Jeff Shantz

Radical Ecology and Social Myth: the Difficult Constitution of Counter-hegemonic Politics Jeff Shantz

Radical ecology has emerged as a potential point for linkage, or nodal point, of a wide plurality of anti-systemic struggles. Many have long expected that the "nature-society" question will provide the most likely focus for a coalescence of new social movements into a broadened counter-hegemonic movement. However, one problem persists. Ecology as nodal point of solidarity has been marked by conflict. Examining ecology exposes a rather troubled mythopoetic, for which even a tentative fixing of radicalizing struggles has proved difficult. Nature can be articulated to widely ranging interpretations and discourses and can be deployed for vastly different purposes. This provides for the strength of nature as a realm of freedom but paradoxically leaves it open to discourses of unfreedom. This book adapts Georges Sorel's theory of social myths to examine radical ecology as a point of convergence for social movements. In doing so it makes an important contribution to understandings of environmentalism and social movements more broadly. An innovative work it will be of great interest for students of social theory and politics as well as anyone involved in environmental activism.