Selling Nature, Buying Green. Two Neoliberal Roads to Environmental De-Politicisation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36253/rifp-3943Keywords:
environmental depoliticisation, environmental neoliberalism, neoliberal activismAbstract
While acknowledging the declining trajectory of the neoliberal order, this article explores de-politicising tendencies that keep environmental debates and practices deeply embedded in its logic. It focuses on how some central neoliberal patterns and practices remain alive and well, including their ability to cast a shadow over class struggles. In particular, the article examines two lines: the delegation of environmental protection to processes of privatisation, commodification, and marketisation (neoliberal conservation), which reduce conservation to technical decisions that appear politically neutral yet inherently involve ethical and political choices; and the reduction of environmental concern to individual positions and behaviours (neoliberal activism), entrenched in market dynamics and exemplifying a hyperpolitical era. These two heterogeneous tendencies withdraw environmental decisions from collective political contestation – the former by handing them over to markets and institutions, the latter by dissolving them into individual conduct. The article concludes that this twofold de-politicisation – together with the emerging forms of hyperpoliticised yet individualised engagement – exposes the limits of our modern and post-modern political categories and calls for new terms and frameworks through which to think the environmental question.
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