Finite world and sustainable action-as-politics: On the ecological transformation of society

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In the wake of the global environmental crisis, new forms of environmentally responsible individual conduct and social cooperation have emerged: some individuals and groups now aim to make a direct contribution – via sustainable action – to solve the ecological problem of finiteness. Partly, this may also be a reaction to an often diagnosed or perceived government failure in terms of finding political solutions to the ecological limits of growth. Three specific forms of sustainable action that take a lead role are urban gardening, community renewable energy, and community supported agriculture. These three forms concern key elements of finiteness, namely food production and energy.This project aims to analyse these forms of sustainable action. In a first step, the project will investigate selected initiatives with political-sociological methods. The goal is to identify individual and collective strategies of dealing with the experience of finiteness, which may be inferred from social practices and social cooperation. More specifically, the work methods and political self-images of the involved actors shall be analysed. In a second step, the project will employ a political-theoretical approach to classify these forms of sustainable action in terms of their political substance and their political potential. The key question is whether these forms of action remain within the confines of individual ethics or whether they may rather be understood as genuinely political behaviour. If the latter proves to be the case, it will be further inquired what understandings of politics are underlying these forms of action and whether they perhaps constitute new forms in the “regulation” of matters political.