ABSTRACT
The second chapter expands on the achievements and constraints of environmental statehood and on the formation of transitory state-fixes, which contain agencies, norms and discourses articulated according to concrete socioecological circumstances. In a capitalist society, environmental statehood is expected to deal with environmental problems but also leave the asymmetry of private property and accumulation opportunities unaffected. This typical ‘irrational rationality’ of environmental statehood has close parallels with the elements of Western modernity and its dichotomic separation of society from socionature. Against such dichotomous thinking, the interconnections between state, society and socionature are described as a perpetual, and highly politicised, trialectics.
