Ingolfur Blühdorn

Sustaining the unsustainable: Symbolic politics and the politics of simulation

Abstract Stirred by the contradiction between the mainstreamed castigation of merely symbolic eco-politics and the firm resolve of advanced consumer democracies to defend the core principles of democratic consumer capitalism, this contribution undertakes a meta-critique of the paradigm of symbolic politics. A tentative typology of different varieties of symbolic politics maps the terrain for a detailed analysis of symbolic politics in the popular understanding. A comprehensive cultural shift conceptualised as the post-ecologist turn is held responsible not only for a fundamental transformation of the ways in which late-modern societies frame and process their environmental problems, but also for the exhaustion of authentic eco-politics which, by implication, renders the critique of merely symbolic politics questionable. The concept of simulative politics is suggested as a more appropriate conceptualisation of late-modern eco-politics. Practices of simulative politics are presented as a key strategy which help late-modern societies to sustain what is known to be unsustainable.

Eco-politics beyond the paradigm of sustainability: A conceptual framework and research agenda

Abstract This contribution sketches a conceptual framework for the analysis of the post-ecologist era and outlines a research agenda for investigating its politics of unsustainability. The article suggests that this new era and its particular mode of eco-politics necessitate a new environmental sociology. Following a review of some achievements and limitations of the paradigm of sustainability, the concept of post-ecologism is related to existing discourses of the ‘end of nature’, the ‘green backlash’ and the ‘death of environmentalism’. The shifting terrain of eco-politics in the late-modern condition is mapped and an eco-sociological research programme outlined centring on the post-ecologist question: How do advanced modern capitalist consumer democracies try and manage to sustain what is known to be unsustainable?

The governance of unsustainability: ecology and democracy after the post-democratic turn

Starting from the diagnosis of a profound reconfiguration since the second half of the 1980s of the normative foundations of contemporary eco-political discourses, the theory of post-ecologist politics has conceptualised eco-politics in advanced modern consumer societies as the politics of unsustainability. How the politics of unsustainability is organised and executed in practical terms is explored and the theory of post-ecologist politics is extended to suggest that, in the wake of a modernisation-induced post-democratic turn, democratic values and the innovative modes of decentralised, participatory government which, up to the present, are widely hailed as the key towards a genuinely legitimate, effective and efficient environmental policy are metamorphosing into tools for managing the condition of sustained ecological and social unsustainability. Analysis of this governance of unsustainability reveals a new twist in the notoriously difficult relationship between democracy and ecology.

The Politics of Unsustainability: COP15, Post-Ecologism, and the Ecological Paradox

More spectacularly than ever before, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Fifteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP15) summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 exposed the limitations of established approaches to, and institutional arrangements for, international climate and environmental politics. It illustrated the paradoxical simultaneity of, on one hand, the wide acceptance that to mitigate climate change and achieve sustainability rich consumer societies, in particular, need to radically change their established values, lifestyles, and social practices, and on the other, a profound inability and unwillingness to implement such change. Conceptualising the form of ecopolitics on display (not only) in Copenhagen as the “politics of unsustainability,” this article looks for explanations for the apparent impasse in contemporary ecopolitics and explores the practices that help advanced modern consumer societies to cope with the paradox of wanting to sustain the unsustainable. Adopting a social—theoretical approach rooted in the European tradition, the article focuses on one particular explanatory factor that in the prevalent context of environmental depoliticisation is receiving too little attention: the sociocultural norms underpinning all ecopolitics.

Self-Experience in the Theme Park of Radical Action? Social Movements and Political Articulation in the Late-modern Condition

In accordance with the established view that the new social movements since the late 1960s have always pursued an agenda of comprehensive societal change, the new wave of movement activism since the late 1990s has widely been interpreted as evidence of the emergence of a new global movement for a radically different society. A critique of the one-sided reliance in social movement research on traditional actor-centred approaches leads to a systems-centred conceptualization of late-modern society, and via the diagnosis of its particular dilemmas, to the interpretation of contemporary social movements as a vital resource for the stabilization of the socioeconomic order of democratic consumer capitalism. As an addition to the existing social movement theories, the suggested approach contributes to a more complex understanding of non-conventional forms of political articulation and participation.

