rio, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Ward, Colin (2011) “A Peopled Landscape” pp. 311–320 in Damian F. White and Chris
Wilbert (eds) Autonomy, Solidarity, Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader (Oakland,
CA: AK Press).
Watson, Matthew C. (2011) “Cosmopolitics and the Subaltern: Problematizing Latour’s
Idea of the Commons” Theory, Culture & Society 28, 3, 55–79.
Watts, Michael (1998) “Nature as Artifice and Artifact” pp. 243–268 in Bruce Braun
and Noel Castree (eds) Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium (London:
Routledge).
WCED (UN World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987) Our
Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and
Development (Geneva: WCED).
Weale, Albert (1992) The New Politics of Pollution (Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press).
Whatmore, Sarah (2002) Hybrid Geographies (London: Sage Publications).
White, Damian F. (2003) “Hierarchy, Domination, Nature: Considering Bookchin’s
Critical Social Theory” Organization and Environment 15, 5, 1–32.
White, Damian F. (2008) Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal (London: Pluto Press).
White, Damian and Wilbert, Chris (eds) (2009) Technonatures: Environments,
Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-First Century (Waterloo, ON:
Wilfred Laurier University Press).
Wilbert, Chris and White, Damian (eds) (2011) Autonomy, Solidarity and Possibility:
The Colin Ward Reader (Oakland, CA: AK Press).
Wilkinson, Richard G. (1973) Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Model of Economic
Development (London: Methuen).
Wilmsen, Edwin N. (1989) Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari
(Chicago: Chicago University Press).
Wines, James (2000) Green Architecture (Koln, DE: Taschen).
Wolf, Eric R. (1982) Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press).
Worster, Donald (1988) The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental
History (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Wright, Erik Olin (2010) Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso).
Wynne, Brian (1996) “May the Sheep Safely Graze? A Reflexive View of the Expert–Lay
Knowledge Divide” pp. 165–198 in Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Brian
Wynne (eds) Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology (London:
Sage Publications).
 Bibliography 245

Yearly, Steven (1996) Sociology, Environmentalism, Globalization (London: Sage

Publications).
Yearly, Steven (2005) Cultures of Environmentalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Yearly, Steven (2008) “Nature and the Environment in Science and Technology Studies”
pp. 921–947 in Edward J. Hackett, et al. (eds) The Handbook of Science and
Technology Studies, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
York, Richard (2006) Treadmill of Production. http://www.eoearth.org/view/­
article/156691.
York, Richard (2008) “De-Carbonization in Former Soviet Republics, 1992–2000: The
Ecological Consequences of De-Modernization” Social Problems 55, 3, 370–390.
York, Richard (2010) “Three Lessons from Trends in CO2 Emissions and Energy Use in
the United States” Society and Natural Resources 23, 12, 1244–1252.
York, Richard, Rosa, Eugene A. and Dietz, Thomas (2003a) “STIRPAT, IPAT and
ImPACT: Analytic Tools for Unpacking the Driving Forces of Environmental
Impacts” Ecological Economics 46, 3, 351–365.
York, Richard, Rosa, Eugene A. and Dietz, Thomas (2003b) “A Rift in Modernity?
Assessing the Anthropogenic Sources of Global Climate Change with the STIRPAT
Model” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 23, 10, 31–51.
Zahran, Sammy, et al. (2007) “Ecological Development and Global Climate Change:
A Cross-National Study of Kyoto Protocol Ratification” Society and Natural
Resources 20, 37–55.
Zehner, Ozzie (2012) Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future
of Environmentalism (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press).
Zhang, Lei, Mol, Arthur P.J. and Sonnenfeld, David A. (2007) “The Interpretation of
Ecological Modernisation in China” Environmental Politics 16, 4, 659–668.
Zimmerer, Karl S. (1993) “Soil Erosion and Labor Shortages in the Andes with
Special Reference to Bolivia, 1953–1991: Implications for ‘Conservation-with-
Development’” World Development 21, 10, 1659–1675.
Zimmerer, Karl S. (1994) “Human Geography and the New Ecology” Annals of the
American Association of Geographers 84, 1, 108–125.
