Hegel, Beck and the reconceptualization of ecological risk: The example of Australian agriculture

Abstract

Abstract Ecological risk is challenging the modern societal development approach that has dominated thought and practice for centuries. Due to incomplete assumptions about the ecological risk inherent to modern systems, the very nature of societal actions and reactions are being brought into question, such that the dominant development heuristic is no longer sustainable. Hegel's dialectical analysis has strongly influenced conceptions of development. He stated that societies progress through actions that correspond to theses about how humanity should best live and produce, and correct or mediate any limitations or crises by formulating antitheses, which eventually lead to syntheses or alternatives, which in turn become the new norm. That process has never fully incorporated all environmental constraints and as a result, risk is destabilizing modernity, including the agricultural systems that focus this paper. As a remedy to a First modernity that generates intractable risks as a necessary companion to development, Beck framed the concept of an alternative Reflexive modernity, where multiple, simultaneous cosmopolitan paths generate sophisticated, sustainable development forms. Contemporary knowledge of the importance of nature for societal development have shown that risk can be incorporated into decision-making at local, national and global scales to allow an ecological dialectic to account for the externalities of modernity. In this review, Australian agriculture exemplifies how risk has been generated through an inappropriate development path and how an antithesis is beginning to enable a reconceptualization of risk. To learn to anticipate and respond to risk, agricultural communities could be supported to engage with the best available knowledge on future risk and assisted through research, training, mutual learning and policy settings to adapt effectively. To generate a response of sufficient scale in a timely manner, the theoretical Hegelian development framework must evolve to include key ecological principles to order to present a comprehensive, critical antithesis to all modern societal systems.