Social Provisioning within a Culture-Nature Life-Process

Ecological Economics, 2019

Recurrent claims that ecological economics (EE) is moving conceptually closer to environmental economics arise from the tendency to understand economic transformation through dualistic and interacting representations of 'nature' and 'society'. The methodological and value pluralism primordial to EE praxis is left under-theorized in the form of either humans acting upon a passive and external nature or a non-negotiable nature imposing limits on human activity. Solutions tend to get presented as analytical configurations mechanistically adjoining 'nature' and 'society' for pragmatic purposes rather than through dialectic and relational understandings of a unified social and material analysis. This paper considers three sub-fields of EE research: social metabolism, institutional design within social-ecological systems, and ecosystem services, to illustrate how dualisms simplify human-nature relations and impede understanding of the continuous emergence of plural values. A dialectic positionality within these sub-fields sees humans and non-humans as relational, co-constituted and offering a politically and ethically explicit move towards distinctly anti-colonial futures in avoiding the tendency to reduce 'nature' and 'society' as inputs for economic production. I argue that greater sensitivity to geographical and historical nuance in the transformation of human-nature relations (or socionatures) is needed to more clearly distinguish and val-orize the analytical and methodological contributions of EE scholarship.

Sustainability

Ecological economics has relied too much on priorities and institutional conventions defined by the high energy/throughput era of social democracy. Future research should focus on the political economy of a survival unit (Elias) based upon Livelihood as counterbalance to both State and Market. Drawing on the work of Polanyi, Elias, Gellner and Ong, capitalist modernization is analyzed in terms of the emergence of a society of individuals and the replacement of the survival units of place-bound bound family and community by one in which the State acts in concert with the Market. The operation of welfare systems is shown to depend upon ongoing economic growth and a continual flow of fiscal resources. The politics of this survival unit depends upon high levels of mutual identification and an affective-cognitive ‘we imaginary’. Increasing diversity, a political rejection of nationalism as a basis for politics and limits to economic growth, are likely to present an existential threat to ...

Problems of difficult settlement or solution in the contemporary world cannot be solved by segmented academic formats, market-place interests and mass-media headlines; instead of dealing with “taken for granted issues” (the apparent “bubbles” in the surface), public policies, research and teaching programmes should detect the issues and work with them deep inside the “boiling pot”. The conceptual direction and the legitimacy of development strategies should be examined in view of a comprehensive framework, not surrendering to specialisation and fragmentation, but promoting a multi-level approach. The present crisis breaks through the core of different societal institutions –governance, justice, education – and reflects a disordering of thought, perceptions and values, embedded into the prevailing power-driven ethos and anomic individualism, which diverts human concern into unlimited material consumption and production and business embedded fragmented technologies. Policy discussions and policy making require a comprehensive ecosystemic approach, in view of new paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom embedded into the cultural, social, political and economical institutions (more critical than individual motives and morals). The emphasis on human rights, rather than collective political action, only reiterates individualistic approaches: the fundamental change is economic, social, cultural and political; priority should not be given to growth, but to sustainability, human development, order and stability in civil society. “Social inclusion” only accommodate people to the prevailing order and do not prepare them to change the system; once “included", a new wave of egocentric producers and consumers reproduce the system responsible for their former exclusion. Peace building, rights and duties should be understood as the culmination of a process in which the acceptance of ethical standards derive from a set of morally relevant social experiences throughout life, in which “cultural capital”, personal identity, are not the result of the "privilege" of belonging to groups seeking mastery through ruse, violence and crime, but of new forms of being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world is more than living on it; a process of change demands a comprehensive approach in the socio-cultural learning niches, as new structures emerge and develop critical capacities to operate changes in the system, exploring new ways to understand things in view of new paradigms and meanings. Changing the dominant perspective of powerful political and economic groups imposes a reconfiguration of state control and political authority on a transnational basis, on ethical grounds. For problem solving, dynamic and complex configurations intertwining four dimensions of being-in-the-world, should be considered, as they combine, as donors and recipients, to induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and contribute for change (diagnosis and prognosis): intimate (subject’s cognitive and affective processes), interactive (groups’ mutual support and values), social (political, economical and cultural systems) and biophysical (biological endowment, natural and man-made environments). Public policies, a multitude of agents in different areas (education, culture, health, environment, politics, economics), should commit themselves to an integrated ecosystem approach in order to foster the connections and seal the ruptures between the different dimensions of being-in-the-world in view of their mutual support and dynamic equilibrium.

