Politics and Sustainability: Perspectives from Environmental Political Theory
About the book: This review examines the relationships between politics, sustainability, and development. Following an overview of sustainability thinking across different traditions, the politics of resources and the influence of scarcity narratives on research, policy and practice are explored. This highlights the politics of transformations and the way these play out under combinations of technology-led, market-led, state-led, and citizen-led processes. In particular, this review points to the politics of alliance building and collective action for sustainability and development. Transformations cannot be managed or controlled, but must draw on an unruly politics, involving diverse knowledges and multiple actors. This review highlights how politics are articulated through regimes of truth, rule, and accumulation, and how understanding such political processes has implications for institutional and governance responses. The conclusion reflects on future research priorities and the methodological stance required for an effective response to the political challenges of sustainability and development.
About the author: Steve Vanderheiden received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001, and joined the CU-Boulder faculty in 2007 after six years at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He specializes in normative political theory and environmental politics, and has published on topics ranging from Rousseau鈥檚 social thought to SUVs and democratic theory. His recent Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (Oxford, 2008) won the ISA鈥檚 2009 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, given annually to the best book in international environmental politics. He is also editor of Political Theory and Global Climate Change (MIT, 2008), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on topics in political theory and environmental politics. In addition to graduate seminars in political theory, Vanderheiden teaches the introductory Western Political Thought survey course, Politics & Literature, Liberalism and Its Critics, and Environmental Political Theory.