Vol. 15 No. 30 (2024): Putting the Political in Its Place: Towards a Political Sociology of Sustainability
Articles

Hegemony and Sustainability. A Call for Historical Materialism

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  • Sergio D'Agata
Sergio D'Agata
Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca, Italy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-15331

Published 2024-12-30

Keywords

  • urban sustainability fix,
  • hegemony,
  • Gramsci,
  • sustainability,
  • historical materialism

How to Cite

D’Agata, S. (2024). Hegemony and Sustainability. A Call for Historical Materialism. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 15(30), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-15331

Copyright (c) 2024 Sergio D'Agata

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Social scientists have been critical about sustainability from its appearance. However, as the literature on post-politics highlight, they have failed to address why our society endures in unsustainability in what some authors call the post-ecological paradox. This article reflects on some of the major theoretical assumptions of urban political ecology, presenting the urban sustainability fix framework as the most valuable tool to perform a critique of sustainability. It adds to the debate arguing that empirical obstacles are related and rooted in theoretical incompatibility between neo-Marxist and post-structural literatures which shape the discipline, stating the need for a return to historical materialism starting by Antonio Gramsci. To this end, the article proposes to use Jessop’s RSA to analyse sustainable development.

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