The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds. We start by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. We then focus on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial processbased on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political strugglesit has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation. Collective autonomy and the politics of self-limitation are key elements of societal boundaries and are linked to important proposals and pluriverse experiences to integrate well-being and boundaries. The role of the state and propositions for radical alternative approaches to well-being have particular importance. We conclude with reflections on social freedom, defined as the right not to live at others' expense. Toward the aim of defining boundaries through transdisciplinary and democratic processes, we seek to open a dialogue on these issues.
Energy, food, or mobility can be conceptualized as provisioning systems which are decisive to sustainability transformations in how they shape resource use and because of emissions resulting from them. To curb environmental pressures and improve societal well-being, fundamental changes to existing provisioning systems are necessary. In this article, we propose that provisioning systems be conceptualized as featuring integrated socio-metabolic and political-economic dimensions. In socio-metabolic terms, material stocks—buildings, infrastructures, and machines, for example—are key components of provisioning systems and transform flows of energy and materials into goods and services. In political-economic terms, provisioning systems are formed by actors, institutions, and capital. We loosely identify and closely analyze, from socio-metabolic and political-economic perspectives, five phases along which provisioning systems are shaped and in which specific opportunities for interventions exist. Relying mainly on examples from the fossil-fueled electricity system, we argue that an integrated conceptualization of provisioning systems can advance understanding of these systems in two essential ways: by (1) facilitating a more encompassing perspective on current forms of provisioning as relying on capitalist regulation and on material stocks and flows and by (2) embedding provisioning systems within their historical context, making it possible to conceive of more sustainable and just forms of provisioning under (radically) altered conditions.
Résumé
L’article envisage la citoyenneté dans le cadre des mutations actuelles des procès d’institutionnalisation économique, politique etculturel et de la transformation du sujet politique. Nous nous intéressons à l’émergence du phénomène d’incorporation de la citoyennetéen tant qu’il participe à la redéfinition du rapport de l’acteur à la communauté politique. L’analyse des transformationsactuelles de la citoyenneté est ainsi renvoyée à celle des mutations des rapports entre le droit et la démocratie, le législatif et lejudiciaire, le citoyen et la nation. Après avoir considéré la modernité du point de vue du rapport privilégié qu’elle instaure entrela citoyenneté et la nation et étudié les diverses dimensions du procès d’institutionnalisation politique de la société moderne, nousanalysons systématiquement les transformations des formes de l’État et de la citoyenneté. Nous analysons de manière systématiqueles mutations de l’institutionnalisation économique et culturelle en portant une attention particulière au double phénomène del’autonomisation de la corporation transnationale et de l’incorporation de la citoyenneté culturelle.
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