Environmental Narratives Research Articles

The Persuasiveness of a Humorous Environmental Narrative Combined With an Explicit Persuasive Appeal

Entertainment narratives commonly feature explicit appeals to underscore important content therein. This strategy may also undermine the subtle approach that characterizes narrative persuasion. This experiment examined the effects of a pro-environmental public service announcement (PSA) combined with an entertainment narrative on environmental intentions and behaviors. Results revealed that the combination of an environmental narrative and PSA led to fewer intentions to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors than exposure to the environmental narrative alone. The PSA combined with the environmental narrative also led to greater perceived persuasive intent and, among those who held negative views about the environment, greater reactance and less environmentally friendly behavior.

Arab Sustainable Urbanism: Worlding Strategies, Local Struggles

Unlike many metropolises that use green urbanism as a worlding strategy, Arab cities seem reluctant to embark on ambitious schemes addressing sustainability issues. To explain this situation, the article highlights three arguments. Firstly, as state-led governance prioritizes social stability, existing green plans have been scrapped in the face of political threats. Second, large, allegedly sustainable projects such as Masdar should not hide ongoing unsustainable urbanization features. Thirdly, the dominant framings of sustainability tend to focus on global issues (greenhouse gas emissions and low carbon energy), hence neglecting local claims for sustainability that do not fit into global environmental narratives.

Bridging Past and Present Traumas: The Emergence of Kosovo Serb Ethnoscape in the Dynamic Interaction between the Enclaved Environment and History Textbooks’ Content

AbstractThis article deals with the use of history textbooks imported from Serbia in the specific context of Kosovo Serb enclavement. It provides a content analysis of history textbooks used by Kosovo Serb pupils in Kosovo in terms of their contribution to Kosovo Serb collective identity building. This article focuses on the interaction between the enclaved environment within which Kosovo Serbs have lived since 1999 and the narratives contained in the history textbooks, to highlight how this interaction influences the way Kosovo Serbs consider their identity. First, I start by showing that history textbooks used by Kosovo Serbs in Kosovo emphasize religious identity. Next, I argue that dialogic relation between past and present, understood through the dynamic interaction between the enclaved environment and history textbook narratives, contributes to the emergence of enclaves as ethnoscapes.

6Ecocriticism

AbstractThis review of publications in the field of ecocriticism in 2018 is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction: Anthropocene Timescales and Affects; 2. Affective Ecocriticism; 3. Material and Empirical Ecocriticisms; 4. Ecocriticism and Ecopoetics; 5. Ecocritical Convergences; 6. Conclusion. The review focuses on four single-authored monographs, three edited book collections, three journal issues, and three stand-alone articles. The biospheric urgencies of the Anthropocene and its cataclysmic signature—climate change—have attracted ecocritical attention to concerns of time, scale, and affect. In particular, 2018 marked the further maturation of material and queer ecocriticisms, the florescence of affective ecocriticism, and the germination of empirical ecocriticism. The field in 2018 explores, in depth, the role of affect—emotions, intensities, corporealities, and modes of relations—in the Anthropocene. All the while, confluences between affective, material, and queer ecocriticisms continue to broaden the scope of environmental affect to include ‘bad’ and irreverent modes. What’s more, new publications in material ecocriticism draw attention to environmental narratives as vehicles for concretizing the highly abstract spatiotemporalities of the Anthropocene whereas empirical ecocriticism applies qualitative methods to understanding the transformative potential of narratives. 2018 saw major studies of ecopoetics in addition to convergences between ecocriticism, animal studies, performance studies, crime fiction studies, and the environmental humanities. The year also brought the extension of ecocritical approaches to the genre of crime fiction and the literature of the Global South.

Scalar fixes of environmental management in Java, Indonesia

This paper analyses the emergence and fixing of scales in struggles over environmental issues. Using the example of watershed and coastal management in Java, we show how political framings of environmental matters and struggles over resources are linked to scalar regimes. We conceptualise these regimes as scalar fixes in which scales of intervention and scales of knowledge production are bound by environmental narratives and social–ecological processes to produce lock-in effects for prolonged periods of time. In our empirical case, particular scales were central in providing ‘problem closure’ and legitimising interventions while precluding other problematisations. Sedimentation of the Segara Anakan lagoon, first desired to support conversion into a rice bowl, was later framed as threat caused by upland peasants. The lock-in of interpretive framings and scales of observation and intervention, which was linked to politics of forest control, impeded debate on the various causes of sedimentation. With our newly defined concept of scalar fixes we contribute to understanding environmental narratives and related knowledge, providing a complement to the micro-perspectives on the stabilisation of knowledge claims currently discussed in cultural and political ecology. In doing so, we offer an approach to scalar analysis of environmental conflicts linking environmental narratives with the material social–ecological processes enrolled.

