The Meaning of Growth

Anti-Environmentalist Rhetoric and the Defence of Modernity
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-003-86415-8
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Environmental Policy and Politics

Since the Limits to Growth report was published in 1972 it has been widely known that a commitment to endless growth was putting us on course for environmental disaster—so why have we failed to take decisive political action in the half-century since then? In The Meaning of Growth, Richard McNeill Douglas uses interpretive social science to uncover the cultural roots of political resistance to environmental science and policy.

Through a close reading of anti-environmentalist rhetoric the book identifies its idolisation of growth as a defence of a modern (Western-European) world-view, focusing on values of freedom, power, and immortality. The significance of these findings is drawn out by applying the ‘secularisation thesis’, a theoretical account on the development of a modern understanding of reality from a theological world-view to which it is ostensibly opposed. This framework is used to offer a deep interpretation of what is at stake in environmental debate: that to accept there are limits to growth means abandoning crucial elements of a faith in a theodicy of progress that makes life meaningful in a secular age. Douglas concludes by suggesting that the precondition for political action on the environment is a change of philosophical perspective that provides for a sense of meaning in a world of limits.

This book should be of interest to academics in the fields of environmental sociology and communications studies, as well as activists interested in understanding the motivations of anti-environmentalist campaigners and how to counter their influence.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

McNeill Douglas, Richard

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprechwissenschaft, Rhetorik
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword. Prologue: 1972 - The high water mark of modernity.  Introduction: The Question Mark.  1. An irrational denial of limits? 2. Interpreting the denial of limits: the secular theodicy of modernity 3. Growthism vs Limitism: a new analysis of environmental discourse 4. Freedom: The good life according to growthism 5. Power: The economy in mind 6. Immortality: Growth against death. Conclusion: Limits and transcendence

Über Autor(innen)

Richard McNeill Douglas is a research fellow of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey, and fellow of the Westminster Abbey Institute. Previously, Douglas has worked at the UK Parliament, for the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth. His writing on the environment and political economy has appeared in three books and a range of publications, including Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Politics, International Journal of Green Economics, Social Epistemology, Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, Political Quarterly, Prospect, Monthly Review, Capitalism Nature Socialism, The Mint Magazine, Left Foot Forward, and Church Times.