The bubbles or the boiling pot? An ecosystemic approach to culture, environment and quality of life, 2009

Problems of difficult settlement or solution in the contemporary world cannot be solved by segmented academic formats, market-place interests or mass-media headlines; they require a comprehensive framework for problem solving, encompassing the dynamic and complex configurations intertwining, as donors and recipients, four dimensions of being-in-the-world: intimate, interactive, social and biophysical. The process of change must take into account the singularity of each dimension and their mutual support, as they combine to induce the events (deficits and assets), to cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and contribute for change (potential outputs). Acceptance of ethical norms, peace building, environmental equilibrium requires ethically interpreted and ordered social experiences as the bases of rights-bearing. To counteract the asymmetries of power between individuals and corporations, new paradigms of growth, power, wealth, work and freedom must be embedded into the cultural, political and economic institutions. Instead of dealing with “taken for granted issues” (the apparent “bubbles” in the surface), problems should be detected and worked with deep inside the “boiling pot”, where the real problems emerge. Policy discussions and policymaking requires a comprehensive ecosystemic approach, a definition of desirable goals and new paths to reach them in view of the transition to an ecosystemic model of culture. Instead of taking current prospects for granted and projecting them into the future, a definition of desirable goals and new paths to reach them is posited for planning and evaluation of public policies, research and teaching programmes.

Declève M., Salembier C., 2020, " Third-places of social economy and the relationship work-habitat ", in Bernard Declève, Geoffrey Grulois, Roselyne de Lestrange, Andrea Bortolotti, Corentin Sanchez Trenado (Eds), Brussels, Metrolab Series, #2, pp. 33-41, 2020

Karl Polanyi distinguished capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of provisioning. Following Polanyi, pre-capitalist provisioning carries the meaning of the ‘objective-material’ (the dependence of men from others and nature in provisioning) whereas capitalist provisioning goes back to a formal logic of provisioning characterised by the rational choice between different possible uses (Polanyi 1979). In recent years, economic sociology was concerned with discovering social logic in capitalist societies. Convention theory first distinguished between six patterns of social action (Boltanski/Thévenot 1991), whereby Boltanski and Chiapello (2003) later diagnosed a dominance of justifications referring to market logic, which is now again contested due to the hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism and the apparent crisis’ of capitalist forms of formal logic provisioning. In this contribution I discuss whether in today’s societies there are approaches to establish institutions that tend to replace market institutions in the sense of capitalist formal logic of provisioning by modes of provisioning focussing on the ‘objective-material’ meaning. Which justifications tend to overrule market based justifications? Here, I focus on concepts emerging from the degrowth movement because of the need for an ecological, social and economic transformation (Ötsch 2014, 2016a, 2016b). Whereas Eric Olin Wright discusses strategies for transformation (reform, interstitial transformation, revolution), and whereas further authors focus on the material transformation of the economic system, in this contribution, I focus on qualitative justifications and conventions aiming to overcome capitalist institutions by replacing its dominant logic. I assume that within today’s movements there are diverging justifications that may be analysed in more differentiated categories than in Boltanski/Thévenot cité of civil society, using Polanyis categories of provisioning as point of reference. I compare different approaches from mayor compilations on degrowth (Alisa et al. 2014; Brand et al. 2012; Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften 2015; Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie 2016) and distillate six key notions of movements that identify contrasting drivers of change, namely buen vivir, the commons, anti-utilitarism, conviviality and autonomy, sufficiency, radical ecological democracy and criticism of capitalism. I discuss whether the movements’ justifications are linked to conventions and whether they have the capacity to move society towards ‘objective-material’ ways of provisioning. I conclude that most movements have characteristics of convention and appealing justifications that may contribute to shift the landscape of provisioning if these elements are combined in a complementary way. However, there are strong counter forces that may use contradictions within movements and indeterminacy to split movements and misuse and reinterpret justifications.