La fabricación de una comunidad moral. El caso de los afectados de la causa Matanza-Riachuelo

Based on an ethnography study conducted between 2010 and 2015, I analyze the relocalization of riverside slums in the City of Buenos Aires. Argentina’s maximum judicial authority mandated the process due to the neighborhood’s proximity to a highly contaminated river. I investigate how some dwellers of a problematic location appeal to an environmental narrative, which typically adheres to a core claim regarding housing or living conditions. How can the right to a healthy environment –which can be anchored on the mere cultural recognition of being affected–articulate with a dynamic network of other rights? The harm, which afflicts some of those bodies, becomes, through diverse translations, a political device. The analysis of the negotiations of those affected brings us to the potential of suffering in the creation of moral communities (Pita, 2010) and in the search for recognition in order to bend the path of certain policies.

Oil fiction as risk fiction: inhabiting risk in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit

ABSTRACTThis essay discusses Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit as environmental risk narrative. The novel contributes to the literary history of oil in the United States by exploring from a risk perspective an infamous period of Native American history in the 1920s, the catastrophic events that developed from the discovery of oil in Northern Oklahoma’s ‘Indian Territory.’ Reading Mean Spirit as risk narrative provides a specific way of knowing about oil, about its economic, social, and cultural meanings. The novel’s focus on how oil-related risks shape its characters’ lives shows that oil cultures must be regarded as risk cultures in which various risks unfold their shaping power – risks that are voluntarily taken and risks that must involuntarily be endured. Through its focus on risk, Mean Spirit draws attention to the fact that uncertainty and instability have always marked the cultural history of oil in the United States.

Beyond Narratives: Civic Epistemologies and the Coproduction of Environmental Knowledge and Popular Environmentalism in Thailand

Popular environmentalism can have limited democratic outcomes if it reproduces structures of social order. This article seeks to advance understandings of environmental democratization by examining the analytical framework of civic epistemologies as a complement to the current use of environmental narratives in political ecology and science and technology studies. Civic epistemologies are the preexisting dimensions of political order that the state and other actors seek to maintain as unchallengeable. They add to current analysis because they show the structures around which narratives form, as well as how knowledge and political agencies of different actors are coproduced in reductive ways. The article applies this analysis to popular environmentalism in Thailand and especially concerning community forests and logging from 1968 to present. Using a combination of interviews and content analysis of historic newspaper reporting, the article shows how diverse actors—including state, elite conservationists, and peasant activists—have organized political activism and ecological claims about forests according to unchallenged norms of appropriate community culture and behavior. These actions have kept narratives about forests and society in place and worked against alternative and arguably more empowering visions of communities and forests in recent years. The article argues that revealing civic epistemologies can contribute to a deeper form of environmental democratization than engaging in environmental politics based on existing narratives or analyzing the limitations of narratives alone. Key Words: authoritarianism, environmentalism, political ecology, science and technology studies, Thailand.

Explaining political polarization in environmental governance using narrative analysis

Research into formation of environmental narratives can explain the process of political polarization in environmental governance, or perhaps more constructively, how to avoid it. To do so, we must broaden narrative analysis to include the evolution of relationships between environmental norms in a community and the changing positionality of the researcher. I show how this may be done, by focusing on river governance in post-Tropical Storm Irene New England, USA. The storm left residents in the region bitterly divided over how a river should be governed. Relying on interviews, newspaper articles, and judiciary and town hall proceedings, I show that two narratives coevolved from norms of vulnerability and stewardship as different groups vied for power in river governance. As they did so, the community became polarized as the newer, stewardship-based narrative gained legitimacy by problematizing traditional environmental norms. In response, community members who saw the river as dangerous and the town as vulnerable defended these norms by problematizing the new narrative. Through an iterative process, the different environmental narratives became increasingly relative as each attempted to dictate governance. Ultimately, the narratives became problematized reflections of one another. This process undermined the possibility of compromise or novel governance schemes that may have incorporated different environmental norms. To avoid polarization, researchers must at one time position themselves within the political process but take care to study how this position changes governance.

La fabricación de una comunidad moral. El caso de los afectados de la causa Matanza-Riachuelo

A partir de una etnografía desarrollada entre 2010 y 2015, analizaré la relocalización de villas ribereñas de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ordenada por la máxima autoridad judicial argentina, debido a su cercanía a un río altamente contaminado. He de indagar de qué modo algunos habitantes de un entorno problemático apelan a una narrativa ambiental que suele sumarse a un eje reivindicativo en torno a la vivienda o las condiciones de vida. ¿Cómo puede articularse el derecho a un ambiente sano —que puede quedar anclado en un mero reconocimiento cultural de “ser afectados”— a una red dinámica de otros derechos? El mal que aqueja a algunos de esos cuerpos deviene, mediante diversas traducciones, reclamo político. El análisis de las negociaciones de los afectados nos remite al potencial del sufrimiento en la creación de comunidades morales (Pita, 2010) y en la búsqueda de reconocimiento para torcer el rumbo de ciertas políticas.