 Index
abundance (ecological) 61, 96–97,
107–108, 125, 207–209, 223
as alternative hedonism 198
Bookchin on 73
and exuberant ecologies 137–141
plenitude xxi, 194–202
actor-network theory (ANT) xviii–xix,
120–123, 132–135, 151
actants 121–122, 132–134
assemblages 14, 115, 120–123, 133,
138, 152, 164
criticisms of 131–135, 200–202
and Latour xxi, 2, 6, 14, 19, 28, 115,
117–123, 131–135, 151, 156,
194–196, 199, 201, 213
agricultural/pastoral relations 37–41, 44,
47, 55, 57, 60, 97, 105, 109, 129,
145, 188, 198
agro-food 190, 210
Agyeman, Julian 189
anarchist perspectives 17, 19–20, 26–28,
38, 72–75, 180, 211
anthropocene (the) xi, xx–xxi, 36–37,
46–51, 85, 88, 98, 176, 179,
193–194, 207, 213
anthropocentrism 4, 24, 88, 121, 182
anti-environmentalism 110, 113, 187
and contrarians xvi, xvii, 66–70, 108,
177–178, 187
and greenwash 93, 113–114
and Prometheanism xvii, xx, 24, 33,
52–53, 60–63, 65–72, 77, 82–85,
87, 97, 101, 137, 159–160,
177–178, 186, 189, 214
Apocalyticism (ecological) xvii, 59, 63,
86, 114, 179–182, 195, 214
and Black Swan events 181
and catastrophism 62, 108, 180
246
and collapse xvii, xx, 10, 41–43, 51,
54–55, 176, 179, 181
and eco-Marxism 108–109
as End Times Ecology 179–182
and Malthusianism 179–182
and political fatalism 71, 123, 181
Arendt, Hannah 13
Bakker, Karen 106, 107, 151, 173
Barry, Andrew 134–135, 192
Barry, John 83, 110, 173, 181, 202–205,
210, 212
Basel Convention 101, 159, 166–168,
173
Beck, Ulrich xi, 126–131, 142, 194
Benton, Ted 24, 31–34, 142
Biodiversity xvi, 59, 65–66, 70, 74,
80, 88–89, 103, 136, 179, 182,
196–197
biophysical variables on the social 3, 10,
23, 31, 36, 65, 105
Biotechnology 126–127, 137, 177–178
Bookchin, Murray 27, 71–75, 82, 87, 90,
104, 114, 208, 212–213
Bright Greens xxi, 176, 182–191, 194,
198–200, 207, 212, 215
Braun, Bruce 138–141
Brown, Phil 156, 196
Brulle, Robert 68, 69, 113
Brundtland Report 63, 158, 164, 173
Bullard, Robert 149, 154
Cancer Alley, Louisiana 108, 149–150
capitalism
accumulation 50, 96–98, 103, 126,
133, 135, 158–159, 188, 203,
210–211
and the anthropocene 37, 49–51, 213
 Index
additions and withdrawals 94
colonialism/imperialism 5, 8, 22,
46–47, 77, 80, 134, 167, 188
and consumption 56, 75–76, 92, 94,
101, 107, 109, 112, 184, 200,
202, 205, 207, 213
and disproportionality of
environmental impacts xxi, 6, 77,
107–108, 114, 148–149, 154
and displacement of environmental
bads 101, 111, 159, 166–168, 173
and global governance 158–175
hybridity of 210
and the informal economy 202–205
and innovation 60–61
as neoliberalism 106, 140, 159,
164–166, 173, 176, 178, 181–182,
186, 201, 204, 206, 210–212
as the treadmill of production 26,
93–96, 102–105, 107–109, 114,
152, 173
and violence/accumulation by
dispossession 188
Capitalocene 37, 49–51, 213
Carson, Rachel 56, 100, 161
Castree, Noel 23, 25, 151–152, 173
Catton, William 30–35, 42, 56
Clark, Nigel 2,3, 138–139
climate change xvi–xvii, 1, 3, 5–6, 23, 65,
77–78, 141, 206–207.
