Pub Date : 2024-03-20DOI: 10.1177/25148486241239815
David Harnesk, David O’Byrne
In Sweden, Indigenous Sámi reindeer pastoralists must find effective ways to improve ecological conditions conducive to natural pasture-based reindeer pastoralism in a rapidly changing environment. In particular, they must challenge the conventional climate policy agenda of the dominant economic and political actors. This paper seeks to contribute to the emergence of a social movement that can push for reforms towards such improvements. Theoretically, we combine a theory of hegemony and counter-hegemonic politics, and the contentious politics approach to social movement theory, to discuss how meaningful reforms could be achieved by assembling a broad social coalition. Empirically, we examine 10 years of data from a public media outlet that reports on Sámi issues to show what demands are being made, who is making them, and the reforms and changes in social relations that they imply. The analysis identifies current coalitions and demand clusters. We discuss potential opportunities for a new reform agenda and actor constellations, with a focus on rural and Indigenous cultures and livelihoods, in relation to a broader environmental movement.
{"title":"Reforms and coalition building around the reindeer pastoralism of the Indigenous Sámi people in Sweden, 2012–2022","authors":"David Harnesk, David O’Byrne","doi":"10.1177/25148486241239815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241239815","url":null,"abstract":"In Sweden, Indigenous Sámi reindeer pastoralists must find effective ways to improve ecological conditions conducive to natural pasture-based reindeer pastoralism in a rapidly changing environment. In particular, they must challenge the conventional climate policy agenda of the dominant economic and political actors. This paper seeks to contribute to the emergence of a social movement that can push for reforms towards such improvements. Theoretically, we combine a theory of hegemony and counter-hegemonic politics, and the contentious politics approach to social movement theory, to discuss how meaningful reforms could be achieved by assembling a broad social coalition. Empirically, we examine 10 years of data from a public media outlet that reports on Sámi issues to show what demands are being made, who is making them, and the reforms and changes in social relations that they imply. The analysis identifies current coalitions and demand clusters. We discuss potential opportunities for a new reform agenda and actor constellations, with a focus on rural and Indigenous cultures and livelihoods, in relation to a broader environmental movement.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"27 16","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140226117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-18DOI: 10.1177/25148486241238663
Pancho Lewis
This paper draws on the concept of ‘attachment’ to examine pro-coal sentiment in Whitehaven – an English town at the centre of global political controversy because of a plan to open a coal mine in the area. Drawing on fieldwork data, I show that pro-mine persuasions among some residents are underpinned by a process of ‘re-attaching’ to coal. I argue that the case of the Whitehaven mine is a warning about how fossil fuels might re-emerge as promissory objects in other parts of the world, even when a transition away from fossil fuels has been completed. Paradoxically, the very disorientations and deepening traumas that climate change is causing threaten to spur on the rise of fossil fuel (re-)attachments. The paper also examines how pro-coal discourses linked to wider vested interests are received in a context where coal exists as ‘afterlife’. Consequently, local actors construct narratives that legitimise new coal extraction by (re)articulating discourses of delay. My findings are thus a reminder of the need to guard against over-valorising ‘the grassroots’, arguably a risk in environmental justice scholarship. I conclude by calling for further empirical research on the way attachments to high-carbon objects are (re/de)composed, an urgent task given the need for rapid societal decarbonisation – one which has received very little attention to date.
