Out now: History, the future and the words to connect them
Dear friendly friends: I’ll be enjoying some sun, er, and sea this coming week and as you know packing is hard labour, so I have no time for real work. Instead of my ‘usual’ review of the literature, therefore, this week I’ll supply you with a quick round-up of articles rolling right off the presses. Caution: contents are hot!
Riedy, Chris, Jennifer Kent, and Nivek Thompson. 2019. "Meaning work: reworking institutional meanings for environmental governance". Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. 62 (1): 151-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2018.1450230
The fossil fuel divestment movement has a difficult message to convey – at least to those who matter most. Read on if you want to understand more about that (for now) uphill battle. The article should also be of note for those interested in how to create compelling stories for the projects they are trying to realize. (From a special issue on “institutional work in environmental governance”.)
Effective environmental governance requires institutional change. While some actors work to change institutions, others resist change by defending and maintaining institutions. Much of this institutional work is ‘meaning work’, which we define as the practice of crafting, adapting, connecting and performing meanings to purposively create, maintain or disrupt institutions. This paper constructs a concept of meaning work that highlights agency in carrying meanings across scales and between discursive layers, while noting the structuring role of prevailing discourses. It grounds the concept using two environmental governance cases at very different scales: a local democratic innovation employed by Noosa Council in Queensland, Australia; and the international campaign to divest from fossil fuels. The cases demonstrate the diversity of meaning work and the difficulty of achieving deep discursive change. They point to the need for environmental governance practitioners to rework existing meanings to construct compelling stories for change, taking advantage of narrative openings.
Scott, Tyler A., and David P. Carter. 2019. "Collaborative governance or private policy making? When consultants matter more than participation in collaborative environmental planning". Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning. 21 (2): 153-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1566061
Nice little subversive finding about good intentions and all. We all struggle with pacifying power differences somewhat in our desire for (inclusive) policy-making and (co-creative) product development. But power to set the terms of the debate (meaning work) is something that is not easily relinquished:
“we document that neither the strength nor the commitment of collaborative efforts correlate with the content of planning outputs. Instead, the variation observed among regional plans can be largely explained by taking into account the consultant firms that were contracted to advise IWRM councils”.
More excerpts:
The study of collaborative governance constitutes an established sub-literature within environmental policy and management scholarship. Among the lessons of this literature is that collaborative planning outputs are shaped by the mix of collaborative participants in question and the commitment participants exhibit towards joint planning efforts. This paper argues that a focus on the composition and commitment of collaborative participants ignores an increasingly prevalent actor in environmental planning – private sector contract consultants. […] Our discussion addresses the practical implications of relying on professional consultant services in environmental policy processes, and the theoretical imperative of incorporating consultant influence when explaining collaborative governance processes, outputs, and outcomes.
Hasselqvist H., and Hesselgren M. 2019. "Bridging citizen and stakeholder perspectives of sustainable mobility through practice-oriented design". Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy. 15 (1): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2018.1533781
Speaking of power differences, “stakeholders”.
Addressing sustainable consumption […] requires […] many stakeholders including governments, companies, organizations, and citizens. However, the power to influence elements of practices may not be equally distributed […] over space and time.
I’m sure someone can hire a consultancy firm to design our way out of this conundrum, no?
[…] This article contributes to a discussion of critical aspects of sustainable mobility practices in relation to the responsibilities and concerns of stakeholders with power to influence these practices. We present four sets of design concepts for supporting car-free living which were formulated and co-created based on a practice-oriented analysis of a one-year study of three families in Stockholm, Sweden that replaced their cars with light electric vehicles. The design concepts bring forward elements of sustainable mobility with a focus on: trying out new mobility practices, cycling infrastructure, child-friendly public transport, and transporting stuff. Furthermore, we discussed the concepts with public and private sector stakeholders and examined their interests in particular practices. Also considered are how the responsibilities of different stakeholders may clash. Finally, we suggest that practice-oriented design concepts can support discussions and increased knowledge about responsibilities and potential conflicts related to sustainable practices, as well as provide means for supporting learning about sustainable practices among decision makers.
Elements of sustainable mobility in Sweden
Anaafo, David. 2019. "Between science and local knowledge: improving the communication of climate change to rural agriculturists in the Bolgatanga Municipality, Ghana". Local Environment. 24 (3): 201-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2018.1557126
Lillevold, Karin, and Håvard Haarstad. 2019. "The deep city: cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable local transformation". Local Environment. 24 (4): 329-341. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2019.1567481
From the good folks over at Local Environment come two stories about how one might mobilize local culture – patrimony, tradition, knowledge – for sustainable (economic) practices. There might be two reasons for this: if in part high modernity got us into this environmental mess, then going back to something that predates that might get you out of it again. Secondly, if dislodgement and nostalgia are seemingly inevitable consequences of modernity’s relentless onward slog, er, eternal upward march, then ‘local culture’ might just be the thing that people value. If so, it’s good basis to starting werking that meaning b**ch!
The study establishes that the names of the calendar months, which serve as goalposts for local agricultural practices no longer portray their true meaning due to climate change. The study, therefore, recommends the use of nuanced ways of communicating climate change to local agriculturists, using scientific research, lived experiences as well as socially and culturally embedded tools such as misnomers associated with local climate events.
By looking at Røros, a World Heritage Site in central Norway with a dense and historic wooden urban centre, we investigate how its heritage protection facilitates the maintenance of a compact urban centre. We hold that a shared sense of place – the deepness– may serve as a resource against unsustainable sprawl and mall-oriented development.
Kim, Hyomin, Seung Hee Cho, and Sungsoo Song. 2019. "Wind, power, and the situatedness of community engagement". Public Understanding of Science. 28 (1): 38-52. https://doi.org.proxy/10.1177/0963662518772508
You know what else high modernity brings? Economic progress! Kim and company find “unusually high levels of acceptance” of the ever controversial (onshore) wind turbines on the Korean island of Jeju. Why? Nobody cherishes poverty and marginalization. Everyone wants a “good” society – whether that be in the guise of compact city living, economic self-sufficiency or recognition.
Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality.
Wave
I’ll be off for a week envisioning my good society in the guise of perpetual rounds of vacation. I’ll be back on duty either the end of the next week or Monday in two weeks at the latest. Feel free to drop me a line in the meantime!