Democracy, Justice and Risk Society: the Meaning and Shape of Ecological Democracy

Abstract

Normative and institutional questions about sustainability will be discussed in this paper but not in the usual direct or abstract way. Instead, I shall first look at the societal context within which sustainable patterns of production and consumption have to be pursued. My guide in this will be the important work of the German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, on the nature of (late) modern, especially western, society. He points out a fundamental shift in the development of industrial society, from its classical form to what he calls risk society, a development expressive of reflexive modernization. The transformation of risks to large-scale hazards, ecological ones among others, plays an important part in Beck’s picture of risk society. And learning to deal with large-scale societal risks is just what taking sustainability seriously is all about.

Destinations and risks are what politics is about, and power is simply the ability to settle these matters, not only for oneself but for others…Democratic politics…is a standing invitation to act in public and know oneself as a citizen, capable of choosing destinations and accepting risks for oneself and others, and capable, too, of patrolling the distributive boundaries and sustaining a just society.

(Walzer, 1983, p. 287)