Global Environmental Politics and the Imperial Mode of Living: Articulations of State-Capital Relations in the Multiple Crisis

The article introduces the concept of the 'imperial mode of living', which is sustained by capital and the capitalist state, in order to understand the persistence of resource-and energy-intensive everyday practices and their socio-ecological consequences. The imperial mode of living is principally based on an unlimited appropriation of resources and labour power and on a disproportionate claim to global sinks. In the constellation of the 'multiple crises', it contributes to safeguarding social stability in the global North and provides a hegemonic orientation in many societies of the global South. At the same time it has plunged global environmental politics into a severe crisis, fostering (neo-)imperialist strategies with respect to natural resources and sinks. In this sense, the imperial mode of living makes the crisis both more acute and able to be processed in a socially and spatially limited dimension. The concept thus helps to understand the simultaneous persistence and crisis of the neoliberal-imperial constellation and to identify starting points for counter-hegemonic struggles.