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The book provides for a historical-materialist understanding of the multiple crises of capitalism, focusing on the ecological crisis and its interaction with other crisis phenomena (financial crisis, crisis of democracy, economic crisis). Drawing on political ecology, Gramscian theory of hegemony, critical state theory and the regulation approach, it introduces the concept of an imperial mode of living in order to better understand the everyday practices and perceptions as well as the social relations of forces and institutional constellations that facilitate environmentally destructive patterns of production and consumption. Furthermore, it develops a historical-materialist critique of the green economy concept that has been propagated in recent years as a solution not only for the ecological but also for the economic crisis. Finally, the book proposes a democratisation of societal nature relations as a way out of the crisis that requires overcoming capitalist property relations and the exclusive forms of controlling nature guaranteed by them.
The book provides for a historical-materialist understanding of the multiple crises of capitalism, focusing on the ecological crisis and its interaction with other crisis phenomena (financial crisis, crisis of democracy, economic crisis). Drawing on political ecology, Gramscian theory of hegemony, critical state theory and the regulation approach, it introduces the concept of an imperial mode of living in order to better understand the everyday practices and perceptions as well as the social relations of forces and institutional constellations that facilitate environmentally destructive patterns of production and consumption. Furthermore, it develops a historical-materialist critique of the green economy concept that has been propagated in recent years as a solution not only for the ecological but also for the economic crisis. Finally, the book proposes a democratisation of societal nature relations as a way out of the crisis that requires overcoming capitalist property relations and the exclusive forms of controlling nature guaranteed by them.
Chapter 1: Theorizing the Imperial Mode of Living: An
Introduction
Chapter 2: The Crisis of Global Environmental Politics and the
Imperial Mode of Living
Chapter 3: Crisis and Continuity of Capitalist Societal Nature
Relations
Chapter 4: Strategies of a Green Economy, Contours of a Green
Capitalism
Chapter 5: The Valorization and Financialization of Nature as
Crisis Strategy
Chapter 6: Social-Ecological Transformation as the Horizon of a
Practical Critique of the Imperial Mode of Living
Chapter 7: Towards the Democratization of Societal Nature
Relations
Chapter 8: Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living: Political and
Strategic Implications
References
Index
Ulrich Brand is Professor of International Politics at the
University of Vienna.
Markus Wissen is Professor of Social Science at the Berlin School
of Economics & Law.
How and why does capitalism ceaselessly exploit the biophysical
world yet remain resilient in the face of its manifest failures?
Through their concept of the 'imperial mode of living' the authors
show how the destructive forces of capitalism become,
paradoxically, opportunities not only for political opposition
but for capitalism itself. A battery of organisation, geographical
and ideological manoeuvres allow the ecological limits to
capitalism to be continuously overcome. Leveraging off these limits
is the necessary work of capitalism's many opponents.
*Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of
Manchester*
Brand and Wissen’s remarkable synthesis of political sociology and
political ecology tells how a hegemonic mode of consumption
regulates society-nature relations under a newly emergent
'internationalised state’. If you want to know why global
environmental crisis stems from 'the imperial way of living'; why
financialization and the green economy stops its effective
management; and why participatory socio-ecological transformation
is urgent, then this is your book.
*Ariel Salleh, Political Economy, University of Sydney, author of
Ecofeminism as Politics*
Brand and Wissen offer an innovative perspective on the limits of
capitalist nature. The book is an important addition to the
literature on the eco-social transformation of contemporary
capitalism. Scholars, students and activists should read it.
*Max Koch, Professor in Social Policy, Lund University*
This book has breakthrough appeal. It cuts through a thick layer of
ideology around the crises of the societal relationships with
nature in an age of climate change. Its innovative and precise core
concept of 'the imperial mode of living' reveals the chief
contradictions of daily life in neoliberalism and is a crucial
contribution to current debates on the Capitalocene.
*Roger Keil, Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies,
York University*
Everybody who wants to know why and how contemporary capitalist
societies are so unsustainable, why a Great Transformation is such
a big challenge, but also which alternative strategies do already
exist, should read this book. It provides a powerful explanation as
to why the current mode of production and living is socially
unjust, ecologically disastrous and a major obstacle for an
attractive future.
*Christoph Görg, Professor of Environmental Governance, Helmholtz
Centre for Environmental Research*
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