Political Ecosystems: Modernity, Complexity, Fluidity, and the Eco-Left

by HARPIGNIES J. P.

• ISBN13: 9780972066297
• ISBN10: 0972066292
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Small Pr Distribution

Summary

Political Ecosystems is an unusual and highly original appeal to left-progressives and environmentalists and those sympathetic to those movements. It urges them to engage in more thorough self-examination, to assess more realistically their strengths, weaknesses and blind spots, and to learn to look at the darkened American political panorama through a variety of far more sophisticated lenses, and with a broader, longer, more nuanced view of history, culture and social change. A modest yet deeply informed account of the current state of eco and social justice activism and its adherents, Harpignies invites us to engage in a rigorous, but entertaining, and ideally rejuvenating, set of ideological calisthenics.

Table of Contents

About this book	5	(4)
Introduction	9	(7)
Section I: Beyond Linear Politics
Toward More Sinuously Sophisticated Political Perspectives	16	(9)
Ideological Ecosystems and Multi-Perspectival Politics	25	(9)
Time, Culture, and Politics	34	(18)
Section II: Some Special Problems of the Left
Ethics, Rationality and the Handicaps of the Left	52	(13)
Modernity and the Left	65	(39)
Art, Truth and Politics	104	(20)
Section III: Know Yourself, Know your Opponents, Know the Terrain
Know Yourself, Know Your Adversaries	124	(23)
The Utopian/Realpolitik Axis	147	(12)
Know the Terrain	159	(17)
Section IV: What is to be done?
Introduction	176	(2)
Some Recapitulation: Toning Down Internecine Warfare; Pragmatism and Utopianism; Electoral Dilemmas	178	(14)
Tactics and Strategy	192	(9)
Thinking Strategically: Vision and Action	201	(10)
Communication Breakdown	211	(10)
Dividing the Right	221	(5)
Historical Compromises?	226	(10)
Some Closing Questions	236