Contesting eco-modernist hegemony in Denmark? Green reform nexus and transformative climate advocacy in an established environmental state

Across green political theory, social movement studies, and environmental sociology, debates on how to theorize the dynamics of contention involved in societal shifts towards more transformative and just sustainability remain underdeveloped. This paper presents a conceptual encounter between neo-Marxist and pragmatic-sociology contributions, further developing Eve Chiapello’s concept of ‘green reform nexus’ in the latter tradition. This aims to capture the roles of knowledge-based critique, alliance-building, and civic learning at stake in contestations of state-imposed pathways to green transition. The paper deploys this framework in analyzing three ongoing public-activist trajectories in Denmark: attempts to impose accountability for global climate justice; to de-grow the country’s animal-industrial agricultural sector; and to re-invent ecological democracy through stronger citizen participation. Together, the paper concludes, the three trajectories seriously challenge eco-modernist hegemony in this established environmental state, enacting an ecological bifurcation and signaling where green contention is likely to move also in other Euro-American settings.