Critical Social Theory and Environmental Theory: A (Re-)Construction
Shaun M. Gilligan
Department of Government
University of Texas, Austin
Critical social theory has long been an archetypal example of an intellectual
orientation that embraces interdisciplinarity. As critical social theory has progressed
from the late 20th to the early 21st century, certain of its practitioners (Douglas Kellner,
Steven Best, and others) have coupled this traditional interdisciplinarity – marked by
utilization of political science, sociology, psychology, economics, cultural studies, and
philosophy – with a multiperspectival approach, welcoming a wealth of analytical/critical
tools into the critical social theory approach. Contemporary work in critical social theory
is informed by perspectives as wide ranging as feminism, psychoanalytic theory, post-
structuralism, critical race theory, Marxism, and post-modernism. Regrettably, despite
this methodological and disciplinary openness, critical theory has largely neglected
concerns about the environment and ecology, leaving environmental theory out of the
proverbial interdisciplinary and multiperspectival toolbox as it were. This paper seeks to
flesh out how a (re-)constructed critical theory of society ought to take account of
environmental theory in attempting to describe, analyze, and criticize the contemporary
period. In so doing, I will rely on Vogel’s seminal work Against Nature in order to
examine the ambivalent and problematic portrayal of nature and the environment in the
work of the Frankfurt School. I will then briefly examine the contemporary critical
theory of Douglas Kellner – whose work I take to be an excellent starting point in
discussing contemporary critical theory – to reveal the basic absence of environmental
theory in his own work, as well as in his joint work with Steven Best. I will then sketch
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