TY - JOUR
T1 - Political representation, the environment, and Edmund Burke
T2 - A re-reading of the Western canon through the lens of multispecies justice
AU - Rutledge-Prior, Serrin
AU - Handby, Edmund
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/2/28
Y1 - 2024/2/28
N2 - A major puzzle in contemporary political theory is how to extend notions of justice to the environment. With environmental entities unable to communicate in ways that are traditionally recognised within the political sphere, their interests have largely been recognised instrumentally: only important as they contribute to human interests. In response to the multispecies justice project's call to reimagine our concepts of justice to include other-than-human beings and entities, we offer a novel reading of Edmund Burke's account of political representation that, we argue, can be applied to the environment. Burke claimed that interests are ‘unattached’ to any actual class or group, and that it is the duty of the representative to represent these unattached interests. Beyond providing an original application of Burke's work, the paper offers an alternative to the ‘allure’ of authoritarian environmentalism, an alternative which conservative thinkers may use as an entryway into debates on environmental justice.
AB - A major puzzle in contemporary political theory is how to extend notions of justice to the environment. With environmental entities unable to communicate in ways that are traditionally recognised within the political sphere, their interests have largely been recognised instrumentally: only important as they contribute to human interests. In response to the multispecies justice project's call to reimagine our concepts of justice to include other-than-human beings and entities, we offer a novel reading of Edmund Burke's account of political representation that, we argue, can be applied to the environment. Burke claimed that interests are ‘unattached’ to any actual class or group, and that it is the duty of the representative to represent these unattached interests. Beyond providing an original application of Burke's work, the paper offers an alternative to the ‘allure’ of authoritarian environmentalism, an alternative which conservative thinkers may use as an entryway into debates on environmental justice.
KW - Edmund Burke
KW - Environmental representation
KW - history of political thought
KW - multispecies justice
KW - political representation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186458275&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/14748851241236055
DO - 10.1177/14748851241236055
M3 - Article
SN - 1474-8851
JO - European Journal of Political Theory
JF - European Journal of Political Theory
ER -