{"title":"Re-attaching to coal in a Climate Emergency: The case of the Whitehaven mine","authors":"Pancho Lewis","doi":"10.1177/25148486241238663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241238663","url":null,"abstract":"This paper draws on the concept of ‘attachment’ to examine pro-coal sentiment in Whitehaven – an English town at the centre of global political controversy because of a plan to open a coal mine in the area. Drawing on fieldwork data, I show that pro-mine persuasions among some residents are underpinned by a process of ‘re-attaching’ to coal. I argue that the case of the Whitehaven mine is a warning about how fossil fuels might re-emerge as promissory objects in other parts of the world, even when a transition away from fossil fuels has been completed. Paradoxically, the very disorientations and deepening traumas that climate change is causing threaten to spur on the rise of fossil fuel (re-)attachments. The paper also examines how pro-coal discourses linked to wider vested interests are received in a context where coal exists as ‘afterlife’. Consequently, local actors construct narratives that legitimise new coal extraction by (re)articulating discourses of delay. My findings are thus a reminder of the need to guard against over-valorising ‘the grassroots’, arguably a risk in environmental justice scholarship. I conclude by calling for further empirical research on the way attachments to high-carbon objects are (re/de)composed, an urgent task given the need for rapid societal decarbonisation – one which has received very little attention to date.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"346 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140232626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-15DOI: 10.1177/25148486241235821
Zach Tabor, Matthew Fry, Jamie Johnson
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is now a major health concern among US cervid populations, including white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus). Texas is home to the greatest number of deer breeding facilities and most bred deer in the United States. The vast majority of the state's CWD cases occur at deer breeding facilities. CWD risk on deer breeding facilities is largely owed to the close proximity of deer pens. To reduce the risk of CWD transmission, state authorities use strict management strategies including culling of infected and potentially infected deer populations. State wildlife biologists provide recommendations that inform the CWD containment strategies. However, there is contention between deer breeders and state wildlife authorities over CWD. Property contradictions—whereby the state must manage the public trust deer herd on privately owned land—complicates the state's biopower and provides breeders the opportunity to reconfigure biopolitics. We draw on qualitative research data to demonstrate how CWD science becomes entangled among trophy antler genetics, physical abnormalities, ranching science, conspiracy narratives, hunting culture, and public trust property. We show how both the state and private entrepreneurs manipulate scientific knowledge toward the regulation of bodies: hunters, ranchers, and deer breeders on one hand, and the animals themselves, on the other.
{"title":"Breeding distrust: The biopolitics of chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer","authors":"Zach Tabor, Matthew Fry, Jamie Johnson","doi":"10.1177/25148486241235821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241235821","url":null,"abstract":"Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is now a major health concern among US cervid populations, including white-tailed deer ( Odocoileus virginianus). Texas is home to the greatest number of deer breeding facilities and most bred deer in the United States. The vast majority of the state's CWD cases occur at deer breeding facilities. CWD risk on deer breeding facilities is largely owed to the close proximity of deer pens. To reduce the risk of CWD transmission, state authorities use strict management strategies including culling of infected and potentially infected deer populations. State wildlife biologists provide recommendations that inform the CWD containment strategies. However, there is contention between deer breeders and state wildlife authorities over CWD. Property contradictions—whereby the state must manage the public trust deer herd on privately owned land—complicates the state's biopower and provides breeders the opportunity to reconfigure biopolitics. We draw on qualitative research data to demonstrate how CWD science becomes entangled among trophy antler genetics, physical abnormalities, ranching science, conspiracy narratives, hunting culture, and public trust property. We show how both the state and private entrepreneurs manipulate scientific knowledge toward the regulation of bodies: hunters, ranchers, and deer breeders on one hand, and the animals themselves, on the other.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"57 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140237414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1177/25148486241238398
Georgia de Leeuw, Valentin Vogl
The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm.
{"title":"Scrutinising commodity hype in imaginaries of the Swedish green steel transition","authors":"Georgia de Leeuw, Valentin Vogl","doi":"10.1177/25148486241238398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241238398","url":null,"abstract":"The technological push for hydrogen-based steel production has become a flagship project of the Swedish state for advancing its global environmental leadership and becoming the world's first fossil free welfare state. The new production process has the potential to drastically cut emissions in a heavy polluting industry. The plans also entail a drastic upscale in steel production, energy and iron ore consumption and risk increasing existing pressures on Indigenous Sami land, local communities, and biodiversity. This article sets out to investigate the frontier-making function of green steel imaginaries to contribute to debates on sacrificed spaces of extraction for green commodity demand. The article speaks to a call for a critical turn in sustainability transitions literature by introducing the concept of hype to scrutinise the material consequences of growth-based green transition imaginaries. This article builds on a narrative analysis of government, industry, and company actors’ visions of a green steel future. The analysis illustrates how sociotechnical imaginaries are constructed to enable particular industrial futures over other green transition pathways. We show that the sociotechnical imaginary of green steel, fuelled through hype, serves to advance the new commodity and growth of the industry while effectively cancelling out democratic nuance and non-extractive alternatives. The findings illustrate the importance of pluralising green imaginaries to ensure inclusive transition pathways and to nuance and discursively dismantle the hype of green transitions that fail to break with the growth paradigm.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"5 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140244471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1177/25148486241238402
Francis Dakyaga, Sophie Schramm, J. Lupala, D. Magembe-Mushi
Though urban scholars have drawn our attention to the multiple water infrastructures serving urbanites in the global South, studies rarely explored the practice through which prices are produced and governed within the heterogeneous infrastructures that supply water beyond the utility. Drawing perspectives from everyday pricing practices and heterogeneous water infrastructures, we contribute to the scientific discourse on heterogeneous infrastructures, everyday practices and infrastructure governance by showing how multiple infrastructural systems beyond the utility network, such as hydro-mobile and private network water providers produced prices to mediate water collection. Prices were established based on the cost of electricity, fuel, repairs and maintenance, location and/or distance, nature of road connectivity to clients’ residences, and providers’ expected profit margins. Water providers’ discretions and learning by doing enabled the continuity of pricing practices. The conventional practice of non-collective negotiation and bargaining produced specific prices between water providers and end-users. The novelty of the paper emanates from the ways in which prices are produced and governed. In contrast to conventional tariff systems, reflectivity, creativity, practical knowledge and experiences acquired by non-state actors over time works to produce prices. The involved non-state actors exercised regulatory power over prices of water produced and supplied beyond the utility. When prices were established, they remained subject to modification. We argue that the focus on pricing sheds light on an important aspect of heterogeneous infrastructure provision and governance: where varied prices are established outside formal regulation, they reflect, shape and exacerbate fine-grained socio-spatial differences between individuals within single neighbourhood.
