Within the EU, Germany took a pioneering role in the production and promotion of biofuels. To explain this role the article analytically examines public discourses on biofuels. The analysis points out how the subject is interpreted and positioned by relevant actors and thus results in a specific public perception of biofuels in Germany. This perception in turn influences political decision-making processes. Since the analysis of discourses contributes to a better understanding of today's biofuel policy in Germany, the article characterises the (...) biofuel discourse during the genesis of this policy. Additionally, it analytically traces changes of discourse constellations in the course of the biofuel policy path. (shrink)

Whether and how to intervene in nature to maintain or restore values is a contested issue among scholars within ecological restoration, protected area management and environmental ethics, but also among the practitioners and public officials who shape how nature is actually managed. This article analyses how the issue of intervention is debated in the case of protected forest area management in Sweden, a country with a traditionally strong preservationist discourse centred on maintaining areas as ‘untouched’ as possible. The analysis shows (...) how this traditional view is challenged by a more interventionist discourse centred on adaptive management for biodiversity, but also how there are still attempts to reaffirm a preservationist discourse and practice. The implications of this as-yet-unsettled debate are discussed, concluding by pointing to a need to examine critically not only the older preservationist discourse and ‘naturalness', but also the ascendant interventionist discourse and ‘biodiversity'. (shrink)

Despite multiple axes of variation in defining wellbeing, the paper argues for the dominance of a ‘components approach’ in current research and practice. This approach builds on a well-established tradition within the social sciences of attending to categories whether for their identification, their value or their meanings and political resonance. The paper critiques the components approach and explores how to move beyond it towards conceptually integrating the various categories and dimensions through a relational and situated account of wellbeing. Drawing on (...) more fluid social sciences, wellbeing is framed as an effect, dependent on the mobilisation of resources from everyday encounters with complex assemblages of people, things and places. Through such a framing, wellbeing can be conceived of as stable and amenable to change, as individual and collective and as subjective and objective. Policy interventions then need to attend to the relationalities of particular social and spatial contexts. (shrink)

This paper examines the social implications of sustainable consumption through an empirical study of a local organic food initiative. It sets out an analytical framework based upon Douglas's Cultural Theory to categorise the range of competing value perspectives on sustainable consumption into 'hierarchical', 'individualistic' and 'egalitarian' worldviews, and considers how these various worldviews might each adopt locally-grown organic food as a sustainable consumption initiative. Tensions between the paradigms are evident when attention is turned to a case study of a local (...) organic food producers' cooperative. Research with both producers and consumers reveals that the values embedded in its practice are both partisan and pluralistic, but are principally 'Egalitarian'. Its interactions with policy regimes and social and economic institutions are examined, to illustrate the value conflicts inherent, and understand the barriers it faces in operation and the institutional factors inhibiting the growth of grassroots 'bottom-up' sustainable food initiatives of this kind. In addition to addressing these barriers, the policy implications of these findings for sustainable consumption policy and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The recent phase of economic growth in the Republic of Ireland has led to an increase in industrial and infrastructural development across the island. One offshoot of this accelerated growth has been a rise in community based environmental movements, as environmentalists and concerned communities have come to mobilise campaigns to protect local communities and hinterlands. This paper examines the contestation of two forms of environmentalism, institutional ecomodernism versus a grassroots ecopopulism within the context of the ongoing dispute between a local (...) community in the west of Ireland and both multinationals and the state, who are attempting to run gas pipelines from the Atlantic Corrib Field through the rural community's lands. (shrink)

In animal husbandry in The Netherlands, as in a wide variety of other societal areas, we see an increased awareness of the fact that progress cannot be attained anymore by simply repeating the way we modernized this sector in the decades before, due to the multiplicity of the problems to be dealt with. The theory of reflexive modernization articulates this macro-social phenomenon, and at the same time serves as a prescriptive master-narrative. In this paper, I analyse the relationship between Feenberg's (...) instrumentalization theory and reflexive design; that is, the approach of doing reflexive modernization. Feenberg's analytical distinction between primary and secondary instrumentalization is useful in highlighting the way social and political values are inscribed into technological arrangements, but is not meant as a method. Reflexive design, on the other hand, is meant to be a reflective and deliberative method that aims to articulate, assess and reintegrate hitherto unquestioned values and presuppositions into new designs of production systems. Reflexive design thus may be seen as a conscious strategy of making explicit the separate stages of instrumentalization in advance, instead of criticizing the implicit embedding of dominant values in technological artefacts once they have been realized. The approach is illustrated with a case from animal husbandry. (shrink)

