Post-democracy and post-sustainability

The belief that democracy and sustainability are inseparably connected to each other belongs to the established orthodoxies of eco-political movements, thinking and policy. Developments in contemporary consumer societies which have been conceptualised as a post-democratic turn, the end of sustainability and the rise of a politics of unsustainability challenge these beliefs and reconfigure the democracy/sustainability relationship. This chapter explores this reconfiguration. It understands both sustainability as well as democracy are essentially contested concepts: Their meaning is continuously renegotiated with malleable understandings of autonomy, subjectivity and a good life being the normative point of reference. Thus, changing ideals of subjectivity, the ongoing reinterpretation of democracy and the continuous reframing of ecological concerns are the three constitutive dimensions of this exploration of the democracy/sustainability nexus. Based on the discussion of the concepts of post-democracy and post-sustainability, the chapter outlines how the change in prevailing notions of freedom and a good life gives rise to forms of democracy which are conducive to the politics of unsustainability.