Democracy and Green Political Thought - Sustainabilty, Rights and Citizenship
Edited by Brian Doherty and Marius de Geus, Routledge, London (1996) ISBN 0 415 14412 4
Though often stimulating and critical, this book ultimately stops short of fulfilling its potential as a serious study of contemporary problems in ecology and democracy. The guest writers are a vegetable stew of ecodemia, and while they valiantly struggle with the chosen themes, there is a slightly dull tone to the whole debate, as if class, race and gender issues had been withdrawn, leaving the whole dish flavourless. In short, power is a subject left untouched. This is radical liberalism at its most well conceived but disappointing. This is a rather sweeping analysis, so perhaps it would be productive to look at each of the more interesting chapters individually. Michael Kenny - Paradoxes of Community Challenging green assumptions about the nature, desirability and paths to 'community' Michael Kenny is both provokative and insightful, focusing on one of the key issues to eco-anarchists - the potential and limitations of the concept and realities of 'community'. On 'community' as a subject of consensus, Kenny argues: 'Its repeated usage in some green circles encourages the belief that power relationships can be transcended once humans are operating harmoniously; the idea that networks of power operate throughout society, at all levels of community life, remains alien to many greens, though not because they possess a coherent alternative theory...indeed the absence of a distinctively ecological theory of power may constitute one of the central weaknesses of political ecology.' (p.23) This highlights one of the central weaknesses of this book, the reference to 'greens' as a generic and encompassing term has becme meaningless. Social Ecology, for example is clearly a political ecology which has as its centre precisely what Kenny argues for - a distinctively ecological theory of power.
Other related reading:
Brian Doherty - Green parties, Nonviolence and Political Obligation
John Barry - Sustainability, Political Judgement and Citizenship: Connecting Green Politics and Democracy
Andrew Dobson - Democratising Green Theory: Preconditions and Principles
Peter Christoff - Ecological Citizens and Ecologically Guided Democracy
Wouter Achterberg - Sustainability, Community and Democracy
Marius deGeus - The Ecological Restructuring of the State