Rural landscapes are facing a loss of biodiversity. To deal with this challenge, landscape governance is seen as an alternative and addition to sectoral policies and a potential way of realizing transformative change for biodiversity. To study transformative change in the Bulb Region, the Netherlands, this study uses a discursive-institutional perspective. A mixed methods approach was used including 50 interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The structuration and institutionalization of three competing landscape discourses were analyzed: a hegemonic discourse rejecting any (...) changes in bulb farming; an emerging discourse aiming to enhance sustainability through innovation; and an unstructured discourse questioning the sustainability of bulb farming. The paper shows that the emerging sustainability discourse strengthens the hegemonic discourse by providing an action repertoire for farmers to deal with changing societal demands, while not questioning the hegemonic view on the landscape. Moreover, an institutionalized landscape discourse can be very stable if discursive (relation between naturalized landscape perspectives, identity and the articulated economic interests) and non-discursive factors (natural-spatial conditions, structure of agricultural sector, embeddedness in international trade) are strongly intertwined, leaving little room for alternative discourses. The sustainability discourse was induced by changes outside the Bulb Region (e.g., legislation), thus raising the question whether landscapes are the appropriate level to expect the initiation of transformative change. For rural transformations to come about, solely relying on policies on the landscape level is not sensible. A mix of policies at both the landscape and higher levels offers more perspective for transformative change. (shrink)

Agriculture has long struggled to reconcile production with biodiversity conservation. Industrial farming practices that erode structural complexity within crop fields and across entire landscapes, as well as widespread pesticide use, have resulted in declining insect abundance and diversity globally. Recognition of socio-environmental consequences have spurred alternative pest management paradigms such as integrated pest management (IPM) and conservation biological control (CBC), which emphasize ecology as the scientific foundation for a sustainable agriculture. However, adoption of these approaches at scales large enough to (...) impact biodiversity has been slow, particularly in industrialized countries. Landscape-scale management is an integral component of ecological agriculture, making pest control and biodiversity conservation collective problems that require coordination among multiple stakeholders. The extent to which farmers recognize and act upon this perspective is not well studied. Through literature synthesis and a case study of Southern Wisconsin, I analyze factors shaping farmer adoption of insect and landscape management practices through the lens of constrained choice. I argue that multiple overlapping institutions (social networks, market forces, science and technology, and political-legal systems) co-produce farmer behaviors and landscape structure, largely to the detriment of ecological pest control and biodiversity. Wisconsin farmers' entomological concerns largely overlook beneficial insect species and eschew landscape thinking. Ultimately, slowing agricultural drivers of insect biodiversity declines will likely require large-scale coordination and political-economic change. (shrink)

Spatial planning policies are fundamental blocks for the implementation of sustainable development goals. Still, despite the growing adoption of environmental proxies, as it is nature-based solutions, the study of their institutionalization in policy and spatial planning is in the early stages. Simultaneously, the use of discursive and interpretative methods to unfold the social structures related to environmental issues is growing, nonetheless, their application is more common to supranational narratives. This article proposes a conceptual and methodological approach to using critical discourse (...) analysis for studying the institutionalization and conceptualization of nature-related issues in policy and spatial planning at national and local levels. This is done by discussing the ontological relations between the discursive institutionalist theory and critical discourse analysis as a methodology. It contains four main stages: clarifying the analytical focus; mapping policy and planning documents; analyzing macro discourse, which includes critical textual analysis, text-type analysis, and intertextuality analysis, and, at last, the fourth phase, interpretation within the institutional context. It provides a tool for researchers less familiar with linguistics but interested in performing discourse analysis to understand the integration of environmental narratives within policy and spatial planning. (shrink)

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how we can live with the material remains of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally rely on space infrastructures, they so far have failed to address the infrastructural challenge of debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community. One reason for this is the renewed (...) momentum of interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of the Moon and Mars, which is part of transhumanist and commercially driven dreams of the so-called New Space age. Understanding space infrastructures as inherently linked to earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space debris, a once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests, and geopolitics, increasingly becomes a matter of concern. Drawing on qualitative interviews with European space sector representatives and work in Science and Technology Studies on infrastructures, we argue that their discursive efforts and visual representation strategies coproduce space debris as a boundary infrastructure. We suggest considering this boundary infrastructure as relating orbital environments and the planet through enacting sustainability and responsibility for beyond-planetary environments. (shrink)

