Departing from a critique of Alain Lipietz's concept of Political Ecology for its failure to integrate Political Ecology and the Theory of Regulation, we present a possible way of integrating the two approaches via the formulation of a sixth structural form: social relations towards nature or ecological constraint. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of this category by applying it to an analysis of recent developments in the biotechnology industry.
political ecology; theory of regulation; A. Lipietz.