Subpolitics

A conventional view of politics is oriented toward the rule-directed struggle between parties for privileges and levers of power. The ecological issue underlines the need for a more differentiated analysis of politics. In the world risk society, politics is made in various realms of subpolitics, whether it is in the finn, the laboratory, at the gas station, or in the supermarket. New types of conflict emerge and new coalitions become thinkable. Subpolitics thus questions the status of existing systems, calls for a rethinking of the various schemes of classification according to which people are accustomed to perceive their organizational environment, and asks for the invention of new institutional ways to deal with environmental risk.