Construction Of Climate Change Research Articles

The Socio-Political Construction of Climate Change: Looking for Paths to Sustainability and Gender Justice

With the purpose of getting to know the cultural and socio-political mechanisms that shape the climate agenda, this study follows a discourse analysis method and a gender perspective, for which an analytical basis is proposed to identify the cognitive, normative, and symbolic components that give meaning and substance to climate policy. Examining the productions of international organizations responsible for generating climate policy, a corpus consisting of 47 documents (reports, communications, programs, and legal framework) was analyzed, spanning from 1994 to 2015, to identify the trend of climate agenda prior to the Paris Agreement. The results indicate that the terms in which climate change is placed as a public issue contribute to reproducing a social order based on an anthropocentric, utilitarian, virtualized, and mercantilist vision of socio-environmental relations. Control mechanisms of peripheral countries and groups whose rights have been breached by discriminatory practices can emerge in this process, with women being especially affected. Based on empirical findings that follow the first two decades of climate policy, the logic underlying the climate discourse is shown, and the challenges it poses to reach more fair and sustainable agreements are discussed. Finally, some proposals are outlined to help guide the climate agenda in that direction.

Capturing paradox through a discourse of transcendence: Big Oil’s construction of climate change

This paper explores how the European oil and gas supermajors (BP, Shell and Total), through organizational discourse, symbolically overcome the apparent paradox between producing and marketing foss...

Security in Climate Change Discourse: Analyzing the Divergence between US and EU Approaches to Policy

Why has Europe implemented a quite-proactive climate policy while the US has adopted a far less ambitious climate strategy? Does variation in security concerns or other factors better explain this difference in policy? Using a multimethod case study approach, the authors find that in the US, constructions of climate change as a security threat play an important role in developing public support. In Europe, leadership and opportunity discourses predominate. Other factors including centralization of governance, trust in the technocratic elite, and cultural norms contribute to the variation in policy construction.

After the green gold rush: the construction of climate change as a market transition

This paper examines the emergence of a representation of climate change amongst business and political elites as an axiomatic frame of long-term economic strategy. In this representation, the rationale for action on climate change is liberated from the premise of an exogenous physical threat, and replaced by incentives endogenous to the market in the form of opportunities in the so-called carbon economy. The relationship between climate science and action upon climate change has in this process become markedly different from common assumptions whereby science is either ignored or obfuscated, or followed faithfully as the evidence base for policy. Strikingly, the abandoning of climate ontology as irrelevant to corporate decision-making has enabled a large-scale investment of capital into the policies nominally designed to tackle climate change.

Science or Science Fiction? Professionals' discursive construction of climate change

This paper examines the framings and identity work associated with professionals’ discursive construction of climate change science, themselves as legitimated to adjudicate ‘the truth’, and their attitudes towards regulatory measures. Drawing from survey responses of 1077 professional engineers and geoscientists, we reconstruct their framings of the issue and knowledge claims to position themselves within their organizational and their professional institutions. In understanding the struggle over what constitutes and legitimizes expertise, we make apparent the heterogeneity of claims and legitimation strategies within one profession. By linking notions of the science or science fiction of climate change to the assessment of the adequacy of global and local policies and of potential organizational responses, we contribute to the understanding of ‘defensive institutional work’ by professionals within fossil fuels-companies and their professional associations.

Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future – Ritual, Reflexivity and the Hope for Renewal in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Climate Change Communication Film "Home"

Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future – Ritual, Reflexivity and the Hope for Renewal in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Climate Change Communication Film "Home"

A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change

If the scientific consensus is correct, then humanity faces an impending climate crisis of catastrophic proportions. It is no longer a question of whether it is really happening, but what will be the impacts of climate change on societies around the world and how governments and individuals will adapt to the troubles they will bring. In the light of frightening predictions, it might reasonably be asked, what is the point of suggesting that greater attention should be paid to gender? Feminist scholarship on environmental problems must always be ready for such questions, to defend the relevance of gender analysis in the face of dominant tendencies to see humanity as homogeneous, science as apolitical, and social justice as a luxury that cannot be chosen over survival. In this essay, I make the case for feminist social research on climate change with the following argument: shedding light on the gender dimensions of climate change will enable a more accurate diagnosis and a more promising ‘cure’ than is possible with a gender neutral approach. My argument is that any attempt to tackle climate change that excludes a gender analysis will be insufficient, unjust and therefore unsustainable. Supporting this argument with evidence is challenging because there is a worrying lack of research on which to draw. Social research on climate change has been slow to develop; feminist research into the gender dimensions has been even slower. After briefly taking stock of the small amount of research that currently exists on these issues, I take a critical look at the ways in which gendered discourses, roles and identities shape the political and material aspects of climate change. I consider the ways in which gender plays a role in three broad areas: i) the construction of climate change, ii) experiences of climate change in everyday life and iii) institutional and individual responses to climate change. Where possible I discuss what is already known in the available research; but it is also possible to draw on traditions of feminist theorizing in the field of ‘gender and environment’. In many ways climate change raises issues that are no different from the environmental challenges we have been facing for the past 40 years. My intention is to highlight gaps where more research is needed now, and so I conclude with a call for more feminist-informed sociological research into the ways in which the material and discursive dimensions of climate change are deeply gendered. If these can be made more obvious, then perhaps the need

The Social Construction of Climate Change: Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses - Edited by Pettenger M

The Social Construction of Climate Change: Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses - Edited by Pettenger M

Book Review: The Social Construction of Climate Change. Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses by Mary E. Pettenger

The Social Construction of Climate Change. Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses, by Mary E. Pettenger. Ashgate Publishing, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-7546-1082-4

Governing and adapting to climate. A response to Ian Bailey's Commentary on ‘Geographical work at the boundaries of climate change’

Ian Bailey has responded to my original Boundary Crossings article (Hulme 2008) with a well-argued call for introducing more explicit consideration of the spatial and the cultural into current thinking about climate policy (Bailey 2008). This call complements my original argument that in our construction of climate change as a global and material phenomenon we have unhelpfully de-cultured, or purified, the idea of climate. Thus Bailey comments,