Pub Date : 2022-10-12DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2135062
Vinay Sankar
ABSTRACT As India is releasing its third National Water Policy in the last 20 years, this paper seeks to review the earlier policies relevant to a critical yet under-studied surface water ecosystem of rural community ponds. The paper examines how the notion of commodification informed the policies on water, land and local democracy, impacting the governance of rural community ponds in the state of Kerala, India. The review shows that while earlier country-level policies largely showed a tendency to treat water as a commodity, decommodification tendencies are perceptible in the water policy of Kerala. Nonetheless, the land reforms in Kerala resulted in Dalit Bahujans being systematically excluded from accessing land, even though it ended the operation of commoditised human bodies, and enforced land ceilings. Huge tracts of plantations were kept out of the purview of land reforms, signifying the operation of commodification. A positive aspect of the land ceilings was that many private enclosures like rural ponds were transferred to the state. The reforms in local democracy, to a great extent, led to accessible policy-making. The framework of ‘double movement’ is useful in analysing the trends in environmental sociology and evaluating policies related to socio-ecological systems.
{"title":"Commons, communities and commodification: a review of reforms in land, water and local democracy in Kerala, India","authors":"Vinay Sankar","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2135062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2135062","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As India is releasing its third National Water Policy in the last 20 years, this paper seeks to review the earlier policies relevant to a critical yet under-studied surface water ecosystem of rural community ponds. The paper examines how the notion of commodification informed the policies on water, land and local democracy, impacting the governance of rural community ponds in the state of Kerala, India. The review shows that while earlier country-level policies largely showed a tendency to treat water as a commodity, decommodification tendencies are perceptible in the water policy of Kerala. Nonetheless, the land reforms in Kerala resulted in Dalit Bahujans being systematically excluded from accessing land, even though it ended the operation of commoditised human bodies, and enforced land ceilings. Huge tracts of plantations were kept out of the purview of land reforms, signifying the operation of commodification. A positive aspect of the land ceilings was that many private enclosures like rural ponds were transferred to the state. The reforms in local democracy, to a great extent, led to accessible policy-making. The framework of ‘double movement’ is useful in analysing the trends in environmental sociology and evaluating policies related to socio-ecological systems.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48509090","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 : 2022-09-24DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2124623
N. Weins, A. Zhu, J. Qian, Fabiana Barbi Seleguim, Leila da Costa Ferreira
ABSTRACT In the Anthropocene, debates about global climate risks have taken carbon as a measure of policy success, with land-based mitigation strategies like afforestation receiving particular scrutiny. While scientists and policymakers discuss forestry as a potential climate solution, China has been implementing massive forestry projects for decades, drastically transforming environments under the Ecological Civilization framework. This article showcases China’s globally emerging paradigm of Eco-Civilization and its implications for the climate-forestry nexus. Drawing parallels with Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘metamorphosis’ and Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘mutation,’ we argue that China’s Eco-Civilization aspires to a fundamental transformation in worldview – but one that is promoted as distinctly non-Western. We use the case of forestry to illuminate the potentially unique features of Chinese environmentalism as encapsulated in Eco-Civilization. We find that Eco-Civilization affords a strong role for the central state in actively building and constructing an ecological future in which the natural and the socio-political are not considered separate. This is in contrast to certain Western visions of preserving nature from human encroachment through grassroots environmental movements. We conclude by highlighting the theoretical contributions more pluralized debates about China’s environmental rise could bring to environmental sociology.
