Environmental Engineering Reference
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from the need for capitalist governments to fuli l a number of basic func-
tions irrespective of discourses that may have been captured by government
oi cials, especially continued economic growth. Within his rejection of the
Foucauldian discursive approach, Dryzek points to the very existence of
authors such as Foucault as evidence that individuals subject to discourses
are able step back and make comparative assessments and choices across
dif erent discourses. Dryzek also rejects the hegemonic terms used by
Foucauldians to describe discourse. He asserts that variety is as likely as
hegemony, with the disintegration of the previously hegemonic discourse
of industrialism since the 1960s as evidence of just such variety.
Dryzek sets out his approach to discourse analysis with the aim of
advancing 'analysis of environmental af airs by promoting critical com-
parative scrutiny of competing discourses of environmental concern'
(Dryzek, 1997, p. 20). He is thus interested in explaining how environmen-
tal discourses inform political programmes. A four-fold typology is put
forward where ways of thinking about environmentalism are character-
ized in terms of their departure from the discourse of industrialism (Elliott,
1999). These departures can be reformist or radical, prosaic or imaginative
and result in the identii cation of four main categories of environmental
thought. These four strands are categorized as follows. The discourse of
environmental 'problem-solving' is prosaic and reformist. It takes the
political-economic status quo as given but in need of adjustment to cope
with environmental problems, especially via public policy. The discourse
of 'survivalism', popularized by the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972)
is also prosaic, but radical. It is radical because it seeks wholesale redis-
tribution of power within the industrial political economy and wholesale
reorientation away from perpetual economic growth to avoid exhausting
natural resources and the assimilative capacity of the environment. It is
prosaic because it sees solutions in terms of options set by industrialism,
especially greater control of existing systems by administrators, scientists
and other responsible elites. The discourse of 'sustainability' is imaginative
and reformist, beginning in the 1980s with imaginative attempts to dissolve
the conl icts between environmental and economic values that are charac-
teristic of the discourses of problem-solving and survivalism. Finally, the
discourse of 'green radicalism' is also imaginative, but radical. It rejects
the basic structure of industrial society and the way the environment is
conceptualized therein. Due to such radicalization and imagination, it
features deep intramural divisions.
In common with the roots of Habermas's work in argumentation
theory, Dryzek also adopts a rhetorical method, marrying this with a more
basic social constructivist perspective (see Rydin, 2003, ch. 2). This of ers
a fairly tightly controlled comparative analytical device for identifying the
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