The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become performative is underexplained. Drawing on constructivist sociological theory, this article aims to fill this gap by exploring the question (...) ‘how do imagined futures become socially performative’? In doing so, the article has three aims to identify the leading social–theoretical work on the future; conceptualize the relationship of the imagination of the future with social practices and the performance of reality; provide a theoretical framework explaining how images of the future become performative, using the concepts ‘techniques of futuring’ and ‘dramaturgical regime’. (shrink)

Discursive deference in the governance of science and technology is rebalancing from expert analysis toward participatory deliberation. Linear, scientistic conceptions of innovation are giving ground to more plural, socially situated understandings. Yet, growing recognition of social agency in technology choice is countered by persistently deterministic notions of technological progress. This article addresses this increasingly stark disjuncture. Distinguishing between “appraisal” and “commitment” in technology choice, it highlights contrasting implications of normative, instrumental, and substantive imperatives in appraisal. Focusing on the role of (...) power, it identifies key commonalities transcending the analysis/participation dichotomy. Each is equally susceptible to instrumental framing for variously weak and strong forms of justification. To address the disjuncture, it is concluded that greater appreciation is required—in both analytic and participatory appraisal—to facilitating the opening up of governance commitments on science and technology. (shrink)

Infrastructure management has traditionally been based on a logic of predict and provide in which rising demand was met with an increase in infrastructure capacity. However, recent changes in political, economic, and environmental priorities mean that projects such as new roads, which simply expand supply, have become more controversial, and that reducing demand is now a key challenge. This article is about the different ways in which infrastructure managers have tried to achieve reductions in demand, as well as the range (...) of plans that blend various proportions of technological and institutional innovation. For the sociology of science, the controversies over these urban environment plans are interesting not just because they are scientific controversies but because they are controversies over the relationships between science, expertise, technology, and society. As a result, the authors argue that sociologists of science have a contribution to make as experts in their own right. This article argues that the sociology of scientific knowledge needs to move beyond symmetry and neutrality and outlines some of the ways in which SSK can make a difference by repositioning itself at the center of contemporary policy debates. (shrink)

Despite the potential political impact of industry attempts to influence public policy about genetic modification, little research has focused on critical understanding of industry perspectives. This article explores the rhetorical and discursive construction of public messages about this controversial issue by two major New Zealand export industries. The kiwifruit industry advocates a very cautious public policy position, while the dairy industry has been a strong advocate for the commercial development of genetic modification. We demonstrate that these industries draw on multiple (...) identities and rationalities to negotiate, express, and elaborate their positions on genetic modification, informed variously by discourses of risk, science, the political economy of the marketplace, and images of the ‘natural’ environment. We suggest that exploring how organizations seek to influence controversial socio-political issues through the management of multiple identities may facilitate greater understanding of viewpoints often represented in the media as two distinct polarities; that is as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the issues. (shrink)

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become dominant for (...) how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘Green’ concerns about nature, the environment or the climate have traditionally been juxtaposed with concerns about economic growth or job creation. Recently, however, a new type of conflict has appeared, in which different green concerns, for instance regarding mitigation of climate change and protection of landscape qualities, seem to collide. These environmental conflicts have so far received little scholarly attention. This article addresses the issue by a study of national and in particular local news media discussion on the construction of (...) wind turbines in Denmark, bringing together research traditions from environmental communication, discourse analysis, and place studies. Analytically, the study employs the notion of topos as the key meaning unit, referring to the premises upon which an argument is based. In addition to the empirical findings, the study points to methodological potential of the concept of topos to integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches within a discourse studie... (shrink)

While scholars have expended great effort analyzing environmental discourse and applying a critical lens to environmental law, scant work has used critical discourse analysis to study environmental law. This is surprising given the rising prominence of CDA and the continued development of critical environmental law scholarship. The present article seeks to correct for this oversight by highlighting the particularities of environmental law which compel the use of CDA, and outlining a method by which social science researchers can use CDA to (...) understand the role of power in the domain of environmental law. (shrink)

While the subject of framing has achieved considerable recognition recently among social scientists and policy analysts, less attention has been given to how societies arrive at stable, collective frames of meaning for environmental values and policy. This paper proposes four models of societal processes by which framing occurs: narration, modelling, canonisation and normalisation. These four models are developed, compared, and explored in detail through a case study of the framing of the impacts of climate change on human societies in US (...) science policy from the 1960s through the 1990s. I conclude by offering a number of potentially fruitful avenues for further research into the dynamics of framing. (shrink)