{"title":"Ecological Civilization in the making: the ‘construction’ of China’s climate-forestry nexus","authors":"N. Weins, A. Zhu, J. Qian, Fabiana Barbi Seleguim, Leila da Costa Ferreira","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2124623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2124623","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the Anthropocene, debates about global climate risks have taken carbon as a measure of policy success, with land-based mitigation strategies like afforestation receiving particular scrutiny. While scientists and policymakers discuss forestry as a potential climate solution, China has been implementing massive forestry projects for decades, drastically transforming environments under the Ecological Civilization framework. This article showcases China’s globally emerging paradigm of Eco-Civilization and its implications for the climate-forestry nexus. Drawing parallels with Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‘metamorphosis’ and Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘mutation,’ we argue that China’s Eco-Civilization aspires to a fundamental transformation in worldview – but one that is promoted as distinctly non-Western. We use the case of forestry to illuminate the potentially unique features of Chinese environmentalism as encapsulated in Eco-Civilization. We find that Eco-Civilization affords a strong role for the central state in actively building and constructing an ecological future in which the natural and the socio-political are not considered separate. This is in contrast to certain Western visions of preserving nature from human encroachment through grassroots environmental movements. We conclude by highlighting the theoretical contributions more pluralized debates about China’s environmental rise could bring to environmental sociology.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48121064","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 : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2124622
Sebastian Abrahamsson
ABSTRACT This article is an empirical analysis of food waste management and food recycling in Sweden. Currently, across Sweden, attempts are being made to achieve a circular economy whereby food wastes are transformed into resources. Food waste is used to produce biogas and bio fertilizer, and the enactment of food waste as a resource turns the waste into a raw material over which waste management organizations compete. Against this backdrop, the article interferes with research in ‘waste studies’ that highlight transformation of waste into something valuable, and proposes instead to ‘defend’ waste against the CE. The paper contributes to ‘waste studies’ and research on the circular economy by cautioning about the risks involved both in the establishment of a circular economy, and the treatment of waste as valuable. The empirical material used draws on a research project in which interviews were carried out with ‘waste workers’ in Swedish waste management organizations.
{"title":"A defense of waste: the case of municipal food recycling in Sweden","authors":"Sebastian Abrahamsson","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2124622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2124622","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is an empirical analysis of food waste management and food recycling in Sweden. Currently, across Sweden, attempts are being made to achieve a circular economy whereby food wastes are transformed into resources. Food waste is used to produce biogas and bio fertilizer, and the enactment of food waste as a resource turns the waste into a raw material over which waste management organizations compete. Against this backdrop, the article interferes with research in ‘waste studies’ that highlight transformation of waste into something valuable, and proposes instead to ‘defend’ waste against the CE. The paper contributes to ‘waste studies’ and research on the circular economy by cautioning about the risks involved both in the establishment of a circular economy, and the treatment of waste as valuable. The empirical material used draws on a research project in which interviews were carried out with ‘waste workers’ in Swedish waste management organizations.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46446627","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 : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2124621
M. Paredes
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how the toxic consequences of extractive industries like mining have reconfigured both local topographies and introduced new structures and meanings regarding environmental justice and mobilization for communities living in polluted areas. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the case of Espinar in Peru, the paper explains how the company and the government’s management of uncertainty regarding land and water pollution have transformed the meaning of mobilization for communities and their capacities for cleaning or at least improving their environment. I argue that local and global connections and transnational support still open opportunities for meaningful local mobilization despite uncertainty and ambiguity in managing environmental pollution, which weakens social cohesion and fragments the positions of inhabitants concerning collective and political action. However, communities can unwillingly embrace toxic conflicts: low intense, fragmented, but persistent forms of mobilization to bargain for some form of partial compensation from the company and the state. This form of conflict reinforces the internal fragmentation of the overall community and runs against environmental justice aspirations.