clean development mechanism 171
climate justice 206–207
computer modeling of 54, 58, 64
and global governance 170–175
and the IPCC 6, 66, 128–129,
170–172, 181
Kyoto Protocol 171
Commoner, Barry 58, 71, 75–76, 78, 84,
87, 90, 104, 114
complexity theory 51, 105, 110,
138, 182
Conservation 8, 38, 50, 77, 81, 140,
145–146, 177178, 185, 196–198,
206
constraints and enablements
Constructionism 8–11, 59, 117,
133, 177
247
Consumption 56, 75–76, 92, 94, 101,
107, 109, 112, 184, 200, 202,
205, 207, 213
Crutzen, Paul 47–48
Cyborgs xix, xxi, 115, 124–125,
136–137, 141, 151–154
cyborg urbanism 152–153
Dematerialization 102, 112, 183
democracy 72, 85–86, 128, 146, 193,
198, 201, 212, 215
as citizens science/popular
epistemology 196
as cosmopolitics xxi, 194–197,
200–201, 209
and invention/innovation 68,
191–192
municipal 207–208
and popular assemblies 208
and popular planning 211–212
demographic transition theory 76–79
design (eco) xviii, 68, 183, 192, 194–200,
214–215
adaptive reuse 68, 211
cradle to cradle 114, 182–186
ecological design 182–191, 194,
198–200, 207, 212, 215
eliminative design 199
as reconciliation ecology 194–197
as redirective practice 198–199, 202
and the state 68–69
and transitions 199–200
determinism/reductionism (problem of)
17–18, 138–141
naturalistic/ecological/environmental
xx, 17, 18, 20–23, 27, 31–32, 35,
71, 77, 90–91, 121, 154, 179
social 17, 23, 31, 133
technological 118, 186
Diamond, Jared 41–43, 179
Dobson, Andrew 114
domination of nature 20–21, 36, 46, 51,
74, 153
Dryzek, John 83, 100, 175
Dunlap, Riley 9, 11, 22, 30–31, 69
Durkheim, Emile 17, 22–24, 28–31, 35,
38, 133
248 Index
eco-feminism 20, 76–79, 123–126
ecology
equilibrium/non-equilibrium 29,
104–106, 144, 180, 182
historical 2–3, 37, 39, 40, 49, 45, 57,
74, 85, 118, 121, 133, 200
human 29–30, , 30–31
and limits 52–70, 72–81, 81–84,
88–91
political 81–84, 104–106
public
reconciliation 194–197
resilience 16, 23, 31, 133
science of 104–106
social 72–75
eco-Marxism 93, 96–98, 139, 151–154
and conditions of production
141, 214
ecologically uneven exchange 111
as Left functionalism 107–108
and metabolic rift xxi, 26, 93, 96–106,
108–109, 114, 123, 152
and metabolism 2, 7, 46, 97, 141
relations to political ecology 104–106
ecological footprint 109, 152, 182–183
ecological modernization xi, xxi, 76, 93,
98–102, 109–114
and China 175
criticisms of 109–114, 186–191
Dutch/German experiences 93,
99–101, 175
eco-socialist (Commoner) 75–76
eco-socialist (Harvey) 207
eco-socialist (Parenti) 138–141
and neo-liberalism 113–114, 166–168
and Nordhaus/Shellenberger 183,
185–189, 191, 205
as post political managerialism 113
varieties of 210–212
Ecomodernist Manifesto 186,
187–191
Ehn, Pelle 198
Ehrlich, Paul 54–56, 61–64, 71–3, 77,
111, 180
Ellis, Erie 3
Enlightenment 4, 18–20, 35–36, 46,
131–132, 138
environmental justice xviii, xxi, 13, 25,
86, 136–137, 143, 147–156, 160,
166–168, 182, 185, 189, 196,
206–207, 214–215
eugenic/eugenicist 22–23
Feminism xxi, 37, 53, 71, 76–79, 109,
122–123, 202–203
criticisms of Malthusianism 77–78
cyborg xxi, 2, 28, 33–37, 87, 115–117,
123–130, 134–142, 151–152, 156,
194, 213
eco 20, 76–79, 123–126
and gender 4, 15, 72, 77, 116–117,
123–124, 126, 135, 137, 144–148,
154, 156, 214
and political economy 202–205,
