Affluence and Freedom - An Environmental History of Political Ideas - An Environmental History of Political Ideas

In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment.
 
The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth's shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change.
 
This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

List of contents

Acknowledgements
 
Foreword
 
Introduction
 

Chapter One. The critique of ecological reason
 
The fabric of liberty
 
The other history. Ecology and the labour question
 
Subsisting, dwelling, knowing
 
Autonomy and abundance
 

Chapter Two. Sovereignty and property. Political philosophy and the land
 
The political affordances of the land
 
Grotius: Empire and possession
 
Locke: the improving citizen
 

Chapter Three. Grain and the market. The order of commerce and the organic economy in the eighteenth century
 
The good use of the land
 
The agrarian kingdom of the Physiocrats
 
The liberal pact: Adam Smith
 
Two types of growth
 
Fichte: the ubiquity of the moderns
 

Chapter Four. The new ecological regime
 
From one liberalism to another
 
The paradoxes of autonomy: Guizot
 
The paradoxes of abundance: Jevons
 
Colonial extractions
 
Extraction-autonomy: Tocqueville
 

Chapter Five. Industrial democracy. From Proudhon to Durkheim
 
Revolutions and industry
 
Property and labour
 
Proudhon as critic of the liberal pact
 
The fraternal idiom
 
Durkheim: 'carbon sociology'
 
The political affordances of coal
 

Chapter Six. The technocratic hypothesis. Saint-Simon and Veblen
 
Material flows and market arrangements
 
The technological normativity of the moderns
 
Laying bare the productive schema
 
Veblen and the cult of efficiency
 
The engineer and property
 

Chapter Seven. Nature in a market society
 
Marx as a thinker of autonomy
 
Putting the forest to good use
 
Technology and agronomy
 
Conquering the globe
 
Karl Polanyi: protecting society, protecting nature
 
Disembedding
 
Socialism, liberalism, conservatism
 

Chapter Eight. The great acceleration and the eclipse of nature
 
Freedom from want
 
Emancipation and acceleration: Herbert Marcuse
 
Oil and atomic power: invisible energies
 

Chapter Nine. Risks and limits: the end of certainties
 
Alarms and controversies
 
The critique of development and political naturalism
 
Risk and the reinvention of autonomy
 
The impasse: between collapse and resilience
 

Chapter Ten. The end of the modern exception and political ecology
 
Symmetrizations
 
Authority and composition
 
Under naturalism lies production
 
Unequal ecological exchange
 
Provincializing critique
 
A new conceptual cartography
 
Changing expectations of justice
 
Autonomy without abundance
 
Towards a new critical subject
 

Chapter Eleven. The self-protection of the Earth.
 
Changing expectations of justice
 
Autonomy without abundance
 
Towards a new critical subject
 

Conclusion. Reinventing liberty
 

Notes
 
Bibliography Index

About the author

Pierre Charbonnier is a researcher at the CNRS and a member of the Centre d'études européennes; he teaches at Sciences Po, Paris.

Summary

In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment.

The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth's shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change.

This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

Report

"Because he speaks the language of political philosophy and not that of environmentalism, Charbonnier manages, paradoxically, to bring questions of the material conditions of existence much closer to what those who pursue the modern ideals of freedom and prosperity need in order to realize them. He might succeed in rendering political ecology mainstream."
Bruno Latour, Sciences Po, Paris
 
"Impressive and forensic"
Times Higher Education

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Brown, Charbonnier, Pierre Charbonnier, Charbonnier Pierre
• Assisted by: Andrew Brown (Translation)
• Publisher: Polity Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2021
• EAN: 9781509543717
• ISBN: 978-1-5095-4371-7
• No. of pages: 328
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Soziologie, Philosophie, Politikwissenschaft, Gesellschaftstheorie, Sociology, Social Theory, Political Science, Philosophy, Politische u. Ökonomische Philosophie, Political & Economic Philosophy, Political Philosophy & Theory, Politische Philosophie u. Politiktheorie