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Ecological Modernization in Evolutionary Perspective

Ecological modernization theory (EMT) has emerged as a major theoretical and policy-making perspective. Despite its growing influence, EMT has significant limitations both as a descriptive and as a prescriptive theory. Taking the Darwinian revolution’s rejection of essentialism and developmentalism as the touchstone for ecological thinking, the author argues that EMT is premised on a nonecological foundation. The nonecological underpinnings of EMT preclude its elaboration into a descriptive theory capable of conceptualizing the interactions between social structures, human agency, and biophysical environments. As a prescriptive theory, these same assumptions marginalize people and projects that depart from EMT’s restricted vision of modernization. The author concludes by contrasting EMT with an evolutionary perspective on social change, premised on the concept of a socially constructed adaptive landscape, which combines population thinking with moderate constructionist insights into agency and culture. From the latter perspective, EMT’s prescriptive claims can be interpreted as a form of strategic essentialism.