209–210
queer xxi, 117, 143, 147, 214
Fisher, Dana 108
flourishing/co-flourishing 3, 45, 61, 126,
135, 193, 213–214
Foster, John Bellamy 96–98,
103–104
Foucault, Michel 12–13, 123
Freudenberg, William 107–108
Fry, Tony 198–199, 202
Furedi, Frank 68, 69, 178
Gandy, Matthew 153
Gender 4, 15, 72, 77, 116–117, 123–124,
126, 135, 137, 144–148, 154,
156, 214
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 202–205,
209–210
global governance 69, 78, 159–166,
172, 75
Gottlieb, Robert 145–147
Gould, Stephen Jay 1, 27, 139–140
Greenwash
Gross, Matthias 23, 133, 197
growth
Brundtland Report and 63
exponential (problem of) 54–55, 58,
79, 177
qualitative and differentated 65
zero growth 64
 Index
Haila, Yro 3, 59
Haraway, Donna xxi, 2, 28, 33–37, 87,
115–117, 123–130, 134–142,
151–152, 156, 194, 213
Hardin, Garrett 54–56, 63, 161
Harvey, David 82–84, 87–88, 91, 104,
152, 188, 207, 213
Hayek, Friedrich 59
Head, Leslie 35, 50
Heartfield, James 68
Henwood, Doug 104
Hess, David 174, 205, 206, 209
Hinchliffe, Steve 116, 197
Human(s)
as active citizens 75, 193, 200, 208
adaptive capacities 43, 69–70, 106,
208
agency 2, 32, 92–93, 121, 133–136,
182
and anthropocentricism 4, 24, 88, 121,
182
continuities with non-humans 4, 20,
24, 32–35
as creative gardeners 74
as cyborgs 124–125, 136–137, 141,
151–154
difference (internal) xix, 4–5,
137, 141
differences with non-humans 32–35,
138–141
instrumentalism 4, 20, 24
and non –human agencies xix–xx, 117,
131–136
as shapers of ecosystems 2–3, 37, 39,
40, 49, 45, 57, 74, 85, 118, 121,
133, 200
socio-technologically embodied
137–141
and transhumanism 177–178
Hybridity xix–xxi, 14, 27, 34–35, 44,
104, 116–120, 123–143, 151–158,
176–182, 193–197, 202–214
critical and uncritical xix–xx,
135–154, 212
definition 116–117
human agency xix–xx, 1–3, 32–35,
124–125, 136–137, 151–154
249
and neo-liberalism 177–179
and non human agencies xix–xx, 117,
131–136, 138–141
Hynes, H. Patricia 77–78
IPAT 77–78
Irwin, Terry 200
Jackson, Tim 56–57
Jorgenson, Andrew 111–112
Kossoff, Gideon 199, 200
Kropotkin, Petr 26–27, 38
Labor 143–147
and environmental history 143–147
and the green collar economy
205–206, 209
and green design (worker orientated)
198
and green unionism 212
and green workers self management
212
Lappe, Francis Moore 71, 77, 84, 87, 91,
104, 114
Latour, Bruno xxi, 2, 6, 14, 19, 28, 115,
117–123, 131–135, 151, 156,
194–196, 199, 201, 213
Limits
Brundtland Report and 63
as constraints and enablements
2, 50, 91
dialectical understanding of 82–83
Donella Meadows and 65
knowledge 58–59
as planetary boundaries 52–3,
88–91, 98
Promethium view 60–62
as understood in Limits to Growth
54–58
Lockie, Stewart 159, 173
Loftus, Alex 14, 50, 141, 151, 173
Lomborg, Bjorn 61, 66–67, 87, 160
Love Canal 148, 150, 156
Lovins, Amory 84, 183, 185–186,
190
Luke, Timothy 59, 193
250 Index
Malthus, Thomas 20–22
Malthusianism 33, 50, 52–63, 70, 72–75,
77–88, 90, 94, 99, 101, 103,
105–106, 113–114, 119, 153, 156,
160–164, 180, 186, 214
Marx, Karl xvi, 2, 21, 24–26, 36
Materialism 25–28, 97, 133, 140
active 15, 25, 33, 46, 50, 121,
133, 141
historical geographical xxi, 11,
151–152
object-orientated 116, 139–141
vital xxi, 116, 139–141
McCarthy, James 106
Meadows, Donatella 52, 65
Michael, Mike 8