We argue that industrial hazards have remained an integral feature of the international and ‘global’ economy since the early modern period, and invite historians of science into the study of their history. The growth and dissemination of knowledge about these hazards, as well as the production and trade that generate them, continue to generate deep inequalities in just who is exposed to them, as illustrated by the shifting impact of the asbestos-related disease plague in the past half-century. Exposure levels in (...) poorer countries have risen as those in affluent societies have fallen, the latter due as much to popular protest and media exposure as to scientific expertise. We suggest that the best way to understand the formation of knowledge about these hazards is not to return to the epistemological battlegrounds of the ‘science wars’ of the 1990s but to seek more interdisciplinary integration of the multifaceted ways that material bodies, environments and interests contribute to an understanding of such hazards and injuries. We propose the framework of ‘industrial-hazard regimes’ as an avenue into the ways in which knowledge about risks and dangers at work are created, translated and contested in different countries and times. While urging a return, in some respects, to the early models of ‘progressive enlightenment’ devised by radical commentators and pioneering historians of the industrial hazard in the early twentieth century, we would revise these early approaches, and also offer some sceptical commentary on the difficulties raised, more recently, by narratives of ‘heroic populism’ or ‘anti-science epidemiology’. The critical standpoints for which we argue recognize the diverse social and political identities and loyalties not only of past contributors to the controversies on industrial hazard, but also of historians of science and medicine themselves. (shrink)

How can one distinguish the concept of second modernity from the concept of postmodernity? Postmodernists are interested in deconstruction without reconstruction, second modernity is about deconstruction and reconstruction. Social sciences need to construct new concepts to understand the world dynamics at the beginning of the 21st century.Modernity has not vanished, we are not post it. Radical social change has always been part of modernity. What is new is that modernity has begun to modernize its own foundations. This is what it (...) means to say modernity has become reflexive. It has become directed at itself. This causes huge new problems both in reality and in theory. There has been a pluralization of the boundaries within and between societies, between society and nature, between Us and Other, between life and death. This pluralization also changes the inherent nature of boundaries. They become not so much boundaries as a variety of attempts to draw of boundaries. Border conflicts become transformed into conflicts over the drawing of boundaries. Where postmodernism simply celebrates this multiplication of boundaries, the theory of second modernity starts with the problem this new reality poses for individual and collective decisions, and with the problem that the continued existence of such decisions poses for theory. Institutions that are capable of such conscious boundary drawing are enabled in a way that those of the first modernity were not. But this process also generates qualitatively new kinds of trouble and crises. To investigate those troubles is to unveil the emergence of the second modernity. (shrink)

Societal and technological development during the last century has enabled Western economies to achieve a high standard of living. Yet this profusion of wealth has led to several outcomes that are undesirable and/or unsustainable. There is thus an imperative need for a fundamental and rapid transition towards more sustainable practices. While broad conceptual frameworks for managing sustainability transitions have been suggested in prior literature, these need to be further developed to suit contexts in which the overall vision is arguably clear, (...) such as in the case of consuming animal-originated foodstuffs. In this article we introduce a novel transition management framework that is based upon the dimensions of sustainability. The suggested transition management process includes the identification of objectives and obstacles, the listing of options and their opportunities and threats as well as the evaluation of the outcomes (the Five O’s). We argue that sustainability transition management should be a process in which the identification of the relevant dimensions of sustainability and related objectives forms the foundation for strategic, tactical and operational governance activities. We illustrate the practical applicability of the framework in the case of transition towards plant-based diets. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance and impact of terminology used to describe corporate social responsibility (CSR). Through a review of key literature and concepts, we uncover how the economic business case has become the dominant driver behind CSR action. With reference to the literature on semiotics, connotative meaning and social marketing we explore how the terminology itself may have facilitated this co-opting of an ethical concept by economic interests. The broader issue of moral muteness and (...) its relation to ethical behaviour is considered. We conclude by proposing a number of important attributes for any proposed terminology relating to ethical/socially responsible/sustainable business. (shrink)

Land use planning, based in either traditional liberalist philosophy or the emerging pragmatist philosophy formalizes an anthropocentric, reductionist division within itself: between nature (land) and society (use), ignoring the socially constructed character of both terms. Representations of nature become political issues mediated through the planning system, with the various actants and their networks attempting to exert power over others in order to influence the outcome. Based on a theoretical understanding of, by deconstructing the different representations of nature/the environment and identifying (...) the discourses and narratives invoked by participants in land use planning decisions, we can better understand how nature continues to be exploited by humans in their own interests. (shrink)

