Green Utopianism

Perspectives, Politics and Micro-Practices

Karin Bradley, Johan Hedrén, Karin Bradley, Johan Hedrén

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415333351
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135078416
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Utopian thought and experimental approaches to societal organization have been rare in the last decades of planning and politics. Instead, there is a widespread belief in ecological modernization, that sustainable societies can be created within the frame of the current global capitalist world order by taking small steps such as eco-labeling, urban densification, and recycling. However, in the context of the current crisis in which resource depletion, climate change, uneven development, and economic instability are seen as interlinked, this belief is increasingly being questioned and alternative developmental paths sought. This collection demonstrates how utopian thought can be used in a contemporary context, as critique and in exploring desired futures. The book includes theoretical perspectives on changing global socio-environmental relationships and political struggles for alternative development paths, and analyzes micro-level practices in co-housing, alternative energy provision, use of green space, transportation, co-production of urban space, peer-to-peer production and consumption, and alternative economies. It contributes research perspectives on contemporary green utopian practices and strategies, combining theoretical and empirical analyses to spark discussions of possible futures.

1 Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures

Karin Bradley and Johan Hedrén

1. CRISES: HARBINGERS OF CHANGE?

In recent years, daily papers in the global North have reported on global warming, recurrent social uprisings in cities, financial crises, and the fragility of the debt-based economy. However, interpretations of these events differ. On the one hand, some argue that these problems can be fixed with better economic instruments and new technology. “Sustainable societies” can be created within the frames of the current through ecolabeling, pricing mechanisms, recycling, urban densification, etc. On the other hand, there are reasons to argue that the financial crisis of 2008, social uprisings since 2011, and recurrent floods and droughts in fact represent cracks in the “capi-talocentric” regime: They are signs that the nexus of liberal capitalism and the Anglo-European domination of “other” genders, peoples, and species is entering its decline. According to this perspective, new technologies, smarter pricing, austerity measures, and sustainability policies tend to treat the symptoms rather than treating their cause. For centuries, the Anglo-European economies have grown, technological innovation has increased productivity, and overall consumption and purchasing power have increased. However, this wealth and “progress” have been built on the extraction of fossil fuels, nonrenewable resources, and global exploitation of resources and people (Hornborg, 2011). As the Worldwatch Institute (2012) has pointed out in its State of the World report, we are approaching the end of the cheap-oil era and of continuous economic growth and, for the rich nations of the world, this means a need to develop strategies for prosperity in futures characterized by degrowth. As Richard Heinberg (2007, p. 22) puts it, welcome to “the century of declines.” According to Heinberg, not only are oil resources peaking, but many other natural resources have peaked or will peak in the twenty-first century, including phosphorous, natural gas, fresh water, and rare earth metals. These are resources on which society, as we know it in the global North, is heavily reliant, including for current “green technology.” So what do we do? Will changes in resource supply and demand solve things? As development economist Latouche (2010) points out, lack of growth in a growth-oriented economy is painful and potentially dangerous. Hence, the argument here is that we need a systemic change, a reboot into societal arrangements that do not rely on the extraction of nonrenewable resources or the exploitation of other peoples, species, or territories. We need to rethink and recast the economy, the technical infrastructure, housing, and production and consumption patterns (Worldwatch Institute, 2012). Historically, societal arrangements such as tribalism, feudalism, and mercantilism have changed and transformed and new regimes have evolved. It is therefore likely that global capitalism will also evolve into something else. But into what? How? When? And at the expense of what? Desirable for whom? Powered by whom?

Within the contemporary socioenvironmental movements inspired by concepts such as degrowth, transition, the commons, relocalization, Occupy, “Buen Vivir,” and environmental justice, one finds similar forms of societal critique and attempts to articulate and practice alternatives. These movements indeed have historical roots in critiques and movements of earlier decades, such as green waves, ecofeminism, deep ecology, globalization-from-below, ecological economics, political ecology, social ecology, bioregionalism, and ecosocialism. However, in the wake of the current “triple crises” and the nonarrival of the promised “green growth,” these voices and movements are gaining strength. For new societal arrangements to materialize, new conceptions are needed—dreams, imaginaries, and experiments that are articulated and make the impossible seem possible. However, there is not only a need to dream of other futures, but, in the context of the recent economic crisis, there are also outright basic needs to immediately practice alternatives, to stimulate the utopian impulse telling us that change is both possible and necessary, and to focus the analytical lenses through which current society can be scrutinized. Arguments are mounting that Fukuyama and Thatcher were wrong in their insistent predictions: There are indeed alternatives. And history is beginning, again.

