The ideas of neoliberalism perpetuate a disembedded and dichotomised view of economy-ecology relations. The renewed interest in climate change and sustainability attests to the lack of progress achieved by the 'sustainable development' regime and to the need for more appropriate frameworks for guiding social organisation toward ecological sustainability. This book is born of the need for a critique of current approaches to environmental policy and governance and the search for alternative sustainability frameworks.
Utilising a conceptual approach based on the Polanyian concept of 'embeddedness', this book argues that the links between economic theory, neo-liberalism, and the current regime of sustainable development, have rendered 'sustainability' a discursive frame in the service of economic rather than ecological goals. In rejecting the integrity of 'environmental neo-liberalism', Paton argues there are some clear points of divergence between liberalism and neo-liberalism. She subsequently examines separately the impact on liberalism of efforts to integrate environmental concerns in order to determine if therein lies the potential for an effective reformist politics of 'ecological sustainability'.

List of abbreviations ix

1 Introduction 1

Ecological political economy 2

Which liberalism ? 5

Structure of the book 10

PART I PA\Theorising embeddedness for sustainability 13

2 Ecological sustainability and embeddedness 15

Contested meanings I: sustainability 16

Contested meanings II: the economy 23

Embeddedness beyond metaphor 29

Concluding remarks 36

3 Embeddedness in liberalism and neo-liberalism 38

Contested meanings III: the political 40

The liberal structure of embeddedness 49

Concluding remarks 65

PART II PA\Policy and governance for sustainability 67

4 Changing discourses of sustainability 69

From the margins to the mainstream 70

Sustainable development as 'meta-fix' 78

Concluding remarks 89

5 Towards environmental neo-liberalism 91

The compromise of Tiber al environmentalism' 92

The contradictions of Tiber al environmentalism' 101

Concluding remarks 109

PART III PA\Greening liberal theory for sustainability 111

6 The substantive roots of liberalism 113

Contextual ising classical liberalism 114

Double movements and evolving liberalism s 121

Concluding remarks 130

7 Economic liberalism 131

Economic liberalism: tyranny of the market 132

Economic limits and the limits of liberalism 142

Concluding remarks 153

8 Political liberalism 154

Political liberalism: tyranny of the majority 155

From neutrality to morality 164

Concluding remarks 171

9 Social liberalism 173

Social liberalism: history for the present 174

An ecological liberalism ? 183

Concluding remarks 192

10 Conclusion: the sustainability of liberalism 194

Notes 199

Bibliography 218

Index 242

G.J Paton is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Australia.

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