Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy

Abstract Information is a source of power in the planning process. This article begins by assessing five perspectives of the planner's use of information: those of the technician, the incremental pragmatist, the liberal advocate, the structuralist, and the “progressive.” Then several types of misinformation (inevitable or unnecessary, ad hoc or systematic) are distinguished in a reformulation of bounded rationality in planning, and practical responses by planning staff are identified. The role and ethics of planners acting as sources of misinformation are considered. In practice planners work in the face of power manifest as the social and political (mis)-man-agement of citizens' knowledge, consent, trust, and attention. Seeking to enable planners to anticipate and counteract sources of misinformation threatening public serving, democratic planning processes, the article clarifies a practical and politically sensitive form of “progressive” planning practice.

Planning in the Face of Power.

Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

This article assesses the contribution of discourse analysis to the study of environmental politics over the period of the past decade. Defining discourse as a particular linguistic regularity that can be found in conversations distinguishes it from ‘deliberation’ and ‘discussion’. Discourse analysis is seen as focused on situational logics studying ‘language-in-use’. Three strengths of discourse analysis are highlighted: its capacity to reveal the role of language in politics, its capacity to reveal the embeddedness of language in practices and its capacity to answer ‘how’ questions and to illuminate mechanisms. The article concludes by sketching some of the challenges lying ahead of discourse analysis. Given the changing nature of policy making, discourse analysts are supposed to have a task in identifying the new sites of politics and analysing the political dynamics therein.

A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements, challenges, perspectives

This Special Issue is concerned with theories and methodologies of discourse analysis and their contribution to environmental policy research in particular. It is a response to three theoretical challenges in the field of environmental policy and public management of natural resources: (i) environmental policy problems are obviously the effect of social constructions although they concern 'natural' objects; (ii) struggles about concepts, knowledge and meaning are an essential element of environmental policy; (iii) environmental discourse has material and power effects as well as being the effect of material practices and power relations. These three challenges question to what extent is environmental policy about 'nature' and the 'environment'?
After shortly explaining these challenges, this introduction will sketch out particularities of the discursive perspective and distinguish between a Foucaultian and non-Foucaultian perspective. Following this, it will be shown how the contributors to the Special Issue use discourse analysis to treat nature and environment as contested concepts. The paper concludes with a discussion concerning achievements of and challenges to discourse analysis in environmental policy and planning.

Does discourse matter? Discourse analysis in environmental policy making

This article generates a theoretical framework for analysing the politics of climate change on the basis of Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality Foucault does not limit the exercise of power to sovereignty, but introduces discipline, biopower, liberal and advanced liberal government as alternative configurations of state and power The article argues that the ways in which climate change is rendered a governable entity are best understood before the background of a shift from biopower to advanced liberal government It will be argued that climate change was first rendered governable by biopower, which justified global management of spaceship Earth in the name of the survival of life on Earth Since the mid-1990s, climate change has been captured by advanced liberal government, which articulates climate change as an economic issue that requires market-based solutions to facilitate cost-effective technological solutions A governmentality analysis asks which visibilities, fields of knowled

Rendering climate change governable: From biopower to advanced liberal government?

The concept of resilience was born and grew up in the environmental sciences during the 1970s. After migrating into many other disciplines, resilience is now ‘coming home’ to the politics of the en...

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From ‘fearing’ to ‘empowering’ climate refugees: Governing climate-induced migration in the name of resilience:

Since 2003, climate change has been articulated as a threat to national, international, and human security in scientific publications and political declarations. What does the articulation of climate change as a security issue mean in terms of policy implications? How is climate change being rendered governable as a security issue and what are the consequences of this? In this chapter, three theoretical perspectives are introduced that shed light on this question: the Copenhagen School, the human security perspective, and the Paris School. These three schools all offer theoretical perspectives on the question of what it means (or should mean) to render something governable as a security issue and whether or not this is desirable. As well as being those most discussed in the literature, these three schools also cover the full spectrum of positions on the issue: against securitization, for securitization, and neutral (it depends).

Angela Oels

Papers

Does discourse matter? Discourse analysis in environmental policy making

Rendering climate change governable: From biopower to advanced liberal government?

From ‘fearing’ to ‘empowering’ climate refugees: Governing climate-induced migration in the name of resilience:

From ‘Securitization’ of Climate Change to ’Climatization‘ of the Security Field: Comparing Three Theoretical Perspectives

Rendering climate change governable by risk: From probability to contingency