Abstract
This chapter considers how the socio-ecological crisis confronting contemporary societies might be diagnosed. I address the ways in which these predominantly capitalist societies may be failing to secure their ecological conditions of possibility, drawing upon the two conceptualisations of socio-ecological crisis outlined in the previous chapter (crisis as metabolic rift, and crisis as exhausted socio-ecological relations) in order to do so. I conclude that in either case a decisive response to socio-ecological crisis necessarily implies moving to a post-growth form of political economy, but that the pace at which transition happens depends upon which of these two conceptualisations forms a better diagnosis of the crisis confronting contemporary societies.
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Craig, M.P.A. (2017). Diagnosing Socio-ecological Crisis. In: Ecological Political Economy and the Socio-Ecological Crisis. Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40090-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40090-7_3
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