The Double Bind of Climate Change in Contemporary World Society

At the time of the classical sociologists, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the most visible contradiction of society was that between labour and capital. To early anthropologists, a few decades later, the main contradiction was the clash of cultures resulting from colonialism and unequal power, where non-state, non-modern cultures seemed doomed to vanish. To us, the most poignant and urgent contradiction of global modernity is climate change in all its ramifications, from calls for climate justice to critiques of the growth economy. The loss of cultural diversity and oppression under capitalism have not gone away, but a new and fresh layer has been added, and this is what this conversation is about.