This article aims to identify the discursive strategies of political actors and the media in their re-constructions of climate change. The analytical framework employed in this research project builds on the tradition of critical discourse analysis and has both diachronic and synchronic axes. On the one hand, by tracing the biography of the greenhouse effect as a public issue, the article will look at continuities and discontinuities in its representation and at the historically constitutive power of discourse. On the other (...) hand, the systematic comparison of representations of the problem in three British ‘quality’ newspapers – The Guardian, The Independent, and The Times – at given moments shows that there are alternatives and therefore enhances a critical examination of discursive strategies. (shrink)

Utría National Park is a remote biodiversity hotspot in Colombia. It encompasses ancestral territories of the Embera indigenous peoples and borders territories of Afro-descendant communities in El Valle. We explore environmental value conflicts regarding the use of the park, describing them as a Wicked Problem that has no clear solution. Juxtaposing how the territory is perceived by different communities, we employ Faber et al.'s heuristic of the three tele of living nature to search for deficiency in the third telos, service, (...) which we take to be symptomatic of Wicked Problems. Based on field data encoded using the three-tele heuristic, concerning how the respective communities would like to use the park area, we identify deficiencies in the third telos and develop recommendations regarding how these might be addressed. (shrink)

Ethical consumer discourse is organized around the idea that shopping, and particularly food shopping, is a way to create progressive social change. A key component of this discourse is the “citizen-consumer” hybrid, found in both activist and academic writing on ethical consumption. The hybrid concept implies a social practice – “voting with your dollar” – that can satisfy competing ideologies of consumerism (an idea rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collective responsibility to a social and ecological (...) commons). While a hopeful sign, this hybrid concept needs to be theoretically unpacked, and empirically explored. This article has two purposes. First, it is a theory-building project that unpacks the citizen-consumer concept, and investigates underlying ideological tensions and contradictions. The second purpose of the paper is to relate theory to an empirical case-study of the citizen-consumer in practice. Using the case-study of Whole Foods Market (WFM), a corporation frequently touted as an ethical market actor, I ask: (1) how does WFM frame the citizen-consumer hybrid, and (2) what ideological tensions between consumer and citizen ideals are present in the framing? Are both ideals coexisting and balanced in the citizen-consumer hybrid, or is this construct used to disguise underlying ideological inconsistencies? Rather than meeting the requirements of consumerism and citizenship equally, the case of WFM suggests that the citizen-consumer hybrid provides superficial attention to citizenship goals in order to serve three consumerist interests better: consumer choice, status distinction, and ecological cornucopianism. I argue that a true “citizen-consumer” hybrid is not only difficult to achieve, but may be internally inconsistent in a growth-oriented corporate setting. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the Precautionary Principle (PP) in action. Precaution is a fairly new concept in environmental policy. It emerged back in the 1960s but did not consolidate until the 1980s, as it formed part of the major changes taking place in environmental policies at that time. The PP is examined in three contexts. Firstly, we look at the meaning of the concept and how it is disseminated through the media and public discourses to the political arenas of (...) Denmark. Then we examine how the idea is adopted to the political level. Thirdly, we look briefly at the first Danish translation of the principle into a practical context, which includes translations into concrete scientific practices. It is concluded that if the PP shall be more than a simple “idea” or a frequently used “term,” emphasis must be put on the transformation of the concept into concrete practices, like e.g., the alternative testing regimes that we show in the case of plant growth-retarding pesticides presented in this paper. (shrink)

This paper investigates how people conceive and evaluate nature through language, in a climate change context. With material consisting of 1,200 answers to open-ended questions in nationally representative surveys in Norway, we explore what semantic roles and values the respondents attribute to nature as well as to how they interact with the public debate about climate change. We observe that different conceptions and valuations of nature are tied to different perspectives on the climate change issue: some address the responsibilities of (...) causing climate change, others its consequences, and others yet its potential solutions. The study provides knowledge about the variety of conceptions of nature that can be mobilised by individuals and suggests that policy measures and public communication could benefit by taking this diversity into account. (shrink)

The deadly attacks on a public meeting and on a Jewish citizen in Copenhagen in February 2015 have given rise to a vast amount of public discussion and interpretation of the events themselves, their background, their causes, their significance, and their repercussions. During these discussions, various conceptions of publicness and public space have been articulated. Indeed, one may view the killings as a ‘critical discourse moment’ in which a range of discourses have been employed to help interpret, understand, and deal (...) with what happened. In several of these discourses, conceptions of publicness play a central part. This article sets out to investigate the conceptions of publicness that were articulated in the Danish public spheres following the attacks. The article maps out some of the key different and partly contradictory notions of publicness that the reactions to the killings brought to the fore. The investigation thus focuses on the articulation of normative expectations and ideals of public spheres, on the limitations and restrictions that were acknowledged, and on the main societal problems and national contexts to which publicness was viewed as related. The analysis will cover national newspapers and center on the discursive resources of the media elite in early responses to the attacks, for example in editorials, or comments by writers, academics, debaters, and intellectuals. (shrink)

