Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other.
Abstract: This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce politics and power into the multi-level perspective of low-carbon transition and argue that the resistance and resilience of coal, gas and nuclear production regimes currently negates the benefits from increasing renewables deployment.
Abstract: 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.
1,056 citations
Cites background from "Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..."
...This post-political discourse avoids the ‘agonistic confrontation of competing visions of a different socio-ecological order’ (Swyngedouw, 2010: 226), and instead presents the preferred pathway as the only alternative....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the extension of resilience notions to society has important limits, particularly its conceptualization of social change, and suggest that critically examining the role of knowledge at the intersections between social and environmental dynamics helps to address normative questions and to capture how power and competing value systems are not external to, but rather integral to the development and functioning of SES.
Abstract: The concept of resilience in ecology has been expanded into a framework to analyse human-environment dynamics. The extension of resilience notions to society has important limits, particularly its conceptualization of social change. The paper argues that this stems from the lack of attention to normative and epistemological issues underlying the notion of ‘social resilience’. We suggest that critically examining the role of knowledge at the intersections between social and environmental dynamics helps to address normative questions and to capture how power and competing value systems are not external to, but rather integral to the development and functioning of SES.
929 citations
Cites background from "Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..."
...…literature on political ecology and nature-society geographies provides tools for conceptualizing those dynamics (Elmhirst and Resurreccion, 2008; Forsyth, 2003; Nygren and Rikoon, 2008; Peet and Watts, 2004; Prudham, 2004; Shove, 2010; Sundberg, 2003; Swyngedouw, 2010; Turner and Robbins, 2008)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors defend the proposal of sustainable degrowth, arguing that resource and CO2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable, and propose a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies, such as a basic income, reduction of working hours, environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising.
637 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes, and apply concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this sociopolitical process.
Abstract: This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities – and thus the potential for transformational adaptation – can be supported.
541 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The existential search for meaning of things has been studied extensively in the literature and philosophy literature as discussed by the authors, with the focus on the problem of knowledge and reality, and the way in which contemporary man is clutching at straws in his search for meanings is symptomatic both of the depth of his concern and of the inadequacy of the answers which are emerging.
Abstract: insistent quest for the meaning of things. The question is one that faces "everyman" from the child's first awareness of the mystery of life to the adult's apprehension of the mystery of death. As one existential writer put it, "I know only two things?one, that I will be dead someday, two, that I am not dead now. The only question is what shall I do be tween those two points." Does nihilistic literature and philosophy have the answer?wallowing in nothingness? Are the Madison Avenue thought controllers right in their claim that the time for the individual has passed and that we should conform to collectivities because there is safety in numbers? Shall we follow the "beat generation" and the "angry young men" who say we should conform to non-conformity in the name of pure rebelliousness and non-constructive creativity? Or should we just capitu late with the "positive thinkers" who say that all this concern about what things mean is too nerve-wracking, and that the problems of life can best be met by taking existential tranquilizers in the form of sugar coated mottos? The way in which contemporary man is clutching at straws in his search for meaning is symptomatic both of the depth of his concern and of the inadequacy of the answers which are emerging. In the material which follows, I will develop this theme primarily by elaboration of relevant material on the problems of reality and value, and the psy chology of perception and personality. Since the search for meaning ultimately implies an effort to arrive at something irreducible, it seems reasonable to open the inquiry with the question of knowledge and reality.
421 citations
References
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.
8,858 citations
"Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..." refers background in this paper
...…are actually those that produced the problem in the first place (commodification of nature – in this case CO2), thereby radically disavowing the social relations and processes through which this hybrid socio-natural quasi-object (Latour, 1993; Swyngedouw, 2006) came into its problematic being....
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...Moreover, the mobilized mechanisms to arrive at this allegedly more benign (past) condition are actually those that produced the problem in the first place (commodification of nature – in this case CO2), thereby radically disavowing the social relations and processes through which this hybrid socio-natural quasi-object (Latour, 1993; Swyngedouw, 2006) came into its problematic being....
