The Quest for Ecological Modernization 439within environmentally related practices and social contexts (Irwin, 2001). The res-
idents in the community are not just free agents in their constructions of natural
relations. Neither is the forest a neutral natural actant operating in a completely
natural setting. Both nature (in this case the forest) and the people are actively
engaging in broader socio-political conditions which, in turn help to shape the
particular types of socio-natural relations in this type of local context. While such
a postulate suggests that there is an inherent partiality about the two earlier
approaches. What needs to be added to both conceptions is an empirically embed-
ded understanding of how the natural becomes an active ingredient in the con-
tinual process of community construction.
Exclusion and empowerment
While aspects of rural social exclusion have become a vibrant topic of concern,
especially amongst rural geographers (see Cloke et al, 2000; Shucksmith, 2000),
the emphasis of this work has thus far been largely upon the identification of
exclusionary practices in different social, economic, institutional and domestic
rural arena. One further and important aspect, however, concerns the ways in
which communities, different actors and agencies can become more empowered,
and to do so in contexts which are ecologically as well as socially sustainable. In our
UK forestry communities we witness a long historical process of disempowerment
brought about by both the productivist priorities of the mining and forestry sec-
tors and, in addition, the gradual marginalization of much of the community by
labour markets and the state authorities. Here disempowerment is multifaceted,
and it is the combination of these marginalization histories which provide the back-
drop for any change of forestry commission policy in terms of enhancing commu-
nity and sustainable development. The exclusion-empowerment equations operate
differently between and through communities and they provide a key mechanism in
establishing the social landscape upon which new, more ecological forms of mod-
ernization could take hold. Indeed, they provide a major way in which ecological
modernizing principles can in themselves become marginalized and obscured in the
face of what are seen to be more short-term employment imperatives.
A further, if separate element of exclusion and empowerment comes in terms
of the market and consumer exclusions operating in the conventional food supply
system. Here we see two key processes at work which deserve much more attention
in progressing a more ecologically modernizing agenda. These concern the exclu-
sionary tendencies based upon price, quality and location encouraged by the corpo-
rate retailers in the operation of their food chains (see Competition Commission,
2000). This is generating a major feature of the ‘new food polities’, with consumer
agencies adopting exclusionary arguments as well as food quality arguments in their
political articulations with government authorities. The operation of what is called
in the trade as ‘price flexing’ – whereby the big retailers purposely vary their grocery
prices in the light of local competitive conditions rather than being related to actual
costs – has become widespread in the UK. Even the conservatively written recent