{"title":"Toxic mobilization: mining, pollution and power in the highlands of Peru","authors":"M. Paredes","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2124621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2124621","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how the toxic consequences of extractive industries like mining have reconfigured both local topographies and introduced new structures and meanings regarding environmental justice and mobilization for communities living in polluted areas. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the case of Espinar in Peru, the paper explains how the company and the government’s management of uncertainty regarding land and water pollution have transformed the meaning of mobilization for communities and their capacities for cleaning or at least improving their environment. I argue that local and global connections and transnational support still open opportunities for meaningful local mobilization despite uncertainty and ambiguity in managing environmental pollution, which weakens social cohesion and fragments the positions of inhabitants concerning collective and political action. However, communities can unwillingly embrace toxic conflicts: low intense, fragmented, but persistent forms of mobilization to bargain for some form of partial compensation from the company and the state. This form of conflict reinforces the internal fragmentation of the overall community and runs against environmental justice aspirations.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59992114","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 : 2022-09-17DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2124625
R. Sony, Daniel Münster, S. Krishnan
ABSTRACT Scientific evidence and knowledge are central to movements for environmental justice. Cases of pesticide toxicity have often led to the emergence of controversies around the nature of evidence and its causal connection to observed pathologies. Toxic effects depend on multiple, situated socioecological conditions such as time and place, duration, and mode of administration, making quantifiable etiology tenuous. Research on toxic exposure issues has shown limitations of regulatory sciences in establishing causality and argued for bringing various ways of knowing to understand, acknowledge and act against harms due to exposure. This article draws on sociological research carried out in northern Kerala, where continued use of the insecticide endosulfan between 1977 and 2000 has had significant health impacts on farmworkers and the general population. We present the case of endosulfan poisoning as an instance of controversy over evidence and uncertainty about causality emerging from agriculture scientists’ insistence on proof of etiology that has effectively jeopardized justice for endosulfan victims. We argue that, in cases of economy-oriented production agriculture, powerful actors like agriculture scientists, governments and the pesticide industry use science as a tool to maintain uncertainty as a resource to obscure the truth, making claims about reparative policies and actions impossible.
{"title":"What counts as evidence? Examining the controversy over pesticide exposure and etiology in an environmental justice movement in Kerala, India","authors":"R. Sony, Daniel Münster, S. Krishnan","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2124625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2124625","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Scientific evidence and knowledge are central to movements for environmental justice. Cases of pesticide toxicity have often led to the emergence of controversies around the nature of evidence and its causal connection to observed pathologies. Toxic effects depend on multiple, situated socioecological conditions such as time and place, duration, and mode of administration, making quantifiable etiology tenuous. Research on toxic exposure issues has shown limitations of regulatory sciences in establishing causality and argued for bringing various ways of knowing to understand, acknowledge and act against harms due to exposure. This article draws on sociological research carried out in northern Kerala, where continued use of the insecticide endosulfan between 1977 and 2000 has had significant health impacts on farmworkers and the general population. We present the case of endosulfan poisoning as an instance of controversy over evidence and uncertainty about causality emerging from agriculture scientists’ insistence on proof of etiology that has effectively jeopardized justice for endosulfan victims. We argue that, in cases of economy-oriented production agriculture, powerful actors like agriculture scientists, governments and the pesticide industry use science as a tool to maintain uncertainty as a resource to obscure the truth, making claims about reparative policies and actions impossible.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47946182","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 : 2022-08-30DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2116361
Nicholas Theis, Richard York
ABSTRACT Due to the many plausible decisions researchers can make during the scientific process, varying results can be obtained to research questions. In the environmental sociological literature, key theories and findings highlight how modernization, militarization, demographic factors, and globalization and trade influence carbon dioxide emissions. We use multiverse analysis to address how robust central findings in this literature are to model specification choices. Our results indicate that findings related to modernization and demographic factors are mostly robust, while those concerning militarization and globalization are more subject to model selection.
{"title":"How Robust Are Social Structural Predictors of Carbon Dioxide Emissions? A Multiverse Analysis","authors":"Nicholas Theis, Richard York","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2116361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2116361","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Due to the many plausible decisions researchers can make during the scientific process, varying results can be obtained to research questions. In the environmental sociological literature, key theories and findings highlight how modernization, militarization, demographic factors, and globalization and trade influence carbon dioxide emissions. We use multiverse analysis to address how robust central findings in this literature are to model specification choices. Our results indicate that findings related to modernization and demographic factors are mostly robust, while those concerning militarization and globalization are more subject to model selection.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46490152","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 : 2022-08-27DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2115660
Patrick CoatarPeter, Brian J. Gareau
ABSTRACT This paper analyzes an important facet in international environmental governance: the development and implementation of Chile’s national forestry strategy. As a national program designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to enhance the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and forest carbon stocks (i.e., a national REDD+ program), Chile’s national forestry strategy demonstrates the norm diffusion and institutional structuration commonly exhibited in world polity approaches to global and transnational sociology. Yet, world-system analysis of Chile’s forest conservation program highlights the role of power and positionality along the global division of labor in its implementation. The organized hypocrisy of the Chilean state leads to means-ends decoupling in which the practices of the global institutional order are faithfully executed but have an opaque relationship to climate governance goals. This paper, then, joins a growing scholarship that combines these divergent approaches to highlight advances in environmental governance born from connection to the global institutional order of environmentalism while simultaneously explaining structural issues that hinder efforts to achieve global climate targets.