A critical discourse analysis of three pro-environmental behaviour initiatives promoting low-carbon lifestyles in the UK showcased on BBC Radio 4 illustrates the discursive struggles over meaning involved in the various framings of climate change mitigation policies. Climate change mitigation policies are framed in various competing and coalescing ways in political circles, most commonly as economic opportunities but in some instances as an ethical obligation. While the ‘win-win’ framing associated with the ecological modernisation and green consumption discourses is the most dominant (...) in official UK climate change mitigation policy, PEB initiatives seem to draw on a more diverse, sometimes normative, set of framings to induce behavioural change. (shrink)

Although there has been some growing recognition of the role of private actors in international environmental regimes, little attention has been paid to the role of the private sector at the science–policy interface. Because the automobile industry plays a crucial role in mitigation of greenhouse gases, successful policy requires not just the assent but the active cooperation of this sector. Such cooperation, however, requires some institutional acceptance that climate change is indeed a significant risk. In this article, the authors look (...) at the early stages of the automobile industry’s engagement with the discourse on climate change. The authors focus, in particular, on the role of corporate scientists in two U.S. automobile companies in translating this discourse. Acting as boundary spanners and institutional entrepreneurs, these individuals influenced both corporate perceptions of and responses to climate change science. (shrink)

The profile and possibilities of in vitro meat are rapidly expanding, creating new ethical conundrums about how to approach this nascent biotechnology. The outcomes of these ethical debates will shape the future viability of this technology and its acceptability for potential consumers. In this paper we focus on how in vitro meat is being ethically constructed in academic literatures and contrast this with discourses evident in the mainstream print media. The academic literature is analysed to identify a typology of ethical (...) discourses, ordered from the most common to least expressed. We then apply this typology to investigate the frames present in Australian print media reportage on the topic. In the academic literature, discourses relating to in vitro meat’s promised environmental, animal welfare and food security benefits are most prominent. In contrast, ontological struggles over its ‘nature’ have emerged as the dominant feature in the Australian print media. Although these spaces of engagement evidence decidedly different discursive trends, ethical discourses critical of in vitro meat’s wider socio-cultural ramifications are currently under-represented in both. This paper therefore calls for critical scholars to move beyond the narrow, presumptive framings of in vitro meat as a technological remedy for our consumptive ills, to more seriously engage with the ethical consequences of this new form of food. (shrink)

Social license reflects environmental and social change, and sees community as an important stakeholder and partner. Science, scientists, and science policy have a key role in the processes that generate social license. In this paper, we focus on the interaction between science and social license in salmon aquaculture in south-eastern Tasmania. This research suggests that social license will be supported by distributed and credible knowledge co-production. Drawing on qualitative, interpretive social research we argue that targeted science, instilled by appropriate science (...) policy, can underpin social license by supporting emerging, distributed, and pluralistic knowledge production. Where social license is important and environmental contexts are complex, such knowledge production might support environmental governance, and so improve outcomes in coastal zone management and beyond. (shrink)

While most studies of low-carbon transitions focus on green niche-innovations, this paper shifts attention to the resistance by incumbent regime actors to fundamental change. Drawing on insights from political economy, the paper introduces politics and power into the multi-level perspective. Instrumental, discursive, material and institutional forms of power and resistance are distinguished and illustrated with examples from the UK electricity system. The paper concludes that the resistance and resilience of coal, gas and nuclear production regimes currently negates the benefits from (...) increasing renewables deployment. It further suggests that policymakers and many transition-scholars have too high hopes that ‘green’ innovation will be sufficient to bring about low-carbon transitions. Future agendas in research and policy should therefore pay much more attention to the destabilization and decline of existing fossil fuel regimes. (shrink)

Digital communications technology isreconfiguring democratic governance. Federalagencies increasingly rely on Internet-basedapplications to improve citizen-governmentinteraction. Early efforts in the area ofdigital government have created newparticipatory opportunities as well asformidable governance challenges. Federalagencies are working within and across theirboundaries to find an e-rulemaking format thatis cost-effective, legally appropriate,user-friendly, and well suited to diverse modesof rulemaking activities. One of the overridingissues emerging from this process is thedefinition of meaningful public participationin rulemaking. An examination of an early caseinvolving the USDA's National Organic Programproposed rule (...) summarizes comments related togenetic engineering, biosolids, irradiation,and the role of the National Organic StandardsBoard. The USDA's experience suggests a numberof complex challenges that must be met toeffectively integrate Web-based communicationsinto the federal rulemaking process. (shrink)

