Just got the fourth edition of this book by Andrew Dobson. He is a Green Party member and an academic at Keele University, its a great statement of green political ideas, flags up many important and interesting debates.
His central argument is that green politics is an ideology like socialism or conservativism and distinguishes it from environmentalism.
I will try and find time to comment on it chapter by chapter over coming weeks.
I would highly recommend you read it, a lot of greens need to think more deeply about their politics.
I am alarmed that green politics to some is just a vague concern with the environment rather than something deeper, stronger, wider.
4 comments:
There are many different shades of ideologies described as Green...
Deep Ecology
Social Ecology
Eco-Socialism
Schumacher Economics
Eco-fascism
Eco-feminism
Eco-anarchism
Primitivism
Veganism
Neo-Paganism
etc.
Although most people who would consider voting on the basis of a party's attitudes towards green issues aren't bothered about ideology in the slightest.
Hi Peter,
have a look at the book, there are all sorts of tricky debates that need to be delt with if are to get to a sustainable society.
Andrew Dobson flags up some of the most important
By the way I think veganism is a diet not a discourse.
best wishes,
Derek
My take on Green political philosophy has developed into trying to integrate socialism, liberalism, conservatism and environmentalism. There's some truth in each, but they reify a particular organising principle at the expense of others. Whilst Labour and the Tories compete to compromise between these ideologies, until they're left with no ideology at all, Greens try the much harder task of radical, integral thinking. I wrote about this a little last August, though I disagree with some of that now.
Thanks for the book pointer, Derek, I look forward to your commentary!
Derek - you're right that debates about ideology and direction are important, but they're just not that important for me at the moment.
When I was at university, I absorbed everything I could find on this type of subject - Dobson et al.
These days, I'm more interested in examining the shades of grey inbetween - motives, incentives, how outcomes are arrived at, - rather than what the outcomes should be.
We'll have to agree to disagree on whether veganism can be a discourse, as well as a diet.
It has similarities with primitivism: Primitivism holds that the rot started when humans started using tools and language.
Veganism pinpoints the fall of man a little further back, somewhere around the point we stopped photosynthesising ;)
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