Down to Earth Social Movements: An Interview with Bruno Latour

Since the time of Politics of Nature (Latour 2004) I have always admired environmentalists forin the ways in which they have multiplied the issues to be tackled, and but I have also criticized the general representation they provide of their many useful fights. Yet Theis is why the difference between the environmental movement and difference with the history of the social movements is so striking. Since From the mid- 19th century until to the mid- 20th century, socialists as well as communists have tried to rethink the entirety of Western philosophy to frame the fights against inequalities and injustice. It is true that they had Hegel to help them frame the whole circus! The work carried out ofby political ecology was never developed to that extent. They have absorbed swallowed hook, line, and sinker the perverse notion of a nature --, and especially its exteriority to politics --,, the notion of the global, and the whole ideal of objective science, in a way that has ensured thatsuch a way that in the end the connection between social movements and ecological movements have remained separated. Nature has indeed remained distinct and exterior to politics proper, . Justjust as it was entrenched in Western philosophy in the 17th and 18th century. I agree that it was easier to to frame the social movements rather than the ecological onemovement, especially for people in the West, but still, the work of rethinking nature and science should have been carried out.