Social theory, the ecological emergency, and the direction of history: A review essay

The current ecological emergency is sometimes seen as a new epoch in the history of humankind. The expressions Anthropocene and Great Acceleration are two recent proposals for naming this epoch, which have been and are being widely debated. However, this debate found social theory rather unprepared, with attempts at conceptualizing long-term social change having largely been abandoned in the face of conceptual, methodological, and empirical difficulties decades ago. This essay discusses three recent book publications, the coincidence of which may indicate that the reluctance towards addressing the existence and direction of major socio-historical transformations is about to be overcome. From the angle of social philosophy, Rahel Jaeggi's Fortschritt und Regression (“Progress and regression”) explores in a novel way the question of the normative directedness of history. Based in political and economic sociology, Ingolfur Blühdorn's Unhaltbarkeit (“Intenability”) and Jens Beckert's Verkaufte Zukunft (“Future sold”) focus more explicitly on the ecological emergency, in particular climate change. Reading these three books together, the question arises how the long-term irreversibility of global warming relates to the direction of human history over the past two centuries and the future possibility of change of direction.