New materialism and runaway capitalism: a critical assessment

The “return to materiality” is a burgeoning phenomenon in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. New materialists make a case against cultural constructionism and for a nondualist account of the world as comprised of fluid, ever-changing entities. This would allegedly offer grounds for an embodied, post-humanist emancipatory politics. The article problematizes such claim. By relying on techno-scientific accounts of materiality, new materialism embroils with the analytics of truth, neglecting how nondualist ontologies underpin today intensifying forms of domination over humans and nonhumans. A “critical” humanism is needed, which refrains from ambivalent post-humanist narratives without reverting to dualist thinking. To this purpose Heidegger offers valuable insights.El “regreso a la materialidad” es un fenómeno floreciente en la filosofía, las ciencias sociales y las humanidades. Los nuevos materialistas desarrollan argumentos en contra del construccionismo cultural y a favor de un relato no dualista del mundo, compuesto de entidades fluidas y en constante cambio. Esto presuntamente ofrecería fundamentos para una política emancipatoria de carácter post-humanista. El artículo problematiza tal afirmación. Al confiar en los relatos tecnocientíficos de la materialidad, el nuevo materialismo se ha embrollado con la analítica de la verdad, descuidando cómo las ontologías no dualistas sustentan hoy formas intensificadoras de dominación sobre los humanos y los no humanos. Se necesita un humanismo “crítico”, que se abstenga de las narrativas ambivalentes post-humanistas sin volver al pensamiento dualista. Con este propósito, Heidegger ofrece ideas valiosas

Responsibility and ultimate ends in the age of the unforeseeable: On the current relevance of Max Weber’s political ethics

Ethic of responsibility and ethic of ultimate ends are most discussed Weberian concepts. The article reflects on their heuristic value in the present. A common interpretation claims that, in a rationalized society, the ethic of responsibility supplants or integrates the ethic of ultimate ends. The two ethics, however, fundamentally differ according to their relationship with the unforeseeable. Moreover, contrary to the idea of a relentless rationalization of society, the unforeseeable is today gaining relevance, even ceasing to be regarded as a problem. As a result, the ethic of ultimate ends expands its scope. The article dwells on major implications of this. The enduring relevance of Weber’s conceptualization, it is concluded, lies in its independence from the historical conditions in which it was formulated

Embroiling nature and history: The philosophy of praxis and the challenges of the present

Building on a book by Andrew Feenberg, the article discusses the salient features of the 'philosophy of praxis' and classic Critical Theory, also with reference to current trends in social theory and technoscience

Reassessing sustainability. An introduction

Debates over sustainable development highlight its inherently contentious character. Not only its three “pillars” (economic, ecologic and social) have enjoyed a varied scientific and policy success, the social dimension of sustainability remaining the weakest and most controversial, but there are different strategies as regards the way to give operational meaning to the concept. Some follow a pragmatic approach, where sustainability plays a boundary role thanks precisely to its ambiguities. Others choose a specific outlook, according to a preference for “stronger” or “weaker” interpretations of the role of technology. Still others elaborate on the political import of the notion, its use for political purposes and within social struggles. Hardly insignificant from this viewpoint is the connection between the emergence and spread of the sustainability discourse and the rise of neoliberalism. A reassessment of the issue in the light of ongoing social and environmental changes is mandatory. The articles included in this issues offer an updated discussion of major theoretical and empirical aspects, from biofuels to green urban management, from sustainable tourism to climate change policies, devoting particular attention to the strengths and weaknesses of current prevailing “reformist” approaches. Sustainability remains a wicked problem, the performative role of which in inducing social transformation calls for a renewed sociological inquiry

Reflexive modernization and beyond : knowledge and value in the politics of environment and technology

The relationship between knowledge and values, experts and lay people, represents a major issue of the debate involving environment and technology. There is a growing awareness that the connection between value commitments and technical solutions, scientific expertise and lay competence, is much more entangled than once was believed. The article deals with this issue by analysing Robert Dahl's ‘minipopulus’ and Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz's ‘extended peer communities’ arguments. They are subsequently inserted into the sociological debate which is, at present, considerably influenced by the reflexive modernization framework. As a result, Ulrich Beck's and Anthony Giddens' theories appear as one of four ideal-typical approaches to the social construction of the issues that can be outlined, according to the priority assigned to knowledge versus power and nature versus society. The idea of an ‘extended peer review’ of problems and solutions is remarkably close to the deliberative democracy concept. However, the high level of uncertainty characterizing major environmental and technological questions suggests that a ‘strong’ version of deliberative democracy, such as the Discourse Ethics proposed by Habermas, is untenable in its search for a universal, rational consensus on the normative grounds of action. Thus it is necessary to develop a ‘weak’ interpretation of the extended peer review, exploring the possibility of fair and stable agreements on bounded, practical solutions to bounded, practical problems

