The old sovereignty argument led us to believe that food, water, and land would belong to the people again. This argument ignored the fact that capitalist restructuring in the name of sovereignty always meant more wealth for the same people. Nevertheless, new sovereignists are repeating this mantra. However, a new vision of sovereignty is emerging from those who have been reduced to colonies, such as ecological sovereignty. Taking the World Economic Forum in Davos as a starting point, Irina Velicu dares to connect the dots.
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Davos produced a spectacle of moral outrage, but talking shame to corporations has never gotten us anywhere. Admittedly, we admire the moral ambition of historian Rutger Bregman directly asking multi-billionaires “what are you willing to abolish” in exchange for no-tax privileges as ‘stewards of progress.’ Since no political negotiations are proposed for systemic changes and ecosystem selling is thriving with the help of AI, Bregman’s question can be restated: Which ‘barbarisms’ are perpetuated to justify this ‘civilization’?
Fiction of democracy
In response to the events in Davos, some argued that the fiction of democracy has ended. For example, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu identified clear signs of this in Mark Carney’s speech. Tichindeleanu states: “The reference to Vaclav Havel and the comparison between the state of ‘communism’ in the late 1980s and the state of global capitalism in the late 2020s revealed more than he [Mark Carney] intended (…) It thus turns out that the meaning of the transition that Eastern Europe went through was not so much democracy as obedience and obedient alignment with the rich and powerful in a global class struggle. (…) It can be assumed that in the engines of world powers there was a fundamental consensus between the liberal trend and the conservative trend within Western representative democracy.”
The post-communist transition was more honest than this so-called green transition. In 1980s Romania, it was common to discuss sacrifice. We were a sacrifice zone, and we knew it. People even joked about being a ‘sacrificial generation’ to show our almost identitarian pride and demonstrate our awareness of the situation. We knew we were being screwed over so that the ‘new generation’ (maybe) could live better while ‘the West’ took pride in being saviors. Nevertheless, there was always doubt, which was not fiction as the prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, implied at Davos.
‘Military collaboration’
As expected, opinion leaders at Davos are asking us to normalize arms production in Europe rather than create jobs in sustainable industries. If ‘military collaboration’ is the only form of collaboration in a multipolar world, then being competitive or productive is deadly. Indigenous peoples long ago recognized that the “deadly hierarchies of life” could not be the sole basis of civilization (TallBear 2019).
For moral outrage to become political, there must be a true renegotiation of labor and sovereignty regimes that goes beyond the arbitration of private tribunals of corporate power (Velicu et al., 2026; Triefus, 2024; Tienhaara et al., 2023). The just transition may be postponed by never-ending legal cases. Investor-state arbitration (ISDS) is a bad deal and a good show for the political story of capitalism, which wants us to forget its ‘civilized’ father figures. The irony of such a civilization is seen again in the event of genocide, for which the Pentagon is buying ‘infinite justice.’
Hallucinate about progress
The most unbearable thing about populism nowadays is that it continues to force us to hallucinate about progress. They insist that they are saving our world! Are we talking about care or violence? When these boundaries are simultaneously visible and invisibilized, we indeed feel psychotic. As Lauren Berlant warned us, optimism can be cruel. The imminent moment, or the doomsday clock, reminds us of the real and the Real, putting us in the mirror of the political problem of our moral outrage.
Slavoj Žižek referenced the June 5, 2006 Time magazine cover story titled “The Deadliest War in the World” to highlight the invisibility of certain types of extreme violence in Western media and humanitarian discourse. Regarding this issue, Žižek has written that there can be no universal ethics (the dream of all civilizations and religions) without a fetishistic disavowal of one’s own atrocities and traumas. This is not a new phenomenon; there have been other pivotal moments when humanity has had to confront its limits of self-destruction. Ultimately, I ask: What do we humans care about?