{"title":"Charging the non-networked: Water pricing governance of the heterogeneous infrastructures beyond the utility network in Dar es Salaam","authors":"Francis Dakyaga, Sophie Schramm, J. Lupala, D. Magembe-Mushi","doi":"10.1177/25148486241238402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241238402","url":null,"abstract":"Though urban scholars have drawn our attention to the multiple water infrastructures serving urbanites in the global South, studies rarely explored the practice through which prices are produced and governed within the heterogeneous infrastructures that supply water beyond the utility. Drawing perspectives from everyday pricing practices and heterogeneous water infrastructures, we contribute to the scientific discourse on heterogeneous infrastructures, everyday practices and infrastructure governance by showing how multiple infrastructural systems beyond the utility network, such as hydro-mobile and private network water providers produced prices to mediate water collection. Prices were established based on the cost of electricity, fuel, repairs and maintenance, location and/or distance, nature of road connectivity to clients’ residences, and providers’ expected profit margins. Water providers’ discretions and learning by doing enabled the continuity of pricing practices. The conventional practice of non-collective negotiation and bargaining produced specific prices between water providers and end-users. The novelty of the paper emanates from the ways in which prices are produced and governed. In contrast to conventional tariff systems, reflectivity, creativity, practical knowledge and experiences acquired by non-state actors over time works to produce prices. The involved non-state actors exercised regulatory power over prices of water produced and supplied beyond the utility. When prices were established, they remained subject to modification. We argue that the focus on pricing sheds light on an important aspect of heterogeneous infrastructure provision and governance: where varied prices are established outside formal regulation, they reflect, shape and exacerbate fine-grained socio-spatial differences between individuals within single neighbourhood.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"8 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140244565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-29DOI: 10.1177/25148486241229011
Chase A Niesner, Christopher Kelty, Spencer Robins
Coyotes (Canis latrans) exist throughout North America and increasingly thrive in dense urban spaces; they also cause controversies when they eat small pets or seem to pose a threat. Based on fieldwork in Los Angeles, and an archive of over 400 conversations collected from the online application Nextdoor (2015–2019), we theorize the emergence of what we call the cloud coyote. Cloud coyotes are not representations but lively actors in coyote politics animated by discussion, debate, and a settler logic of property relations in places like Los Angeles. They do this by performing a threat and justifying a response that includes various attempts at extermination, containment, and assimilation, all of which—even supposedly humane alternatives—further sediment forms of settler colonialism in urban Los Angeles. We diagnose this process, show how it works, and argue that anticolonial practices—in both Los Angeles and its cloudy territories like Nextdoor—are needed to escape from perpetuating its violence.
