10. New Society: Green Politics

This chapter considers a category of green radicalism that focuses on green politics. Green radicalism is about political change targeted at social structures and institutions as well as consciousness change. This more overtly political emphasis is advanced by a number of movements and schools of thought whose degree of radicalism varies from eco-anarchists to ‘realo’ greens. The chapter begins with a discussion of different types of green politics, including green parties, social ecology, transition towns and new materialism, red and green, environmental justice, and environmentalism of the global poor. It also considers the antiglobalization movement, global justice, the Occupy Movement, and radical summits, as well as the discourse analysis of green politics. Finally, it looks at green politics in practice and emphasizes the uncertainty about the best way to practice green politics in the face of a seemingly recalcitrant and secure liberal capitalist political economy.

Making Complexity Your Friend: Reframing Social Theory for the Anthropocene

This article uses the dilemma of climate change as an entry point to explore the utility of a complexity framework for a more comprehensive social science of environmental sustainability. A theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS) is especially appropriate for the Anthropocene, a newly proposed geological period defined around humanity’s impact on the biosphere. Aspects of complexity theory have been entering public consciousness through popular accounts of climate “tipping points” and “emergent” change—the risk that Earth’s climate could shift into a new pattern in a relatively short time period. Social structures, including capitalism, are complex systems, as are social movements. The paper reviews CAS research with special attention to applications in social ecology. It discusses two case studies of exemplary research on human management of environmental resources and one case study of the antiglobalization movement, all conceived within a complexity framework. The central argument is that complexity thinking will enhance social studies of sustainability and efforts to create a more resilient economy and biosphere.

On the Proletarian Identity of “A Woman Dressed as an Enormous Beetle”

A set of politics that uses rhetoric, imagery, music, and performance to promote interests that are distinctively and explicitly identified with the working class, Burgmann productively suggests, might revitalize the labor movement. Yet the effort to apply lessons from “identity politics” to “class politics” reproduces two problems in contemporary radicalism. First, by reducing the movements of ethno-racial minorities, women, and gays and lesbians to “identity politics” Burgmann underestimates those movements' claims to civil rights, human rights, socioeconomic improvement, and their general democratic nature. Second, the use of “class” to explain the antiglobalization movement is anachronistic and inadequate to the task of understanding radical politics today.