The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds. We start by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. We then focus on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controversial processbased on normative judgments, ethical concerns, and socio-political strugglesit has the potential to offer guidelines for a just, social-ecological transformation. Collective autonomy and the politics of self-limitation are key elements of societal boundaries and are linked to important proposals and pluriverse experiences to integrate well-being and boundaries. The role of the state and propositions for radical alternative approaches to well-being have particular importance. We conclude with reflections on social freedom, defined as the right not to live at others' expense. Toward the aim of defining boundaries through transdisciplinary and democratic processes, we seek to open a dialogue on these issues.

This article situates the Marikana massacre, in which 34 mine workers were gunned down by police in South Africa, in the context of what the South African state has become, and questions the characterisation of the post-Apartheid state as a “developmental state”. This contribution first highlights what is at stake when the post-Apartheid state is portrayed as a “developmental state” and how this misrecognition of the state is ideologically constituted. Second, it argues for an approach to understanding the post-Apartheid state by locating it within the context of the rise of transnational neoliberalism and the process of indigenising neoliberalism on the African continent. Third, it examines the actual economic practices of the state that constitute it as an Afro-neoliberal state. Such economic practices are historicised to show the convergence between the post-Apartheid state and the ideal type neoliberal state coming to the fore in the context of global neoliberal restructuring and crisis management. The article concludes by recognising that South Africa's deep globalisation and globalised state affirm a form of state practice beyond utilising market mechanisms that includes perpetrating violence to secure its existence. Marikana makes this point.

In the global South, 850 million people remain food insecure, that is, unable to meet daily food requirements. Meanwhile global food value chains are increasingly controlled by a few transnational corporations. The food production and consumption pattern engendered by the globalized agro‐food complex is worsening food insecurity and ultimately increasing hunger among millions of people. Post‐apartheid South Africa has not escaped this pattern of development. Actually, the neoliberalization of the post‐apartheid political economy has deepened the externalization of South African agriculture from an internationalized agro‐food complex to a globalized model, exacerbating food insecurity. This essay highlights how the apartheid era agro‐food complex was restructured and globalized. It points to the neoliberal reforms that have shaped the pattern of development of the agro‐food complex, which historically was mainly structured around “white controlled cooperatives,” but has been locked into the search for “competitive advantage” as opposed to meeting people's needs.

<p>South Africa is the twelfth highest emitter of carbon emissions in the world. It has an energy intensity and per capita usage of fossil fuel energy that surpasses other countries in the BRICS, it is currently building one the largest coal-fired power stations in the world, and is championing a green neo-liberal approach to the climate change crisis. This article investigates how the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) developed an approach to climate justice and is intervening to shape policy around the just transition in South Africa. The article explores the factors that contributed to NUMSA’s embrace of a politics of climate justice, the internal education and policy capacity developed in the union and the campaigns championed to advance climate justice. The article provides insights into how NUMSA has campaigned around energy efficiency and electricity price increases, influenced and monitored the roll out of solar water geysers and has advanced a position on socially owned renewable energy.</p>

No abstract