Re-examining contemporary capitalism: towards a political economy of ecology[Réinterroger le capitalisme contemporain : vers une économie politique de l'écologie]

The magnitude of the ecological and climatic crises should put these issues on the global political agenda. And yet, Conference of Parties (COP) after another has failed to initiate a global transition commensurate with these challenges. It therefore seems important to question capitalism, not only in the way it operates, but also in the way it structures our relationship with nature, and inhibits ecological and climatic action. The aim of this dossier is to bring together works that examine this issue from different angles. This introduction provides an opportunity to identify four avenues for research. The first avenue is to re-examine the regime of financialized and globalized accumulation at the heart of contemporary capitalism, as both a lock-in and a lever for transition. The second avenue focuses on the power relations that stabilize contemporary capitalism. The third avenue aims to re-interrogate the way in which contemporary capitalism shapes our relationship with nature and, in so doing, prescribes or justifies ways of managing it. The fourth avenue questions the way in which capitalism produces and relies on narratives that structure collective imaginations. Whether we are talking about changes in accounting that consider the environmental impacts of companies, the institutions that frame social relations around the management of an invasive species in Bulgaria, the absence of degrowth scenario simulation in the modelling of the 5th IPCC report, or the ways in which the bioeconomy shapes different collective imaginaries.