{"title":"The coyote in the cloud","authors":"Chase A Niesner, Christopher Kelty, Spencer Robins","doi":"10.1177/25148486241229011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241229011","url":null,"abstract":"Coyotes (Canis latrans) exist throughout North America and increasingly thrive in dense urban spaces; they also cause controversies when they eat small pets or seem to pose a threat. Based on fieldwork in Los Angeles, and an archive of over 400 conversations collected from the online application Nextdoor (2015–2019), we theorize the emergence of what we call the cloud coyote. Cloud coyotes are not representations but lively actors in coyote politics animated by discussion, debate, and a settler logic of property relations in places like Los Angeles. They do this by performing a threat and justifying a response that includes various attempts at extermination, containment, and assimilation, all of which—even supposedly humane alternatives—further sediment forms of settler colonialism in urban Los Angeles. We diagnose this process, show how it works, and argue that anticolonial practices—in both Los Angeles and its cloudy territories like Nextdoor—are needed to escape from perpetuating its violence.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140416025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-22DOI: 10.1177/25148486241231205
G. Enticott, Kieran O’Mahony
This paper seeks to understand how caring for new-born livestock is made possible, which practices of care are privileged and to what effect? These aims are situated in attempts to promote the prudent use of antibiotics amongst livestock farmers to prevent antimicrobial resistance. In focusing on the rearing of new-born calves on dairy and beef farms in England and Wales, the paper reveals how care is configured by different temporal orders, the tensions between different temporalities of care, the reasons for them and the strategies employed by calf rearers to manage these tensions. Drawing on the concept of the ‘timescape’, the paper shows how calf care temporalities are relationally enacted and configured by materials, infrastructures and technologies. Common (productivist) agricultural temporalities of care emphasise speed, urgency and efficiency. However, by analysing the practice of feeding colostrum and ‘tubing’ – the forced feeding of calves via a tube inserted into the oesophagus – we highlight how these rapid caring temporalities conflict with the slower, patient skills of calf rearing. At the same time, however, we show how care is rendered fluid as calf rearers find ways of accommodating seemingly discordant temporalities – what we call ‘patient urgence’ – allowing different temporalities to co-exist within agricultural timescapes. Nevertheless, we show how these practices of accommodation are themselves the result of a productivist temporal order that marginalises calves and calf rearers. We argue that these timescapes point to the need for broader structural and cultural changes within agriculture to reduce the use of antibiotics.
{"title":"Feeding time(s): Patient urgence and the careful temporalities of antimicrobial resistance","authors":"G. Enticott, Kieran O’Mahony","doi":"10.1177/25148486241231205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241231205","url":null,"abstract":"This paper seeks to understand how caring for new-born livestock is made possible, which practices of care are privileged and to what effect? These aims are situated in attempts to promote the prudent use of antibiotics amongst livestock farmers to prevent antimicrobial resistance. In focusing on the rearing of new-born calves on dairy and beef farms in England and Wales, the paper reveals how care is configured by different temporal orders, the tensions between different temporalities of care, the reasons for them and the strategies employed by calf rearers to manage these tensions. Drawing on the concept of the ‘timescape’, the paper shows how calf care temporalities are relationally enacted and configured by materials, infrastructures and technologies. Common (productivist) agricultural temporalities of care emphasise speed, urgency and efficiency. However, by analysing the practice of feeding colostrum and ‘tubing’ – the forced feeding of calves via a tube inserted into the oesophagus – we highlight how these rapid caring temporalities conflict with the slower, patient skills of calf rearing. At the same time, however, we show how care is rendered fluid as calf rearers find ways of accommodating seemingly discordant temporalities – what we call ‘patient urgence’ – allowing different temporalities to co-exist within agricultural timescapes. Nevertheless, we show how these practices of accommodation are themselves the result of a productivist temporal order that marginalises calves and calf rearers. We argue that these timescapes point to the need for broader structural and cultural changes within agriculture to reduce the use of antibiotics.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"17 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140440885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-12DOI: 10.1177/25148486241230187
Filippo Menga, Alberto Vanolo
This paper mobilises the idea of impossible worlds to conceptualise and explore inconsistent and illogical visions and ways of living sustainably. Specifically, the paper focuses on an understanding of sustainability based on classic Kantian universalistic ethics (suppose everyone did the same) and relative feelings of responsibility and guilt for the environment. By mobilising three vignettes, the paper argues that impossibility is present in current environmental thinking, and narratives of impossibility have an emotional and political role in shaping popular discourses concerning environmentalism and responsibility. It suggests that exploring glitches, impossibilities, contradictions and inconsistencies may contribute to understanding the role of personal guilt in sustainability narratives, and potentially trigger change.