Intensifying embroilments: Technosciences, imaginaries and publics

A common thread in the contributions to this special issue can be found in the Foucauldian notion of intensification. Technoscientific imaginaries and publics have long been embroiled; yet, elements of novelty in their relationship can be detected in the ambivalence of the overcoming of traditional purification work; the expanding production of 'prototypical' truths; the uncertain threshold between publics of enquirers, witnesses and lookouts; and the growing indistinction of the everyday and the sublime, of trivial and non-trivial futures. The intensification of old patterns and recent trends determines a critical moment in a literal sense of the word: novel potentialities for a democratic governance of technosciences are opening up, but novel dominative opportunities are disclosing as well

New materialism and runaway capitalism: a critical assessment

The “return to materiality” is a burgeoning phenomenon in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. New materialists make a case against cultural constructionism and for a nondualist account of the world as comprised of fluid, ever-changing entities. This would allegedly offer grounds for an embodied, post-humanist emancipatory politics. The article problematizes such claim. By relying on techno-scientific accounts of materiality, new materialism embroils with the analytics of truth, neglecting how nondualist ontologies underpin today intensifying forms of domination over humans and nonhumans. A “critical” humanism is needed, which refrains from ambivalent post-humanist narratives without reverting to dualist thinking. To this purpose Heidegger offers valuable insights

Innocent, guilty or reluctant midwife? On the reciprocal relevance of STS and post-truth

The rise of post-truth has called into question STS, mostly in the defendant’s role. A critique from outside, such as Lee McIntyre’s, provides a debatable account of science deconstruction and its appropriation by “right-wing postmodernism”. Within STS, post-truth has revamped discussions on the implications of the symmetry principle, or elicited a reiteration of arguments for more inclusive generation of public facts. Steve Fuller stands out as a dissonant, more intriguing voice. He praises post-truth for triggering and expressing an emancipatory thrust against elites and an institutional rearrangement of science, and blames STS for being too shy with its midwifing role. However, he also underestimates the import of ongoing changes. The struggle over truth has shifted to an ontological level, raising doubts on optimistic views. If STS is relevant to post-truth, the vice versa also applies. Post-truth indicates that STS has to equip itself for a sociotechnical world ever-more distant from the one in which it has developed

Introduzione

The relationship between environment and social theory is addressed by outlining the emergence of environmental sociology and its main theoretical perspectives, and by highlighting the latter’s connections with environmental mobilizations and the evolution of the character and awareness of, and societal replies to, ecological problems and threats. The contributions included in the journal issue provide a cross-section of an ongoing theoretical elaboration. They can be grouped in four themes: topicality of the theoretical heritage of the discipline; space and energy as key variables of the society-planet relationship; cross-fertilizations between natural and social sciences; emerging challenges vis-à-vis technoscience advancement and changing views of human knowledge and world ontology

Territorio e movimenti sociali. Continuità, innovazione o integrazione?

A growing number of today’s conflicts are “local”, in the sense of having as their premise and target a given place, in its peculiar features, boundaries and connections with the “outside”. Yet are we in front of something really new, or do these conflicts belong to a long-established lineage of social mobilizations? The article begins with comparing new protests with those emerging in the 1970s, finding significant similarities (as regards for example the weak organizational structure, the single issue orientation, the diffidence for institutional politics and the value assigned to the concrete, lived experience) but also significant differences, both quantitative (for example in respect to the relevance of counter-expertise and of individual autonomy against delegation) and qualitative (for example about the declining relevance of the left/right cleavage and the reemergence of the centre/periphery and urban/rural ones, or about the ethicization of individual engagement). It is argued that, to properly understand new local mobilizations, one has to consider the change in the forms of government corresponding to the advent of “governance” and, behind it, of the neoliberal governmental rationality (or “governmentality”); this with special reference to the impacts of new processes of accumulation on territories and local governments, and to the surfacing of lines of fracture not amenable to the traditional cleavages but rather to the risks and opportunities of globalization. The role of environmental justice, science and ethics in new movements is discussed, showing that the stakes involved are ultimately set by the relationship between assimilation to the individual and collective anthropology implied in the neoliberalization of society and innovative impulses embedded in the practices and the production of sociality that animate social mobilizations