Capitalism, Nature, and Democracy

Although nature often appears as the most fixed and self-evident category in social and political thought, its meaning, like other foundational concepts, has been historically constructed and politically contested. This course examines how ideas of nature have been shaped by capitalist accumulation imperatives and how those transformations bear on contemporary ecological problems, including climate change. In light of these inquiries, we also ask whether denaturalizing social categories should be the primary aim of social theory. Students gain knowledge of the merits and limitations of current debates and push them further through discussions and final individual research projects. They also learn to bring the natural and social sciences into conversation and to think across disciplinary boundaries. We begin with nineteenth-century debates, including selections from William Apess, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, and Henry David Thoreau, and ask how industrial society altered understandings of the human relation to the natural world and the conditions of collective self-determination. Contemporary readings revisit and revise these traditions under conditions of planetary crisis and include approaches such as de-growth, Green and Red New Deals, ecofeminism, and indigenous political theory.