Decolonizing the Past and Confronting Climate Change Futures: Bringing the State Back In

Abstract

Abstract Macro-social theory has been on the wane. There are various reasons for this, but among the consequences of this gap is that an urgent social problem – climate change – has received little attention and is poorly connected to existing theories. This problem, in turn, is tied to the fact that the transition to modernity is no longer central to social theory. Instead, a recent focus has been on how the “rise of the West” is predicated on dominance over “the rest.” This essay addresses both problems, arguing that the transition to modernity is still central, but that a second transition, the post-war “great acceleration” and how it led to an “age of limits,” should be equally central. The essay traces the transformation of nature and its impact on the climate through these two transitions, and argues that responsibility for addressing the consequences of climate change will increasingly mean tracking the connections, and lack of connections, between the Global North and South.