{"title":"Combining world-system and world polity approaches to analyze international environmental governance: a case study of forest governance in Chile","authors":"Patrick CoatarPeter, Brian J. Gareau","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2115660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2115660","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper analyzes an important facet in international environmental governance: the development and implementation of Chile’s national forestry strategy. As a national program designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to enhance the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and forest carbon stocks (i.e., a national REDD+ program), Chile’s national forestry strategy demonstrates the norm diffusion and institutional structuration commonly exhibited in world polity approaches to global and transnational sociology. Yet, world-system analysis of Chile’s forest conservation program highlights the role of power and positionality along the global division of labor in its implementation. The organized hypocrisy of the Chilean state leads to means-ends decoupling in which the practices of the global institutional order are faithfully executed but have an opaque relationship to climate governance goals. This paper, then, joins a growing scholarship that combines these divergent approaches to highlight advances in environmental governance born from connection to the global institutional order of environmentalism while simultaneously explaining structural issues that hinder efforts to achieve global climate targets.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48413302","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 : 2022-08-24DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2115654
J. Schwörer, Xavier Romero Vidal, S. Vallejo
ABSTRACT Social and environmental scientists usually argue that political parties hold hostile positions towards GMOs, yet we are confronted with a lack of systematic comparative analyses in the West European context. Conducting a quantitative content analysis of 265 election manifestos in seven Western European countries from 1990 until 2020, we test this assumption and explore the salience of GMOs in election manifestos and the positions of political parties on this domain. Our findings reveal that GMOs are neither a particular salient nor ignored issue by political parties and that most party families do tend to reject GMOs. Mainstream parties are more likely to talk about GMOs and to take a critical stance during periods of high mobilization of anti-GMO movements. Additionally, we hypothesize that the presence of a Green party in the national party system may make a difference. The findings provide insights into mainstream parties’ behaviour on niche issues and information for the scientific community about how political parties may become less hostile towards GMOs.
{"title":"The rise and fall of GMOs in politics: party positions and mainstream party behaviour in Western Europe","authors":"J. Schwörer, Xavier Romero Vidal, S. Vallejo","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2115654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2115654","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Social and environmental scientists usually argue that political parties hold hostile positions towards GMOs, yet we are confronted with a lack of systematic comparative analyses in the West European context. Conducting a quantitative content analysis of 265 election manifestos in seven Western European countries from 1990 until 2020, we test this assumption and explore the salience of GMOs in election manifestos and the positions of political parties on this domain. Our findings reveal that GMOs are neither a particular salient nor ignored issue by political parties and that most party families do tend to reject GMOs. Mainstream parties are more likely to talk about GMOs and to take a critical stance during periods of high mobilization of anti-GMO movements. Additionally, we hypothesize that the presence of a Green party in the national party system may make a difference. The findings provide insights into mainstream parties’ behaviour on niche issues and information for the scientific community about how political parties may become less hostile towards GMOs.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41684695","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 : 2022-08-17DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2112888
Edward E. Millar, Stephanie L Melles, J. Klug, Terry Rees
ABSTRACT Although citizen science can be characterised as a mechanism to counter anti-science attitudes and build public trust in science, the popularity of citizen science may be indicative of growing populism trends and public hostility towards professional expertise. We undertook a qualitative study of the attitudes of volunteer lake stewards in a long-running lake monitoring program in Ontario, Canada, considering themes related to fostering public trust in science. Semi-structured interviews (n = 40) were conducted with volunteers in the Lake Partner Program (LPP), Ontario, Canada, who were asked questions related to how they use the data they collect, how they communicate results to local audiences, and the extent to which they see themselves playing a role in strengthening community trust in scientific knowledge, institutions, and individuals that are involved in the program. Though trust in science is relational, imprecise, and difficult to categorise, our findings suggest that trust is linked to community reputation, the accessibility of scientific concepts, the ability to act when appropriate, and ongoing institutional support for volunteer efforts. Lake stewards see themselves as translators and emissaries of environmental science within their communities: under certain conditions, stewards can help to strengthen community trust.
