The Quest for Ecological Modernization 435We see here then a significant theoretical and empirical challenge both for rural
sociology, on the one hand, and the broader field of environmental social science
on the other. Both could benefit from at least engaging with the emergence of
ecological modernization theory, if only to address the very longevity and resil-
ience of the 20th century ‘growth machine’ and ‘treadmill of production’. More
optimistically such a deeper engagement could begin to set the coordinates for
mapping Frouws and Mol’s more ‘deeper’ ecologically embedded and conceptually
autonomous model of ecological modernization.
Rural development becomes in this context a potentially rich sphere to assess
these ecologizing tendencies, and to test the contingencies and frameworks involved
in rebuilding a more viable and robust rural development perspective which at
least begins to suggest how such ecological modernization notions might be more
effectively progressed. Indeed, just as with the industrial mode of modernization
(with its reliance upon a particular form of neoclassical economics), a new eco-
logical paradigm also needs a viable, critical and normatively engaging social sci-
ence. This is particularly the case with ecological modernization given, as we shall
see below, the spatially variable and context dependent ways in which it actually
expresses itself. What seems clear is that there is a lack of coherence in ecological
modernization, one which can be partially or contradictorily adopted by national,
regional and local governments; and one which may need particular confluences of
strategic and local interests and actors to operate in new and innovative ways.
Looking at the recent rural sociological, and particularly the environmental
social science literature over recent years, one begins to see this tendency being
reported. One further key question is how far and fast will it travel, and how do we
best equip ourselves as scholars to develop a growing relevance in understanding
and mediating its required and contested knowledges?
There are some significant questions here. If we are to meet Buttel’s theoretical
challenge, it would suggest that we have to start looking at these bigger pictures.
The ‘new rural sociology’ and political economy established and developed
throughout the 1980s and 1990s was built upon the development of an intense
and very effective critique of the late 20th century industrialization/modernization
project (particularly as it related to the agrofood complex). We should perhaps
now recognize that this challenge has now begun to change, for it is no longer suf-
ficient to just critically examine the problems of such ‘ageing regimes’. We need to
be reconstructing as well as deconstructing models and frameworks which suggest
how things could work in different and more socio-ecological ways over space and time.
We need to visualize and articulate how actions and cases at one level can build up
more broadly into significant and autonomous projects of change.
This paper aims to suggest a series of key concepts and theoretical formulations
which could begin to build, not so much upon the diffusion of effort that some might
argue we have witnessed, but on some useful integrative themes which could lead to
a more robust and theoretically engaging of rural sociology with environmental soci-
ology. In particular, it will be argued that this involves the need to re-problematize
space and spatial relations (as socio-natural constructions) in our analyses, and to do so