{"title":"Sustainability and impossible worlds","authors":"Filippo Menga, Alberto Vanolo","doi":"10.1177/25148486241230187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241230187","url":null,"abstract":"This paper mobilises the idea of impossible worlds to conceptualise and explore inconsistent and illogical visions and ways of living sustainably. Specifically, the paper focuses on an understanding of sustainability based on classic Kantian universalistic ethics (suppose everyone did the same) and relative feelings of responsibility and guilt for the environment. By mobilising three vignettes, the paper argues that impossibility is present in current environmental thinking, and narratives of impossibility have an emotional and political role in shaping popular discourses concerning environmentalism and responsibility. It suggests that exploring glitches, impossibilities, contradictions and inconsistencies may contribute to understanding the role of personal guilt in sustainability narratives, and potentially trigger change.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"8 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139782807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-12DOI: 10.1177/25148486241230187
Filippo Menga, Alberto Vanolo
This paper mobilises the idea of impossible worlds to conceptualise and explore inconsistent and illogical visions and ways of living sustainably. Specifically, the paper focuses on an understanding of sustainability based on classic Kantian universalistic ethics (suppose everyone did the same) and relative feelings of responsibility and guilt for the environment. By mobilising three vignettes, the paper argues that impossibility is present in current environmental thinking, and narratives of impossibility have an emotional and political role in shaping popular discourses concerning environmentalism and responsibility. It suggests that exploring glitches, impossibilities, contradictions and inconsistencies may contribute to understanding the role of personal guilt in sustainability narratives, and potentially trigger change.
{"title":"Sustainability and impossible worlds","authors":"Filippo Menga, Alberto Vanolo","doi":"10.1177/25148486241230187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241230187","url":null,"abstract":"This paper mobilises the idea of impossible worlds to conceptualise and explore inconsistent and illogical visions and ways of living sustainably. Specifically, the paper focuses on an understanding of sustainability based on classic Kantian universalistic ethics (suppose everyone did the same) and relative feelings of responsibility and guilt for the environment. By mobilising three vignettes, the paper argues that impossibility is present in current environmental thinking, and narratives of impossibility have an emotional and political role in shaping popular discourses concerning environmentalism and responsibility. It suggests that exploring glitches, impossibilities, contradictions and inconsistencies may contribute to understanding the role of personal guilt in sustainability narratives, and potentially trigger change.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"230 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139842473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As communities around the world grapple with the impacts of climate change on the basic support systems of life, their future climate imaginaries both shape and are shaped by actions and material realities. This paper argues that the three globally dominant imaginaries of a climate changed future, which we call ‘business as usual’, ‘techno-fix’ and ‘apocalypse’ – fail to encourage actions that fundamentally challenge or transform the arrangements that underpin systemic injustices and extractive forms of life. And yet, to meet the challenges associated with food production, energy needs, and the destruction of ecosystems, people are coming together, not only to take transformative action, but in doing so, to create and nurture alternative imaginaries. This paper presents empirical findings about how communities in north and south India and south-east Australia are pre-figuring alternative futures, locally and in most cases in the absence of broader state support. An analysis of communities’ actions and reflections indicates that their praxes are altering their future imaginaries, and we consider how these local shifts might contribute to broader changes in climate imaginaries. At the heart of the emerging imaginaries are a set of transformations in the relational fabric within which communities are embedded and how they attend to those relations: relations within community, with the more-than-human, and with time.
{"title":"Climate imaginaries as praxis","authors":"Danielle Celermajer, Maria Cardoso, Josh Gowers, Deepthi Indukuri, Pragnya Khanna, Rohit Nair, Janet Orlene, Vpj Sambhavi, D. Schlosberg, Mayank Shah, Sacha Shaw, Aadya Singh, Gijs Spoor, Genevieve Wright","doi":"10.1177/25148486241230186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241230186","url":null,"abstract":"As communities around the world grapple with the impacts of climate change on the basic support systems of life, their future climate imaginaries both shape and are shaped by actions and material realities. This paper argues that the three globally dominant imaginaries of a climate changed future, which we call ‘business as usual’, ‘techno-fix’ and ‘apocalypse’ – fail to encourage actions that fundamentally challenge or transform the arrangements that underpin systemic injustices and extractive forms of life. And yet, to meet the challenges associated with food production, energy needs, and the destruction of ecosystems, people are coming together, not only to take transformative action, but in doing so, to create and nurture alternative imaginaries. This paper presents empirical findings about how communities in north and south India and south-east Australia are pre-figuring alternative futures, locally and in most cases in the absence of broader state support. An analysis of communities’ actions and reflections indicates that their praxes are altering their future imaginaries, and we consider how these local shifts might contribute to broader changes in climate imaginaries. At the heart of the emerging imaginaries are a set of transformations in the relational fabric within which communities are embedded and how they attend to those relations: relations within community, with the more-than-human, and with time.","PeriodicalId":507916,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space","volume":"117 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139794197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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