Searching for Alternatives: Postmodern Populism and Ecology

In: Telos, Heft 103, S. 87-110

Abstract

Suggests that the populist political movement of the 1890s sensed the changing ecology of relations between human organisms & their environments brought about through the creation of large-scale organizations. Lewis Mumford's (1986) notion of the megamachine is used to describe these organizations, whose goal is to produce corporate goods capable of allowing every individual to see themselves as self-constituting agents of industrial democracy. The transformation of wants & needs within this system has created an artificial environment in which authenticity & individuality are difficult to construct. Postmodern populist movements of the 1990s are described as reactions against this artificial environment in an effort to construct local identities & communities. It is argued that the discipline of ecology represents an important effort to put scientific expertise to work in the establishment of genuine communal relations. A wedding of postmodern populism & ecology is described as an important effort to reorder the social ecology that developed within high modernity. D. M. Smith