Humanity’s inhumanity
The Davos meeting did not address the fundamental question of humanity’s inhumanity. As long as the disparity between the rich and poor continues to grow, legal guarantees for fictitious commodities will not be a priority unless they are backed by labor guarantees. Some have called for various forms of universal basic income, but what else is out there besides emergency exits and voluntary conduct? If humanity still claims the human rights of dignity, consciousness, and freedom, then the new techno-political regime must guarantee more than legal personality for AI to a few corporate superpowers.
The absurdity of these regimes is overwhelming, which is why the concept of dignity is embraced by all conservatives and populists. They always know how to gauge the people’s emotions and declare emergencies. However, taking advantage of people’s basic fears, frustrations, and insecurities is just as abusive as ignoring them. More and more, we sense being insidiously blackmailed because, no matter how isolated we are from each other as workers, we can still see ourselves as such, and we must handle the damage together.
However, as conservatives think, hearts and minds are not automatically attuned in pre-established relationships. The co-presence and mutual connection of people is not just physical; people can also care for each other at a conscious level. Hegemony may be born in an invisible factory, but its social fabric is now vomiting from unbearable oppressive relations. If the substance of the state itself is no longer real, should we discuss sovereignty?
Whose sovereignty?
The old sovereignty argument should not please the new sovereignists. The old idea makes us believe that ‘food, water, and land’ will belong to the people again, as if previous transitions did not already mean more wealth for the same people. The renegotiation must be done with transparency because what is at stake is not just the growth of nations anymore. Planetary civilization should not be a game of survival of the fittest. It has a higher collective consciousness, which is to protect each other, our loved ones, and ourselves, even when that seems impossible.
A new vision of sovereignty – ecological sovereignty, for example – is emerging from those who have been reduced to colonies. Indigenous leaders are demanding recognition as the solution to the crisis, yet their voices are still not being heard by leaders. Recognizing the intangible values of current disasters should allow for a language and logic of resource reproduction, in which food production is not divorced from ancient knowledge. For example, if science supports technology and technology is rooted in territorial and land sovereignty, then a renegotiation of global sovereignty should entail the transfer of more than just potentially exploitable resources (TallBear, 2019, p. 79).
Ohana lands may remain in Ohana hands, but this is not just a safe haven in Hawaii. If the Ohana are excluded from establishing the logic and language that govern how resources are managed, then the land’s meaning as interdependent kin life and health will be lost (Diver et al., 2024). Any government established by leaders will not suffice. From an indigenous sovereignty perspective, our relationship with land, forests, and waters is first and foremost a relationship with ourselves.
Care at multiple scales of socio-ecological relations
If your conduct is based on neglect, abuse, and other forms of violence, moral outrage is only one level of introspection one should allow for self-awareness. But what kind of care does the current development logic have? Clearly, the patriarchal, colonial, hierarchical logic prevails, but we must resist the dreams of progress toward an ever-elusive future of tolerance and goodness. These dreams paradoxically require ongoing genocidal and anti-Black violence, as well as violence toward many de-animated bodies (TallBear, 2019).
Negotiations can no longer be conducted separately with each state or territory as if they were precarious workers on the world market. While the planet has become a depopulated global village, states can no longer function as hotels where people come and go. Flexible labor is mostly precarious and has become a global danger. The language of labor valuation must be revised, not just in relation to wages, but also with regard to the means of reproduction within a social fabric or class that maintains some democratic control. In the meantime, internationalizing sovereignty only makes imperial powers more visible.
It is now clearer than ever that what we are feeling and fearing is an intimate form of structural violence resulting from the enclosure of collective care at multiple scales of socio-ecological relations. In political terms, this translates into labor and sovereignty regimes. Many people are grieving the loss of vital tangible and intangible infrastructures of care, from land, animals, and forests to their own extended families, health, and basic material needs. Care has always been a complex set of practices and bodily and emotional relations. Trying to mechanize it will require much more than technological fabrics. The terms of the social contract for caring for each other on this planet must be rewritten