From City-State to City-Planet

Abstract

The discussions in the previous group of chapters looked at various theories directly, or potentially, related to global ecological themes. For the most part these made their entrance in a general-theory guise. Each broad approach was viewed, that is, in terms of its capacity to generate frameworks for dealing with the universe of global environmental problems. Though diverse, and often characterized by internal conflicts, each also has a capacity to produce evaluative judgements of the likely contributions, and typical failings, of other approaches. In some cases, as with approaches derived from neoclassical economics, this has sometimes taken the form of ignoring competing theoretical strategies while advancing into terrains traditionally associated with other disciplines.