In light of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, this project synthesizes and advances critiques of the possibility of a sustainable capitalism by adopting an explicit ‘negative’ theory of ideology, understood as ideas that conceal contradictions through the reification and/or legitimation of the existing social order. Prominent climate change policy frameworks – the ‘greening’ of markets (market-corrective measures), technology (alternative energy, energy efficiency, and geoengineering), and growth (the green growth strategy) – are shown to conceal one or both of the two systemic socio-ecological contradictions inherent in the current social formation: (1) a contradiction between capital’s growth-dependence and the latter’s degrading impact on the climate (the ‘capital-climate contradiction’) and (2) a contradiction between the potential of using technological infrastructure that aids in emissions reductions and the institutionalized social relations that obstruct this technical potential (the ‘technical potential-productive relations contradiction’). Attempts to reform the very techniques and institutions that brought about the climate crisis will remain ineffective and reproduce the social order that results in climate change. After proposing a way in which societies might move out of the ideological trappings of green markets, technology, and growth, two alternatives are proposed: economic degrowth coupled with Marcuse’s conception of a ‘new technology’.

In the past half-century, massive structural, geographic, and technological changes have occurred in livestock production. This 'livestock revolution' has raised considerable environmental, public health, and ethical concerns. The majority of analyses concerning the negative outcomes associated with these transformations usually condemn industrial technologies as the root of the problem. This article argues that the force behind technological developments in livestock production is to aid capital's blind drive for self-expansion and self-accumulation and is the source of the majority of contemporary food animal suffering. It analyzes (1) the paramount role of generalized commodity production in altering the welfare of food animals and (2) the potential of fundamentally improving human relations with food animals within the system of capital.

The purpose of this analysis is to explore how U.S. grower perceptions of the future potential of different weed management approaches is conditioned by faith in technological fixes and how the latter is influenced by the rate and persistence of herbicide resistant weeds (HRW). We ground our analysis in rural studies literature on location and environmental sociological evaluations of techno-optimism. Using a coding typology of techno-optimism,-skepticism, anddissonance, focus group data show that farmers in Southern states responded with more skepticism and dissonance to the potential of chemical herbicides as a solution to HRW while farmers in Northern states, where there have historically been fewer HRW, have greater optimism in the potential of chemicals to solve the problem. We conclude that (1) the presence of HRWs provides an important context for farmer ideology and (2) those working with farmers in areas with high HRW rates may be able to tap into the skepticism and dissonance farmers feel toward the future potential of chemical herbicide solutions by providing integrated weed management alternatives.

No abstract

We extend social theory to farm animals in an attempt to illustrate how non‐human animals embedded in social systems can be examined using sociological concepts. Inspired by efforts to include the freedom to express natural behaviour in farm animal welfare standards, we apply Marx's conception of alienation to dairy cows. We first examine industrial dairy farm conditions and find that these systems result in the distortion of life and the suppression of physical and social needs. We then explore alienation in an alternative production system where cows graze on pasture and choose when to be milked by robotic milking machines. Based on farm visits and interviews with farmers, we find that this alternative system addresses several aspects of alienation found in industrial dairy farms. However, despite the benefits associated with alternative production systems, forms of alienation will persist in all systems where maximising profits remains prioritised over life and wellbeing.