Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

The Quest for Ecological Modernization 433

tion, on the one hand, and a more open and pluralistically engaged rural sociology
on the other. It is to this exploration that this paper wishes to contribute.
Taking Buttel’s theoretical challenge seriously, and at the same time as the
arrival of more effective debates about a new (ecologically) modernizing process, it
is necessary to address a central theoretical question. This in macro terms is: to
what extent are we seeing the arrival of a more autonomous ecologically modernizing
process operating in advanced societies, and as part of this, through rural development
trends specifically? Second, if we believe that this is a viable question, then what con-
ceptual development and empirical realities does it suggest with respect to the rural
sphere? Taking some empirical and theoretical avenues in the three resource areas of
agricultural restructuring, food supply chains and forestry, this paper adopts a
positive view with regard to the first meta-question. It then attempts to demon-
strate, through the definition of some conceptual parameters, how scholars might
address the challenge this creates in tackling the second question.^1 With specific
reference to these rural resource spheres it is suggested that we are witnessing the
development of an ecological modernization process which is significantly differ-
ent and autonomous in its character from the earlier industrial, 20th century mod-
ernization process. As Frouws and Mol theoretically delineate (1999, p271):

The ecological modernization theory analyses possibilities for a process of ‘re-embed-

ding’ economic practices-in view of their ecological dimension-within the institutions

of modernity. This modern ‘re-embedding’ process should result in the institutionaliza-

tion of ‘ecology’ in the social practices and institutions of production and consumption.

The institutionalization of ecological interests in production and consumption proc-

esses, and thus the redirection of these basically economic practices into more ecologi-

cally sound ones, involves an ‘emancipation’ or differentiation of ecology. The

differentiation of an ecological rationality and an ecological sphere, both becoming

relatively independent from their economic counterparts, is the logical next step.

This process is analytically challenging in the sense that it is necessary at the same
time to differentiate between ecological ‘spheres’ – that is, making analytical space
for considering relatively autonomous ecological spheres so as to study how eco-
logical actions and practices are becoming steadily institutionalized in the central
institutions of modernity – but doing so without completely labelling these as
distinct areas in society, that can simply be empirically identified. The process of
emancipation from the strictly economic sphere, and the gradual re-embedding of ecol-
ogy in the institutions of economy, is a central aspect of ecological modernization, creat-
ing the spaces for an ecological as well as economic rationality. This socio-ecological
postulate requires detailed assessment in terms of its relevance to rural development

• and it raises a theoretical potentiality for developing a more robust sustainable rural
  development paradigm (see Van der Ploeg et al, 2000; Marsden et al, 2003).
  We should, of course, also recognize that this does not deny the maintenance
  of a dominant economic rationality, working as it may do to limit these new eco-
  logical, social, economic and political spaces. However, as some ecological theorists