Radical Anthropology, 2009

'People differ not only in their culture but also in their nature, or rather, in the way they construct relations between humans and non-humans.' (Latour 2009: 2) LOSS We hear a lot these days about loss. In April 2009, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that banks, insurance instruments and pension funds have ‘lost’ some US $4.1 trillion from the global economy. The amounts lost to taxpayers via government removal of the toxic assets littering the financial sector are so huge as to be almost meaningless. According to the IMF, UK taxpayers have already lost over £1.2 trillion to Britain’s financial sector, while in North America the Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) stated recently that potential government/taxpayer assistance could total $23.7 trillion. Meanwhile, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) asserts that the wildlife crisis actually is worse than the economic crisis, with almost 900 species lost already in an analysis of some 45,000, and no fewer than 16,928 of these currently threatened with extinction. Habitat loss to ‘development’ is a major cause of these extinctions. Greenpeace reports of the Brazilian Amazon that “one acre [is] lost every 8 seconds”, the hamburger-cattle sector identified here as the major driver of clearfelling in this landscape. ...

Science & Technology Studies, 2019

In a recent essay Michael Hardt gives voice to a widespread discontent with the left-academic project of critique, stemming from its failure to deliver on its emancipatory promises. Scholarship, in geography and many other social science disciplines is dominated by a pre-occupation with charting the intricate connections between neoliberal governance and an expansive capitalism. As Hardt and many others have observed, the process of critical exposure fails to incite a political response from broader publics. As an alternative to the failed politics of critique, Hardt — inspired by Foucault's engagement with the cynics—argues for a practice of militant biopolitics—an autonomous mode of reflecting, thinking and acting together that eschews expert knowledge. In this paper I argue that the pioneering work of Gibson-Graham and scholars inspired by their work can be seen as a form of militant biopolitics. Collaborative and participatory forms of research and working with others, become the basis for engaging with and transforming economies and human interactions with ecologies. Beyond generating critical awareness, this scholarship aims at producing a post-capitalist politics. Dans un article récent, Michael Hardt donne la parole à un mécontentement avec le projet académique de la gauche, les critiques émanant de son incapacité à tenir ses promesses d'émancipation. Les études en géographie et bien d'autres disciplines des sciences sociales est dominé par une pré-occupation avec la compréhension des liens complexes entre la gouvernance néolibérale et un capitalisme expansive. Comme Hardt et bien d'autres l'ont observé, le processus d'exposition critique ne parvient pas à inciter une réponse politique a al part des publics plus larges. Comme une alternative à la politique de la critique, Hardt - inspirés par l'engagement de Foucault avec les cyniques - plaide pour une pratique de la biopolitique militant. Il s'agit d'un mode autonome de réfléchir, de penser et d'agir ensemble qui évite le savoir des experts. Dans cet article, je soutiens que le travail de Gibson-Graham et des chercheurs inspirés par leur travail peut être vu comme une forme de biopolitique militants. La recherche collaborative / participative et de travailler avec d'autres, deviennent la base pour s'engager avec et la transformation des économies et les interactions humaines avec l'écologie. En plus d'aider la sensibilisation des économies alternatives, ce travail vise à produire une politique post-capitalistes. Michael Hardt en un reciente ensayo da voz a un descontento generalizado con el proyecto de crítica de la izquierda-académica, derivado de su incapacidad para cumplir con sus promesas emancipadoras. La investigación, en geografía y muchas otras disciplinas de las ciencias sociales es dominada por una pre-ocupación con cartografiar las conexiones intrincadas entre la gobernanza neoliberal y un capitalismo expansivo. Como Hardt y muchos otros han observado, el proceso de exposición crítica falla al incitar una respuesta política de públicos más amplios. Como una alternativa a las fallidas políticas de crítica, Hardt, inspirado por el compromiso de Foucault con los cínicos, argumenta a favor de una práctica de biopolítica militante – un modo autónomo de reflexionar, pensar y actuar juntos que evite el conocimiento experto. En este artículo argumento que el trabajo pionero de Gibson-Graham y académicos inspirados por su trabajo pueden ser vistos como una forma de biopolítica militante. Formas colaborativas y participativas de investigación y trabajo con otros, se vuelven la base para comprometerse con y transformar economías e interacciones humanas con ecologías. Más allá de generar consciencia crítica, esta investigación busca producir una política post-capitalista.