With this book, we would like to demonstrate that in-depth socioecological transition is possible—not only possible but in fact happening. We hope to demonstrate how utopian thought can be applied in a contemporary context, as critique and in imagining and practicing desired futures. The book includes perspectives on the changing of global socioenvironmental relationships, political struggles for alternative development paths, as well as analyses of microlevel practices in the form of cohousing, alternative energy provision, use of green space, transport arrangements, the coproduction of urban spaces, peer-to-peer production and consumption, and alternative economies. Most of the chapters are written by authors from Northern or Central Europe, and the cited cases and practices are drawn from France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States and Australia. Some of the chapters are more theoretical while others are more empirically oriented. However, all deal with utopian thought or radical societal change in one or another way. Central questions in the book are: What forms of utopian thought, critique, and practice have evolved in recent years? How can utopianism, in its various guises, be understood? Utopian or alternative, in what sense, and in relation to what? To what extent and how can these critiques and alternative practices affect political endeavors and institutional change? Who or what are drivers of change?

As academics we are trained in critiquing what exists, pointing out the flaws, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies in the everyday practices of professionals, politicians, and citizens. There is abundant scholarly critique of mainstream sustainability politics and practices, watered-down ecological modernization regimes, and “best practice” sustainability guides (Hajer, 1995; Krueger & Gibbs, 2007; Parr, 2009). There is also a growing body of action-oriented literature on the transition to postcarbon or postgrowth societies (Darley, Room, & Rich, 2005; Heinberg & Lerch, 2010; Hopkins, 2012; Murphy, 2008); however, it is characterized more by handbooks for community action rather than by ambitions to problematize and theorize strategies and practices. Our intent in this book is to contribute research perspectives on contemporary green utopian practices and subversive strategies, combining both theoretical and empirical analyses, which together may spark discussions about possible futures. In this book we attempt to explore various perspectives and existing practices that could be alternatives to the ecological modernization paradigm: certainly incomplete, fragmentary, iterative, plural, and at times paradoxical and problematic, but nevertheless sincere attempts at rethinking and recasting society. The perceived “impossibility of the utopian” is not a reason for not trying. As Samuel Beckett (1983) put it, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

In the remainder of this introductory chapter we will first, under the heading “Shades of Green,” situate the book in the spectrum of green politics and practices. Thereafter, under the heading “Utopianism as No-Place and Critique,” we will describe various strands of utopian thought and how we position the book in relation to them. Under the heading “The Purposes of Contemporary Utopianism,” we outline the functions we think contemporary utopianism could have. Finally, under the heading “Transforming Practices and Politics,” we contextualize and describe emerging practices: cohousing, urban commons, coproduction and coplanning, transition culture, alternative economies, and decentralized systems for energy and infrastructure provision. In this introductory chapter we refer to and build upon reasoning and examples from the book’s various chapters, albeit without intending to equally summarize each of them.

2. SHADES OF GREEN: FROM ECOLOGICAL MODERNIZATION TO GREEN UTOPIANISM

The notion of “green” developed over the last few decades is used in various ways—green ideology, green movements, green lifestyles, green politics, etc. Often it is closely connected to environmental concerns, although sometimes also linking environmental and resource issues to broader concerns such as justice between classes, genders, species, and generations—locally and globally.

Not only are there different notions of what is actually meant by “green,” but there is also a contested terrain of competing green diagnoses, comprehensions, problematizations, and prospects for the future. There is certainly no commonly agreed-on green agenda, but rather a green terrain that encompasses a range of both individual and common initiatives aiming at a more or less radical transformation of socioenvironmental relationships.