The question that motivates this article has been a matter of dispute: Is it possible to combine perpetual economic growth and longterm environmental sustainability based on the premise that economic growth can be fully decoupled from negative environmental impacts? The article addresses this question from the position of critical realism. An empirical study focusing on the housing sector is conducted, indicating that housing stock growth and economic growth have been, at best, weakly decoupled from environmental impacts. In the long run, (...) it seems implausible that the degree of decoupling can be increased at a rate sufficient to compensate for continual growth in the volume of housing stock. A further elaboration of the topic at an ontological level leads to the conclusion that continual economic growth and long-term environmental sustainability can hardly be combined. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 438-461 DOI 10.1558/jcr.v11i4.438 Authors Jin Xue, Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 4 / 2012. (shrink)

This article identifies two common academic discourses about globalization: that it is a “new” process unleashing fundamentally novel changes on society, and that it is an “old” process merely extending and building from previous events. Drawing from recent advances in social, cultural, and political theory, the article critiques both of these discourses and articulates four discursive themes—homogenization, aggrandizing, flexibility, and erasure—that occur in the way that both proponents and opponents conceive of globalization. Instead of treating globalization as homogeneous and all-encompassing, (...) the author argues that it should be treated as a concept perennially in motion, a discourse continually under reconstruction. Tracing the representations and contradictions located within globalization helps to de-naturalize and re-politicize it. In this way, globalization can be viewed as a contested discourse constituted through the convergence of social, political, and economic ideologies. (shrink)

This paper examines diverse perspectives around the concept of responsibility concerning antibiotic use in animal agriculture. Antibiotic use in agriculture has been identified as a source of antimicrobial resistance, one of the largest public health threats today. In the United States, efforts to curb antibiotic use in farming draws on a diverse range of actors—including farmers, veterinarians, consumers, and public health advocates—and relies on a mix of industry standards and federal guidelines around responsible use. The paper selects a similarly diverse (...) range of people and employs Q methodology to query the points of disagreement and consensus around the practices that constitute responsible antibiotic use in animal agriculture, and who is responsible for antimicrobial resistance. We find a diverse mix of actor types across three discourses, but with clear differences between farmers and public health advocates. We also argue that, in some cases, points of disagreement and agreement are often based on different interpretations of ideas, indicating points of common ground where there might appear to be disagreement, and areas of difference where there appears to be agreement. We argue that these flexible interpretations of some of the key issues around antibiotic use are nevertheless grounded in durable differences in views of what agriculture is and what it should be. (shrink)

The business case constitutes an important instrumental motive for corporate social responsibility (CSR), but its relationship with other moral and relational motives remains controversial. In this article, we examine the articulation of motives for CSR among different stakeholders in Germany historically. On the basis of reports of German business associations, state agencies, unions, and nongovernmental organizations from 1970 to 2014, we show how the business case came to be a dominant motive for CSR by acting as a coalition magnet: the (...) vocabulary was used strategically by key policy entrepreneurs, while being ambiguous for flexible interpretations by different stakeholders, and thereby growing in attractiveness. As a resulting discourse coalition emerged among business, state, and civil society actors, the moral and relational motives for CSR became increasingly marginalized. The article offers a new approach to studying motives and contributes to understanding the complementary or competing nature of different motives for CSR. (shrink)

Agriculture occupies 38% of the planet’s terrestrial surface, using 70% of freshwater resources. Its modern practice is dominated by an industrial–productivist discourse, which has contributed to the simplification and degradation of human and ecological systems. As such, agricultural transformation is essential for creating more sustainable food systems. This paper focuses on discursive change. A prominent discursive alternative to industrial–productivist agriculture is regenerative agriculture. Regenerative discourses are emergent, radically evolving and diverse. It is unclear whether they have the potential to generate (...) the changes required to shift industrial–productivist agriculture. This paper presents a literature-based discourse analysis to illustrate key thematic characteristics of regenerative agricultural discourses. The analysis finds that such discourses: situate agricultural work within nested, complex living systems; position farms as relational, characterised by co-evolution between humans and other landscape biota; perceive the innate potential of living systems as place-sourced; maintain a transformative openness to alternative thinking and practice; believe that multiple regenerative cultures are necessary for deeply regenerative agriculture; and depart from industrialism to varying degrees. The paper concludes by reviewing three transformative opportunities for regenerative discourses—discourse coalitions, translocal organising and collective learning. (shrink)