Mol, Arthur P.J. 98–102, 110–114
Moore, Jason W. 3, 49–51
Morello-Frosch, Rachel 156, 196
Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona 147
Morton, Tim 138–139
Murphy, Raymond 131
Mutualism 26, 140, 211
natural disasters xvii, 6
Nature-Cultures xix, 7–8, 33–34
nature-society dualism/binary xxi, 19, 28,
91, 103–104, 107, 114, 119, 123,
180–181, 188–189, 214
neo-liberalism xi, xxi, 106, 140, 159,
164–166, 173, 176, 178, 181–182,
186, 201, 204, 206, 210–212
dependence on the state 69, 159,
210–211
and ecological modernization
113–114, 166–168
impact on environmental governance
173
variegated 173
Non-human agency xix–xx, 117,
131–136
Nordhaus, Ted and Shellenberger,
Michael 185–188, 214
O’Connor, James 33, 214
ocean acidification xix, 56, 88–89
Ontology 8–9, 28, 85, 116, 120,
139–142, 151, 185
ozone depletion 168–170
Parenti, Christian 208–210
Pellow, David 15, 154–155, 209
planetary boundaries xx, 52–53,
88–91, 98
political ecology xiii, xxi, 25–26, 59,
76–87, 104–106, 129, 160, 173,
182, 196, 214
feminist 76–78
neo-Marxist 81–84
post-structuralist 104–106
Southern 79–81, 104–106
urban 143, 157
population/over-population 20–24, 27,
31, 41–42, 45, 47–48, 52–58, 60,
62–63, 71, 73, 75–79, 81–82, 86,
94, 101, 107, 162, 180, 185
post-environmentalism 185–188, 214
power/power relations xiii, xix, 4–5, 7,
10–16, 29, 46, 49, 74, 78, 80–81,
93, 113, 126, 133–136, 140–142,
150–156, 159–160, 164, 168,
181–182, 188–191, 204, 207–211,
213–215
Prometheanism xvii, xx, 24, 33, 52–53,
60–63, 65–72, 77, 82–85, 87, 97,
101, 137, 159–160, 177–178, 186,
189, 214
queer ecologies xxi, 117, 143, 147,
203, 214
Racism 9, 148–149, 167
realism (philosophical) 8–11
Resilience 16, 23, 31, 133
Ridley, Matt 67, 101, 160
Risk xix, 6, 16, 90–91, 126–130, 142,
148–149, 154–155, 163, 170, 172,
181, 200, 213
risk society 126–130, 142, 148–149,
154–155, 163, 170, 172, 181,
200, 213
risk taking (positive) 200
Robbins, Paul 59, 81, 105, 173, 196
Roberts, Timmons 6, 149, 154, 160, 206
Salleh, Ariel 25
Scarcity 21, 56–60, 64, 71–73, 77, 79,
81–82, 85–86, 91, 94, 103, 182,
184, 186
 Index 251

Schnaiberg, Allan 94–95, 104 Tonkinwise, Cameron 68, 197–198

Silent Spring 56, 100, 101 Tragedy of the Commons 54, 63
Simon, Julian 52, 60–63, 66–67, 70–72, Transition 199–200
75, 83, 87, 160, 178, 182, 185 design 200
social ecology 72–75 towns 200
socio-ecological imagination x, xi, xx, Treadmill of Production
1–2, 4, 6–7, 17, 35
Soper, Kate 34, 198 Urbanism 74, 152–154, 174
Southern (critiques of Northern and climate change 174
environmentalism) 79–81 cyborg 152–154
the state ecological 184–185
as ecopolitical actor 208–210, 211 fortress 191
and “green statism” 211 socioenvironmental histories of
and innovation/invention 67–69 145–147
and neo-sliberalism 68–69, 159, 173 Urry, John xviii, 8, 10, 42, 105, 110
Stengers, Isabelle 195, 196, 200, 201
STIRPAT 111–112 Ward, Colin 8
Stockholm Resilience Institute 88–91 Whatmore, Sarah 2,3, 138, 197, 201
sustainable development 63, 158, 164, Whitehead, A.N. 17, 28, 33, 37, 123,
173 138, 195
Swyngedouw, Erik 142, 152–153 Wilderness
as humanized landscape 44
Tainter, Joseph A 40–42 as “the people’s forest” 146–147
Tarde, Gabriel 28 social and environmental history of
Taylor, Dorcetta 144–145 36–45