Against Project Arcadia

• Author: David Jenkins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221128891
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221128891

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(1) 112 –125

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917221128891

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Article

Against Project Arcadia

David Jenkins1

Abstract

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The

ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective

but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will

political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What

claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-

five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in

their future contexts? How will the consistent concerns of political theorists

evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from

now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough

equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is

one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries.

Our earth is approaching its end. Through Project Arcadia our species has

a chance at escape. In this paper, I want to argue that Arcadia is all things

considered unjustifiable and unadvisable. It is unjustifiable because human

beings have proven themselves incapable of stewarding sentient life on

planet earth; for example, our collective response to climate change has

been dire, handled almost exclusively through adaptation, committing vast

areas of the world to desolation, desertification, or disappearance. Basic

respect for life, and what we likely will make of some other instances of it,

should counsel humility as we contemplate relocating ourselves to other

life-supporting domains. It is inadvisable because our species, like the

1Department of Politics, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Corresponding Author:

David Jenkins, Department of Politics, University of Otago, PO Box 56 Dunedin, Dunedin,

9054, New Zealand.

Email: david.jenkins@otago.ac.nz

1128891PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221128891Political TheoryJenkins

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