The Environments and Lifestyles of a Socialist Future

Lisa Patusky (Drexel University)

In Frase’s view, “the story of socialism is a story about the climate crisis and our need to adapt to it, but also about…seeing how neither the fetishization of the natural world nor the hatred of the market is necessarily sufficient, or even relevant, to the attempt to construct an ecologically stable world beyond capitalism.” If society can stave off climate catastrophe, and transform society to something more egalitarian, humanity will still be dealing with ecological consequences of capitalism. It will be necessary to reconstruct cities, transportation networks, power grids, and lifestyles. The projects in this presentation contemplate an egalitarian society, constrained by scarce resources, that must work together to rebuild its infrastructure and relationship to nature. Taking clues from historic examples like the Shakers and the contemporary “sharing economy,” and drawing upon the scholarship of Bruno Latour, these projects look at the material conditions of a re-made human-environment relationship. The presentation will consider how to integrate renewable energy, manage consumption, and reconstruct daily life.