Explorations in Environmental Political Theory


Book Description

The contributors to this volume focus on the political and value issues that, in their shared view, underlie the global environmental crisis facing us today. They argue that only by transforming our dominant values, social institutions and way of living can we avoid ecological disaster.




The Politics of Nature


Book Description

This book presents a uniquely comprehensive and balanced survey of current green political ideas. It analyses the ability of these ideas to provide plausible answers to fundamental problems in political theory, concerning justice and democracy, individual rights and freedom, human nature and gender. The authors, who come from a range of different disciplines, explore the relationship between green ideas and other traditions including liberalism, anarchism, feminism and Christianity.







Territories, Environments, Politics


Book Description

This collection seeks to illustrate the state of the art in territoriological research, both empirical and theoretical. The volume gathers together a series of original, previously unpublished essays exploring the newly emerging territorial formations in culture, politics and society. While the globalisation debate of the 1990s largely pivoted around a ‘general deterritorialisation’ hypothesis, since the 2000s it has become apparent that, rather than effacing territories, global connections are added to them, and represent a further factor in the increase of territorial complexity. Key questions follow, such as: How can we further the knowledge around territorial complexities and the ways in which different processes of territorialisation co-exist and interact, integrating scientific advances from a plurality of disciplines? Where and what forms does territorial complexity assume, and how do complex territories operate in specific instances? Which technological, political and cultural facets of territories should be tackled to make sense of the life of territories? How and by what different or combined methods can we describe territories, and do justice to their articulations and meanings? How can the territoriological vocabulary relate to contemporary social theory advancements such as ANT, the ontological turn, the mobilities paradigm, sensory urbanism, and atmospheres research? How can territorial phenomena be studied across disciplinary boundaries? Territories, Environments, Politics casts a fresh perspective onto a number of key contemporary socio-spatial phenomena. Refraining from the attempt to ossify territoriology into some disciplinary straightjacket, the collection aims to illustrate the scope of current territoriological research, its domain, its promises, its theoretical advancements, and its methodological reflection in the making. Scholars interested in social research will find in this collection a rich and imaginative theoretical-methodological toolkit. Students in human geography, anthropology and sociology, socio-legal studies, architecture and urban planning will find Territories, Environments, Politics of interest.




Justice, Society and Nature


Book Description

Justice, Society and Nature examines the moral response which the world must make to the ecological crisis if there is to be real change in the global society and economy to favour ecological integrity. From its base in the idea of the self, through principles of political justice, to the justice of global institutions, the authors trace the layered structure of the philosophy of justice as it applies to environmental and ecological issues. Philosophical ideas are treated in a straightforward and easily understandable way with reference to practical examples. Moving straight to the heart of pressing international and national concerns, the authors explore the issues of environment and development, fair treatment of humans and non-humans, and the justice of the social and economic systems which affect the health and safety of the peoples of the world. Current grass-roots concerns such as the environmental justice movement in the USA, and the ethics of the international regulation of development are examined in depth. The authors take debates beyond mere complaint about the injustice of the world economy, and suggest what should now be done to do justice to nature.




Nature's Edge


Book Description

Nature's Edge brings together leading environmental thinkers from the natural sciences, geography, political science, religion, and philosophy to explore the complex facets of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of our environmental problems. The contributors provide a fresh look at how our lives depend on the lines drawn and ask how those lines must be reinscribed, blurred, or even erased to prepare for a sustainable future. Resolving environmental problems calls for the negotiation of multiple, intersecting boundaries—natural, social, political, geographical, and ethical. From the differentiation of species to the formation of communities and moral values, environmental theorists are constantly confronted with a palimpsest of thresholds and mappings: Can nature and culture be divided? Are natural divisions discovered or created? How do political borders and moral economies shape community-building and social transformation?




Political Theory and Global Climate Change


Book Description

Showing how political theory challenges and is challenged by global climate change, the book both demonstrates and evaluates innovative approaches in the developing field of environmental political theory.




Government and the Environment


Book Description

In the today's global "commercial society" an inquiry into the economic role of government is gaining momentum. Many crucial goods for the wellbeing of a society are not "commercial", national security and clean air are great examples. This means that the economic role of government is not limited to cure the so called "market failures" but it has to provide for non-commercial goods. Unfortunately in the last few decades the decline of the political-economic culture of western post-industrial societies has left scope for people to blindly believe in a free, deregulated market. This book brings the culture of the state in from the cold, by confronting readers at the start with the necessity of recognizing the fundamental difference between private commercial interests, whose provision rests on the culture of profit, and public shared interests, whose provision rests on the culture of the state. This book also explores how much individual wellbeing does depend on both. The only chance for public shared interests, with their non-profit nature, to successfully keep their ground in the face of the overwhelming power of private commercial/financial interests, lies in regenerating a political-economic state culture whereby governments and policy makers/politicians understand their responsibility and social function to consist primarily in pursuing the satisfaction of the formers and not in acting on behalf of the latter.




Rawls and the Environmental Crisis


Book Description

The liberal political theorist John Rawls, despite remaining largely silent on ‘green concerns’, was writing during a time of increasing awareness that the ecological stability of the earth is being compromised by human activity. Rawls’s reluctance to engage with such concerns, however, has not stopped several scholars attempting to ‘extend’, or ‘expand’, his works to incorporate this newfound fear for the ecosystems that support human life. But why Rawls? What is to be gained from developing the ideas of a theorist whose primary aim was to establish a system of justice for contemporaneous, rational, and reasonable citizens of a liberal polity? This research monograph offers a critical consideration of the contextual framework within John Rawls’s Political Liberalism and considers its compatibility with the conceptual process of ‘greening’. Rawls and the Environmental Crisis argues that Rawls’s perceived neutrality on green concerns is representative of a widespread societal indifference to environmental degradation and describes the plurality of methodological and ethical approaches undertaken by green political theorists in analyzing the contribution Rawls’s theory makes to environmental concerns. Addressing a series of key debates within contemporary political philosophy regarding a wider frustration with liberal theory in general, Rawls and the Environmental Crisis will be of great interest to researchers in contemporary political philosophy, environmental ethics, green political theory, stewardship theory, and those interested in renewing existing conceptions of deliberative democracy.




The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory


Book Description

Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists--including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing--and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.