Abstract
For much of sociology’s history, few of its scholars have cared about Robert Malthus (1766–1834), and his principle that the human desire to procreate will always outstrip what nature can provide. Early interest (cf. Alexis de Tocqueville or Karl Marx; see Drolet, 2003) waned when increases in food supply during the 20th century seemed to prove Malthus wrong. But when the extent of environmental problems became more apparent towards the end of that century, the appreciation of Malthus changed. Perhaps the reverend was right about nature’s limits?
As the book title reveals, Giorgos Kallis has no such doubt. Malthus’ error, according to Kallis, is not a failure to anticipate tractors and fertilisers, but assuming that nature is limited. Kallis explains that Malthus believed we always face scarcity due to an inherent mismatch between our biological desires and what nature can provide. The former is endless (a rather curious viewpoint: cf. Durkheim, 2005 [1897]: 209–210), while the latter is limited. For Malthus the mismatch is beneficial because it keeps people striving for improvement. The ontology of unlimited desire as an essential driving force of human life paved the way for utilitarian-style economics and neoliberal politics championing perpetual economic growth.
Kallis argues that some iconic images from sustainability science, such as “limits to growth” and “planetary boundaries”, reproduce the same spectre of scarcity and ontology of unlimited desire. This time not to advocate economic growth, but to warn about the end of the world as we know it. Despite their different agenda, Kallis finds these icons equally flawed. They ignore that people can desire different things, and therefore carry different responsibility for ecological disasters. Furthermore, the assumption of inevitable scarcity also risks appropriation by nationalist politics to exclude others from nature’s benefits.
Kallis explores ideas and practices that – different from Malthus, economics, neoliberal politics and icons from sustainability science – emphasise nature’s plenty. Using Romantics, such as Rousseau or Wordsworth, he argues that there is enough nature for everyone, if only we are content with less. For Kallis, limits are social constructs about what constitutes the good life; not a matter of planetary geophysics. Environmentalists might hesitate because of the free reign this leaves to subjective interpretation. Not so for Kallis, who finds the idea liberating, because: “it is precisely when there are no obvious external limits that we must be prudent enough to pose our own criteria and limits” (p. 73).
The quest for self-moderation brings Kallis to classical Greece that championed a culture of frugality in response to the introduction of a money-economy. Ironically, by heralding self-restraint Kallis finds Malthus at his side. Against overconfident beliefs in scientific and technological progress, which leads people to ignore natural limits and moral duties, Malthus saw individual restraint and self-discipline as the only means to mitigate scarcity (Winch, 1996). While Kallis thinks very differently about nature’s limits and the necessity of economic growth, he is closer to Malthus than he admits when it comes to individual moral duties of self-limitation. Kallis ends with a plea to reinvent a culture of self-restraint for modern societies, starting by investigating the genesis and evolution of self-moderation: “Seeing civilization as the art of limiting the unlimited can help us to revisit other civilizations […] to ask why and how they limited themselves” (p. 128).
Many sociological ideas can be used to address Kallis’ question. An obvious starting point is the distinction between externally and internally imposed limits, which Kallis also mentions. Yet, Kallis neither theorises nor investigates how these limits interact to shape social action and history. Such an effort lies outside the scope of the book, but forms a core theme within sociology.
Norbert Elias (2012 [1939]) demonstrates how power relations, struggles and social interdependencies between groups put limits on the lives that people can lead. Over time groups can internalise and reproduce such limits, discipline themselves, and learn to live with them. Elias (2012 [1939]: 403) describes this process as the conversion of social constraints into self-constraints. It is a central mechanism of civilising processes: changes in human conduct and sentiment towards steadier self-control of drives and affects, and widening circles of mutual identification.
Sociologists have used these ideas to explore to what extent contemporary societies are undergoing a (de)civilising process in relation to nature (e.g. Quilley, 2009). A leading hypothesis is that increased knowledge about the effects of human development on earth’s ecology and geophysics, can induce moral restraints. These restraints operate at the level of the “anthroposphere” (Goudsblom, 2012), where human wellbeing depends on non-human species and their habitats. Animal rights, environmental movements, ecological farming, environmental regulation, vegetarianism, etc. can be interpreted as evidence of widening circles of identification encompassing the non-human world. But reservation is prudent here. There is also evidence of narrowing circles of identification (de Swaan, 1997) – a decivilising process – where urbanisation coupled with the extensiveness and complexity of global human networks create a “rift” (Foster, 2000) between sites of production and consumption, allowing social inequality and environmental violence to grow (Nixon, 2011).
To sustain human societies, Kallis suggests redirecting our focus from nature’s limits to processes of civilisation and decivilisation. As sociologists of the longue durée highlight, the moderation of emotions, desires, wants and preferences is ultimately a question about shifting power relations. Kallis’ contribution lies not so much in proving Malthus wrong, but in raising questions about power and inequality in relation to global sustainability.