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maintain that dominant power structures should be supplanted by a benevolent,
feminised value system.
Eco-socialism conceives the inherent conflict that exists between capitalism and ecology
as the essential root of the environmental crisis (Pepper 1993). While acknowledging the
importance of non-material interactions with nature, this ideology remains distinctly
anthropocentric, regards adverse human activity as the product of inappropriate socio-
economic systems rather than hereditary predisposition, and contrives to re-establish
humanity’s dominion over nature through planning and control. This final requirement is
to be specifically achieved by harnessing the once unalienated productive capacity of
industry, through common ownership of the means of production and by the application
of technology in a socially and ecologically sensitive manner. Per traditional socialist
theory developed by Marx and Engels, adherents to eco-socialist principles reluctantly (if
at all) recognise near-term natural resource limits (Dresner 2008) but, in agreement with
the WCED (1987), accept that technological and organisational restrictions exist to
human transformative power. Citing 20th century Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s
modern and ostensibly more ethical interpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’
(1515) (Nowell Smith & Hoare 1971: 123-202), Burton (2009) believes that the
proponents of change through eco-socialism will not be the proletariat but rather ‘organic’
(i.e. developed from within the eco-socialist movement itself) intellectuals who exhibit
qualities including foresight, adaptability and resourcefulness.
In a similar vein, social ecology, as developed by the libertarian socialist Murray
Bookchin, acknowledges the dialectic relationship that exists between nature and society
and the need to found concern for the environment “in social criticism and a vision of
social reconstruction” (Bookchin 1989: 13). In partial accord with Enlightenment notions
of rationality, Bookchin claims that humanity has evolved out of and is apart from nature
yet remains inextricably continuous to it (Mathews 2011: 227). Thus, through the
disestablishment of hierarchical structures that inhibit self-determination and participation,
associated notions of the dominance over material world are discarded as favour of a
reality where mankind becomes free to create ecologically sympathetic societies
(Bookchin, 1982).
Democracy and critical tendencies established through scientific advancement and
philosophical discourse have led directly to a demonstrable decline in literal
interpretations of religious texts. As a result, humanity’s inexorable right of mastery over
nature, as typified by the Judeo-Christian tradition (Whyte 1967), has been questioned.
Moreover, there is a growing appreciation of the environmental sensibilities of other
spiritual practices (Bell and Morse 2005). Thus, eco-theology has emerged as both a
synthesis and an extension of established religious beliefs applied in a non-human
context such that, in effect, nature itself becomes a deity and the solution to the
contemporary environmental crisis is reached through accordant reverence.
Sustainable Construction and Conceptions of Sustainable Development
From the foregoing conceptual analysis it is the authors’
opinion that contemporary
sustainable construction is primarily grounded in the institutional / status quo
interpretation of sustainable development while also displaying some features of
academic / reformist perspectives. (Not unexpectedly, attributes associated with
ideological / transformative notions of sustainable development are deemed to be
absent.) As such, sustainable construction exhibits many of the limitations associated
with both of these outlooks.
