Decolonizing Nature-Culture Dualism: The Economies of Worth at the Test of Ecological Imaginary

Abstract

Facing the rise of sustainability issues in Western contexts, the major focus on compromising-processes tends to favour business as usual or reformist approaches, while the ecological issue would require fundamental changes. Our research aims at filling this gap by challenging the pragmatic sociology through the analysis of Biodynamics, a radical ecological method in agriculture. In order to analyse the integration of non-human beings and ecosystems in moral issues, we bridged the Economies of Worth framework developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006 [1991]) and the literature on imaginaries through a qualitative analysis of this radically alternative ecological imaginary. Our results reveal the limits of nature-culture duality to found ecological justice and uncover how ecological – ‘non-dualist’ – ontology surpasses and challenges the Economies of Worth framework. Our research induces that morality is based on ontological categorisations that can be challenged during social conflicts, such as the western separation between human and non-human beings. It contributes to decolonize the ‘dualist’ basis of the Economies of Worth framework and to extend the framework by proposing a theorization of ecological ontology.