The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives of science-led agricultural transformations portray that period in glorifying terms—entailing pressing national imperatives, (...) unprecedented achievements, and heroic individuals or organizations. These “epic narratives” draw on the past to produce meaning and empower the actors that deploy them. Epic narratives are reproduced over time and perpetuate a conviction about the heroic power of science and technology in agricultural development. By crafting history and cultivating a sense of scientific nationalism, exceptionalism, and heritage, these epic narratives sustain power-knowledge relations in agricultural science and technology, which are underpinned by a hegemonic modernization paradigm. Unravelling the processes of assemblage and reproduction of epic narratives helps us make sense of how science and technology actors draw on their subjective representations of the past to assert their position in the field at present. This includes making claims about their credentials to envision and deliver sustainable solutions for agriculture into the future. (shrink)

The politics of innovation involves displacements between various interrelated settings ranging from the context of design to the context of use. This variety of settings and their particular qualities raise questions about the democratic implications of displacements, which have been addressed within science and technology studies for decades from different perspectives and along various theoretical strands. This article distinguishes five different traditions of conceptualizing the relation between technological innovation and democracy: an intentionalist, a proceduralist, an actor—network, an interpretivist, and a (...) performative perspective. They differ in their concepts of “technology,” “politics,” and “democracy”; they imply different roles for the analyst and they suggest or urge other political means. It is suggested that spelling out the differences and similarities between the five perspectives creates the possibility to overcome the limitations of any particular perspective of technology and democracy. (shrink)

Environmental controversies are often framed as conflicts between environmentalist and antienvironmentalist positions. The underlying dimensions of ethics and justice tend to be overlooked. This article seeks to integrate insights from environmental ethics and sociological observations through a case study of a watershed conflict. A controversy emerged in the 1990s when residents of the New York City watershed filed a lawsuit to block NYC’s proposed regulations for the land surrounding the streams and reservoirs that supply NYC’s drinking water. The conflict was (...) resolved after NYC agreed to provide economic development funds to the watershed towns in exchange for accepting the regulations. An analysis of interviews with NYC watershed town supervisors reveals that the conflict was resolved because underlying competing theories of justice were addressed. This contradicts the popular narrative that an environmental conflict can be resolved when competing parties come to the realization that natural ecosystems provide valuable water-purification services. (shrink)

This article contributes to the environmental justice debate by analysing the case of the ILVA steel plant in Taranto, Italy. It accounts for the radical polarisation of the public debate between industrialists and environmentalists. These dominant perspectives are polarised but not politicised. In the reading of the crisis, both fronts adopt similar techno-scientific arguments while failing to problematise the multiple dimensions of environmental injustice and to connect the crisis to broader social relations of production. This article contends, therefore, that the (...) environmental debate in Taranto unfolds in a post-political situation, where technical narratives prevail at the expense of more political positions. In this context, any attempts to politicise the public debate is either absorbed by the dominant views or marginalised. (shrink)

This article discusses the metatheoretical foundations of a critical realist approach to critical discourse analysis and counterposes them to insufficiently realist tendencies in Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, on the one hand, and anti-realist post-Marxist discourse theory on the other. The first section argues that Fairclough's approach is progressive in many ways, but lacks metatheoretical rigour with respect to important demarcation problems. These mainly concern CDA's understanding of discourse as mediating entity, its underlying dialectical-relational approach and overarching concept of social (...) practices. The discussion of Fairclough's approach necessitates a treatment of the relation of discourse and epistemology, in which the heritage of Foucault plays a crucial role and a brief engagement with ideology, in which Althusser is a major point of departure. The thesis is advanced that, among other things, Althusserian and Foucauldian residues in CDA's metatheory esta.. (shrink)

The introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Europe has been characterized by controversy. In 2002, the European Union introduced the concept of “coexistence” as a compromise solution that, through the establishment of science-based technical measures, should allow the market to operate freely while reducing policy conflicts on GMOs. However, the concept remains highly contested and the technical measures difficult to apply. This paper presents qualitative research on the conceptualization and implementation of the coexistence framework in two regions of Spain (...) (Catalonia and Aragon), where 42% and 55% of maize was GM in 2006, respectively. In this context, the concept of coexistence and its proposed implementation both fail to resolve previous conflicts and actually work to generate new ones through the individualization of choice and impacts. Considerations of the social conditions in which the technology and the management measures are implemented were not taken into account. This resulted in the promotion of biotechnological agriculture over other alternatives. (shrink)