Ecological Livelihoods: Rethinking 'Development" Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment

Ethan Miller

The three familiar categories of "economy," "society," and "environment"--staples in discourses of sustainable development--constitute a hegemonic formation that widely and problematically shapes the landscape of imagination and contestation, rendering particular, historically-produced relations seemingly inevitable and closing down possibilities for more generative and ethical modes of relationship. At the same time, however, economy, society, and environment are categories in crisis, and the world they aspire to organize and discipline is already escaping their clutches. A key task of our era is to identify, amplify, and connect multiple 'lines of flight" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) beyond these categories. This paper proposes a concept of "ecological livelihoods" as one experimental step in this direction.

Suggested citation

Miller, E. 2014. "Ecological Livelihoods: Rethinking 'Development' Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment." Paper presented in the Institute for Culture and Society Seminar Series, Western Sydney University.