{"title":"Stewarding relations of trust: citizen scientist perspectives on fostering community trust in science","authors":"Edward E. Millar, Stephanie L Melles, J. Klug, Terry Rees","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2112888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2112888","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although citizen science can be characterised as a mechanism to counter anti-science attitudes and build public trust in science, the popularity of citizen science may be indicative of growing populism trends and public hostility towards professional expertise. We undertook a qualitative study of the attitudes of volunteer lake stewards in a long-running lake monitoring program in Ontario, Canada, considering themes related to fostering public trust in science. Semi-structured interviews (n = 40) were conducted with volunteers in the Lake Partner Program (LPP), Ontario, Canada, who were asked questions related to how they use the data they collect, how they communicate results to local audiences, and the extent to which they see themselves playing a role in strengthening community trust in scientific knowledge, institutions, and individuals that are involved in the program. Though trust in science is relational, imprecise, and difficult to categorise, our findings suggest that trust is linked to community reputation, the accessibility of scientific concepts, the ability to act when appropriate, and ongoing institutional support for volunteer efforts. Lake stewards see themselves as translators and emissaries of environmental science within their communities: under certain conditions, stewards can help to strengthen community trust.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47525199","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 : 2022-07-27DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2106087
F. Mempel, F. Bidone
ABSTRACT Brazil plays a central role in Western depictions of and narratives on tropical deforestation. In this contribution, we gather a large text corpus from Western media outlets with articles on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The sources include outlets from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia and span a time period from the late 1980s to 2020. Leveraging several text-mining approaches, such as topic modeling and automated narrative network analysis, we disentangle the way that Western media have tried to make sense of deforestation in the Amazon and the Cerrado biomes. We show that the former has received disproportionately more news coverage, specifically in times of international concern over the Brazilian government’s commitment to tackle deforestation. Further, Western media frequently report on the struggles of indigenous populations in the Amazon, often following an essentialist depiction of these communities, while in the case of the Cerrado, traditional populations are hardly mentioned at all. Our findings provide a methodologically innovative and empirically grounded case for the often raised concern over a relative invisibility of the Cerrado biome and its traditional populations, which may help explain observed disparities in governance interventions.
{"title":"Re-MEDIAting distant impacts - how Western media make sense of deforestation in different Brazilian biomes","authors":"F. Mempel, F. Bidone","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2106087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2106087","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Brazil plays a central role in Western depictions of and narratives on tropical deforestation. In this contribution, we gather a large text corpus from Western media outlets with articles on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The sources include outlets from Europe, the US, Canada and Australia and span a time period from the late 1980s to 2020. Leveraging several text-mining approaches, such as topic modeling and automated narrative network analysis, we disentangle the way that Western media have tried to make sense of deforestation in the Amazon and the Cerrado biomes. We show that the former has received disproportionately more news coverage, specifically in times of international concern over the Brazilian government’s commitment to tackle deforestation. Further, Western media frequently report on the struggles of indigenous populations in the Amazon, often following an essentialist depiction of these communities, while in the case of the Cerrado, traditional populations are hardly mentioned at all. Our findings provide a methodologically innovative and empirically grounded case for the often raised concern over a relative invisibility of the Cerrado biome and its traditional populations, which may help explain observed disparities in governance interventions.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59992555","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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