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This paper takes as a starting point William Ophul's claim that the last 450 years amount to an 'era of exception' in terms of resource availability. Ophuls suggests that it is no accident that this exceptional era of abundance coincides with the birth and development of liberalism – that liberalism, in other words, would not/could not have occurred without the conditions provided by this era of exception. Some of the ways in which this suggestion might be critically examined are discussed, and attention is drawn to one of its more interesting implications: if liberalism depends on abundance, what kind of political theory do we need if we are entering a new era of scarcity ('peak oil/peak everything')? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much prized in daily conversation, good listening has been almost completely ignored in that form of political conversation we know as democracy. Practically all the attention has been paid to speaking, both in terms of the skills to be developed and the ways in which we should understand what enhancing 'inclusion' might mean (i.e. getting more people to speak). The argument here is that both democratic theory and democratic practice would be reinvigorated by attention to listening. To ask why listening has been ignored is to inquire into the very nature of politics, and to suggest a range of ways in which listening could both improve political processes (particularly democratic ones) and enhance our understanding of them - including where they do not always work as well as we might want them to. Four ways in which good listening can help achieve democratic objectives are outlined: enhancing legitimacy, helping to deal with deep disagreements, improving understanding and increasing empowerment. This leads to a discussion of the difference between good and bad political listening, before the question of 'political noise' is broached (i.e. what we should be listening for). Finally, the listening lacuna in Habermas' theory of communicative rationality is pointed out, leading to a discussion of the potential analytic power of listening in relation to deliberative democracy in general and one citizens' jury case in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the nature of democracy in environmental politics, with special reference to the issue of representation, and to the issues of speaking and listening. It is argued that politics has always been regarded as concerned with ‘speechifying’, and that this has created problems for politicising environmental issues, many of which have to do with ‘dumb nature’. The work of Bruno Latour is examined in this context as a way of including nature in politics without resorting to extravagant claims about ‘nature speaking’. Latour's epistemological approach to ‘politicising nature’ is discussed, and attention is focused on the importance for the political (and especially democratic) process of ‘listening’ as well as ‘speaking’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the leitmotif of Alan Holland's work, which is argued here to be a defence of the existence and worth of nonhuman nature. Definitions of politics have always depended on the idea of nature as a contrasting non-political realm, usually turning on the centrality of speech. Referencing the work of Aristotle, Kant and Bentham, I suggest that the instability of the distinction between the human and the nonhuman means that politics, as ?thing and activity', must itself be unstable. The question of whether there can be a politics without nature is explored through an analysis of the work of Latour, and the conclusion is reached that listening may well be just as important as speaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the account of political obligation given by cosmopolitans and concludes that this account, which depends on a weak or thin connection between members of common humanity, leaves a motivational vacuum at the heart of cosmopolitanism. An alternative view, according to which material ties that bind prompt obligations of justice in a globalising world, is offered. This is ‘thick cosmopolitanism’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]