ABSTRACT
The theory of post-ecologist politics is a theoretical model for the interpretation of contemporary eco-politics that has to compete with other such models. Post-ecologist thinking may help to reveal the unquestioned assumptions which provided the basis of ecologist thinking, but like any theoretical model it necessarily makes its own assumptions which are no less speculative than those of ecologism. The post-ecologist approach may hence be criticised from a range of different – including ecologist – perspectives. Before I move on to providing a post-ecologist interpretation of how contemporary societies practically cope with the decline of the ecologist paradigm and the advance of non-ecologist patterns of thinking and policy making (see Chapter 10), it therefore seems appropriate to try and anticipate some objections ecologists may want to raise against the post-ecologist model. A good indication of the criticism the theory of post-ecologism will have to confront may be obtained from the eco-sociological criticism levelled against Luhmann’s social theory on which the thinking of post-ecologism strongly relies. At least in his own country the enormous innovative potential of Luhmann’s theory and its impressive diagnostic capacities have been widely acknowledged. Jürgen Habermas believes Luhmann’s theory to be ‘second to none today 1 when it comes to its power of conceptualisation, its theoretical imaginativeness and its capacity for processing information’ (Habermas 1987b: 354). In the German original of Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk , Ulrich Beck, who is otherwise extremely critical of Luhmann’s approach (e.g. Beck 1997a: 24ff.) concedes that his ‘insights into the systemic self-blockade of a preventive approach towards ecological threats are enlightening and realistic’ (Beck 1988: 169). 2 However, in the sociological literature critical views and serious reservations about Luhmann’s theory have always outweighed the positive appreciations.