Reinventing Green Politics: On the Strategic Repositioning of the German Green Party

Whilst environmental issues, most notably climate change, have recently been more prominent in public debate than at any earlier time, Green parties are confronted with a fundamental challenge: The agenda of ‘new politics’ that had once been their original project has meanwhile become largely exhausted, and the profound transformation of societal structures, value preferences and party political competition necessitates a comprehensive reinvention of Green politics. Focusing on the German Greens, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, this article spells out the thesis of the exhaustion of the Green project and investigates how since the end of the Red–Green coalition under Chancellor Schröder the party has tried to forge a new, electorally attractive, programmatic profile. Detailed analysis of its evolving environmental and social policy position and of its relationship to the specific concerns and priorities energising late-modern consumer societies suggests that whilst in principle Germanys new five-party system offers favourable opportunity structures for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen to regain executive power, there is as yet little evidence of a successful reinvention of Green politics.

A theory of post‐ecologist politics

The environmental movement has traditionally been interpreted as the vanguard of a new social, political and economic order which is to replace the ecologically unsustainable development practised in industrialised countries. The ideology of ecologism was expected to sign‐post societys path of self‐reformation. Social theory and its young sub‐discipline of environmental sociology have developed a number of models for the assumed ecologisation of society. But whilst the latter never seemed to materialise, the former remained subject to the criticism of not being ‘well suited to the elaboration or discussion of this kind of political problem’.1 Contrary to its efforts so far, the most valuable contribution of social theory to the ecological debate might be to demonstrate that processes of modernisation have rendered ecologism itself an outdated ideology, and the ecologisation of society a conceptual bubble. Inspired by Niklas Luhmanns systems theory, and based on a constructionist reinterpretation of envi...

Self-description, Self-deception, Simulation: A Systems-theoretical Perspective on Contemporary Discourses of Radical Change

In advanced modern societies ecological integrity, democratic renewal, social inclusion and global justice are non-controversial collective concerns. The ecological, economic, social and political unsustainability of the present arrangements is largely uncontested. Demands for radical societal change as they have once been articulated by the counter-cultural new social movements seem to have been fully mainstreamed. At the same time, however, there is an unprecedented consensus of defence reinforcing the established system of liberal consumer capitalism. What is required in order to make sense of these evident contradictions is a theory of late-modern societys discourses of radical change. New social movement theory (NSMT) can neither explain the mainstreaming of the supposedly subversive discourses of radical change nor their relationship towards the firmly established consensus of defence. A critical review of Niklas Luhmanns systems theoretical analysis of protest communication paves the way towards an interpretation of contemporary discourses of radical change as a particular form of societal self-description that functions as a means of societal self-deception: late-modern society uses the form of simulation in order to stabilize and reproduce at the same time the unsustainable status quo and the belief in the radical alternative.

Inclusionality - Exclusionality: Environmental Philosophy and Simulative Politics

In direct response to Alan Rayner’s Inclusionality – An Immersive Philosophy of Environmental Relationships in this volume, this chapter critically reviews the validity of some stereotypically reproduced arguments within the environmental debate. It aims to demonstrate how late modern societies have moved beyond the philosophy of inclusionality that provided the foundation for ecologist thinking and politics. The post-ecologist realities of contemporary society however, are, arguably, obscured by a societal practice that is described as simulative politics: whilst there is no serious confidence – nor actually ambition – that the modernist project and promise of ecological thought will ever be completed, late modern society keeps reproducing the illusion that the ecologist ideals are still valid and on the agenda. Academics and intellectuals can hardly avoid contributing to this collective strategy of simulation, or they expose themselves to charges of having abandoned humanist values, and fatalistically taking refuge in apologias of an unacceptable status quo. Trying to pierce this protective screen surrounding late modern consciousness, this chapter aims to expose how the well-intended appeal for an immersive philosophy of inclusionality has become a function of an individualized reality of exclusionality.

Post-capitalism, post-growth, post-consumerism? Eco-political hopes beyond sustainability

ABSTRACTAs a road map for a structural transformation of socially and ecologically self-destructive consumer societies, the paradigm of sustainability is increasingly regarded as a spent force. Yet, its exhaustion seems to coincide with the rebirth of several ideas reminiscent of earlier, more radical currents of eco-political thought: liberation from capitalism, consumerism and the logic of growth. May the exhaustion of the sustainability paradigm finally re-open the intellectual and political space for the big push beyond the established socio-economic order? Looking from the perspective of social and eco-political theory, this article argues that the new narratives (and social practices) of post-capitalism, degrowth and post-consumerism cannot plausibly be read as signalling a new eco-political departure. It suggests that beyond the exhaustion of the sustainability paradigm, we are witnessing, more than anything, the further advancement of the politics of unsustainability – and that in this politics th...