In parallel to this pluralist evolution of green thought, there is another, distinctly different development. The official politics in many countries in the global North downplay the genuinely political, i.e., issues related to conflicting interests, values, or prospects for the future. Under the rubrics of sustainable development or environmental policies, we find descriptions of the situation and suggested actions in which the comprehensive political concerns are made invisible. The tasks related to environmental protection, natural resource use, and environmental distribution are made to appear as technical or managerial issues to be handled by experts and administrators, in practice subordinated to the overarching goal of economic growth. A concrete example of this depoliticization of environmental issues is raised in Karolina Isaksson’s Chapter 7. She describes planning for sustainable mobility and how this is often framed as a technical concern, in which the transport system is supposed to adjust to any desired lifestyle; there is no questioning of the purpose of increased transport, the ends it serves, and whether the need for transport can be reduced and transformed.

On a general level, this depoliticizing tendency might stem from the difficulties many political parties have had in integrating green concerns into their ideological foundations developed hundreds of years before the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s. This depoliticizing process might also be explained by politically strategic considerations, given that green issues rarely rank high among voters in general elections. Whatever the reason, we can take as a departure point that the incremental, consensual approach typical of environmental policies of many states today can be attributed to a post-political condition in which the underlying assumption is that the liberal socioeconomic world order should be maintained (Swyngedouw, 2007).

This postpolitical condition can also be interpreted in terms of the triumph of ecological modernization, in which environmental problems are transformed into an engine of innovation and growth, dethroning the state to the position of service supporter of green companies (Spaargaren & Mol, 1992). In such a framing, the ecological crisis actually helps uphold the tenets of industrial modernization by stimulating the development of so-called green technology, which in turn is supposed to be the primary driver of an economy geared toward growth. In other words, the ecological problems become neutralized and converted into a stimulus for the utopia of neoliberalism.

The postpolitical condition or various aspects of it have also been analyzed in terms of ideology and ideological mystification (Harvey, 1996; Hedrén, 2002). For example, the internationally celebrated Swedish environmental politics is based on an alleged consensus about an ideal environment which, because of its many and radically different meanings, turns out to be nothing but a “continually shifting signifier” (Soper, 1995, p. 151). This “environment” is the abstract space perfectly controlled by the monitoring and management implemented by the public administration and simultaneously the untouched wilderness bearing witness to origins and purity. It is also the cultural landscape, the fragile, sublime totality, the provider of ecosystem services, a recipient of waste, and an aestheticized icon for ecotourism, all adding to the messy and contradictory substrate on which the ideal harmony and balance between nature and society are supposed to be built. Such symbolic language of harmony, balance, and control hides the many real conflicts over competing values, risks, mobility, welfare, trade relationships, urban structures, spatial designs, etc., mystifying the genuinely political character of the issues at stake and making the environment a perfect companion to the ideology of growth and capitalism. In Chapter 3, Erik Swyngedouw analyzes this postpolitical constellation of green issues in discussing the preconditions for a revitalized democracy.

Since the 1990s, when rising public awareness of the urgent need to resolve environmental problems could be noted in many countries, the dominant green discourse is no longer hegemonically produced solely by governments, parliaments, and public authorities. As this rising public awareness is met by new trends in business and goods production, we also note that advertising and media in general strongly invoke the correctness of what are considered “green” or “ecological” lifestyles. Industry produces enormous amounts of commodities, ranging from clothes signaling a supposedly green lifestyle to luxury products for upper-class consumers, or from ecotourism to the greening of public spaces. The postpolitical framing continuously merges with the framing of a new kind of consumerism, in which green issues are commodified. The focus in this commodified turn of the green discourse is on the picturesque, harmony, intimacy, happiness, mysticism, safety, family relationships, the local, and the private. Global relationships are rarely represented, and the domination of (upper) middle class norms, values, and aesthetics (“ecological design”) is strong, giving rise to aestheticization rather than critical political analysis (Hedrén, 2009). Taken together, this can be viewed as a concretization of what is commonly described as the commodification of nature or green issues (Harvey, 1996; Jameson, 2010), which accentuates the nonpolitical framing already produced by the postpolitical turn in institutionalized politics (Meister & Japp, 2002). In such an era of political resignation, when potential controversies have been transformed into matters of lifestyle, “the utopian spirit remains more necessary than ever” (Jacoby, 1999, p 181).

In addition, international cooperation for sustainable development, led by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, appeals very strongly to management instead of politics. It i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Routledge Studies in Environment, Culture, and Society
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 Utopian Thought in the Making of Green Futures
• Part I The Politics of Science
• Part II Transforming Politics and Planning
• Part III Changing Practices
• Contributors
• Index