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Book•
04 Oct 1999
TL;DR: The Second Edition Basic Concepts and Themes Government and Governmentality as discussed by the authors An Analytics of Government Analyzing Regimes of Government Genealogy and Government Governmentality Genealogy, Government Liberalism, Critique and 'the Social' Neo-Liberalism and Foucault Dependency and Empowerment: Two Case Studies Dependency empowerment Conclusion Pastoral power, police and reason of state Pastoral Power Reason of state and Police Conclusion Bio-Politics and Sovereignty Bio-politics Sovereignty and the Governmentalization of the State Liberalism Economy Security Law and Norm Society and Social Government Author
Abstract: Introduction to the Second Edition Basic Concepts and Themes Government and Governmentality An Analytics of Government Analyzing Regimes of Government Genealogy and Governmentality Genealogy and Government Liberalism, Critique and 'the Social' Neo-Liberalism and Foucault Dependency and Empowerment: Two Case Studies Dependency Empowerment Conclusion Pastoral Power, Police and Reason of State Pastoral Power Reason of State and Police Conclusion Bio-Politics and Sovereignty Bio-Politics Sovereignty and the Governmentalization of the State Liberalism Economy Security Law and Norm Society and Social Government Authoritarian Governmentality The Illiberality of Liberal Government Bio-Politics, Race and Non-Liberal Rule Neo-Liberalism and Advanced Liberal Government Society, Freedom and Reform Advanced Liberal Government A Post-Welfarist Regime of the Social Risk and Reflexive Government Two Approaches to Risk Risk and Reflexive Modernization Insurance and Government Reflexive Government International Governmentality Foucault and the International Building on Foucault Conclusion: 'Not Bad... but Dangerous' Postscript to the Second Edition: The Crisis of Neo-Liberal Governmentality?
5,006 citations
"Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..." refers background in this paper
...CO2’s functioning as a commodity (and financialized asset) is dependent on its insertion in a complex governance regime organized around a set of technologies of governance that revolve around reflexive risk-calculation, self-assessment, interest-negotiation and intermediation, accountancy rules and accountancy-based disciplining, detailed quantification and benchmarking of performance (Dean, 1999)....
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...…takes the form of stakeholder participation or forms of participatory governance that operates beyond the state and permits a form of self-management, self-organization and controlled self-disciplining (see Dean, 1999; Lemke, 1999), under the aegis of a non-disputed liberal-capitalist order....
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...…regime organized around a set of technologies of governance that revolve around reflexive risk-calculation, self-assessment, interest-negotiation and intermediation, accountancy rules and accountancy-based disciplining, detailed quantification and benchmarking of performance (Dean, 1999)....
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TL;DR: The critical spirit of the humanities has run out of steam as discussed by the authors and the critical spirit might not be aiming at the right target, which is a concern of ours as a whole.
Abstract: Wars. Somanywars.Wars outside andwars inside.Culturalwars, science wars, and wars against terrorism.Wars against poverty andwars against the poor. Wars against ignorance and wars out of ignorance. My question is simple: Should we be at war, too, we, the scholars, the intellectuals? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm?What has become of the critical spirit? Has it run out of steam? Quite simply, my worry is that it might not be aiming at the right target. To remain in the metaphorical atmosphere of the time, military experts constantly revise their strategic doctrines, their contingency plans, the size, direction, and technology of their projectiles, their smart bombs, theirmissiles; I wonder why we, we alone, would be saved from those sorts of revisions. It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are wenot like thosemechanical toys that endlesslymake the samegesturewhen everything else has changed around them? Would it not be rather terrible if we were still training young kids—yes, young recruits, young cadets—for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone, conquering territories that no longer exist, leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for whichwe are so thoroughlyunprepared? Generals have always been accused of being on the ready one war late— especially French generals, especially these days. Would it be so surprising,
3,608 citations
"Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..." refers background in this paper
...This consensual framing is itself sustained by a particular scientific discourse.1 The complex translation and articulation between what Bruno Latour (2004) would call matters of fact versus matters of concern has been thoroughly short-circuited....
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TL;DR: In this article, a clear and new definition of populism is presented and the normal-pathology thesis is rejected; instead, it is argued that today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies and one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist.
Abstract: Since the 1980s the rise of so-called ‘populist parties’ has given rise to thousands of books, articles, columns and editorials. This article aims to make a threefold contribution to the current debate on populism in liberal democracies. First, a clear and new definition of populism is presented. Second, the normal-pathology thesis is rejected; instead it is argued that today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist. Third, it is argued that the explanations of and reactions to the current populist Zeitgeist are seriously flawed and might actually strengthen rather than weaken it.
2,957 citations
"Apocalypse Forever? Post-political ..." refers background in this paper
...In this part, we shall chart the characteristics of populism (see, among others, Canovan, 1999; 2005; Laclau, 2005; Mudde, 2004; Žižek, 2006a) as they are expressed in mainstream climate concerns....
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