Participatory natural resource management in rural China: Making and unmaking environmental narratives

Environmental and development discourses in China can be categorised into three narrative motifs framing human–nature relationships: peasant, indigenous, and community. Indigenous and community narratives have been widely adopted by environmental NGOs (eNGOs) in China in promoting community‐based natural resource management projects, but there has been very limited critical research on such phenomena. Analysis of socio‐economic change in two ethnic minority communities in Yunnan shows that neither narrative theme is fully internalised by the relevant communities. Instead narratives may be strategically modified or even rejected by local communities. This is due to different agendas being held by local communities and eNGOs, and two factors pertinent to rural China: the incompatibility of concepts of ‘community’ in Chinese and international contexts results in confusion, and a lack of recent territorial and cultural claims by rural communities since the collectivist era makes it difficult to construct the identity of a community. It remains challenging for eNGOs in China to advocate either community or indigenous narratives in contexts of rapid socio‐economic change.

Disingenuous forests: A historical political ecology of fuelwood collection in South India

Much of India contains complex and ambiguous post-colonial environmental histories. Within the international clean cookstove development discourse, it is assumed that fuelwood collection for cooking is a significant factor in the overexploitation of forest biomass. This brand of storytelling is certainly applied in India where a series of programs have long targeted household fuelwood collection activities as a way of reversing rates of deforestation. This essay outlines the enigmatic and peculiar environmental histories of two distinct regions in South India. Based on oral histories, interviews and field surveys our findings indicate that many pressures other than fuel collection have helped alter vegetation and reduce fuel availability, particularly the expansion of commercially cultivated land in recent years. Moreover, a variety of historical contingencies, such as mass displacement from dam construction and the deliberate seeding of an invasive species complicate one-dimensional or reductive explanations of landscape change — a discursive environmental rendering referred to here as a ‘disingenuous nature’. Through retrospective analysis, we describe how this land use narrative, like so many other sustainable development discourses premised on incomplete and misleading information, is the byproduct of a ‘multi-scale narrative repurposing and sector coalescence’ process. This characterization signals how environmental narratives are repurposed and recycled uncritically by actors in distinct yet discursively compatible development sectors.

Alexa Weik von Mossner. Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative. Cognitive Approaches to Culture. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2017, 271 pp., $34.95.

Alexa Weik von Mossner. Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative. Cognitive Approaches to Culture. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2017, 271 pp., $34.95.

Building Meaning

This conceptual article seeks to demonstrate the pertinence of corporate architecture as an integrative tool in spatial marketing systems. Architecture is explored in a dialectical perspective, both as a functional built form and a symbolic vector of ideologies. Architecture intersects with micro-level and macro-level marketing systems, as it inherently projects corporate identity while referring to broader artistic, social and historical parameters. It is argued that these macromarketing dimensions and their meaning-generating potential add significant value to market exchanges. A special focus on corporate architecture in the banking sector shows the value of architectural narratives in changing marketing environments. The article makes two contributions to macromarketing research. It (1) firmly establishes corporate architecture within marketing systems and (2) shows how symbolic meaning can be derived from the macro-level environmental, historical and cultural properties of buildings.

Stretching and bending the frame – green possibilities in popular romantic narratives

ABSTRACTThis article examines frame theory, popular culture, and environmental values. Reviewing frame theory across journalism, communication studies, linguistics, and fine art, it will examine in particular ‘cultural framing’. Radical thought is invariably associated with the avant-garde, yet narrative or genre innovations in popular culture can also trigger ‘deeper’ cognitive shifts, potentially transforming ‘common culture’. Citing comics, films, and animation, the main example is popular music and how Björk and British Sea Power have subverted generic and acoustic conventions (e.g. melody), and music’s habitual romantic narratives, to re-frame human–nonhuman relationships ecologically. By stretching and manipulating frames, popular culture can adapt and engender environmental narratives for mass consumption.

1Ecocriticism

This review of publications in the field of ecocriticism in 2017 is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction; 2. Anthropocene Ecocriticism; 3. Material Ecocriticism; 4. Cognitive and Affective Ecocriticism; 5. Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities; 6. Conclusion. The review focuses on three single-authored monographs, three edited collections, one stand-alone book chapter and two journal issues. Environmental urgencies related to climate change continue to provide the pressing context for ecocritical scholarship. Publications in the field consider a range of texts with bearing on public awareness of global ecological concerns. This year’s work reveals sustained engagement with developments in the Anthropocene debate, as evident in scholars’ particular interest in deep temporality and risk theory. The review identifies narrative heterogenization as a distinct feature of many studies. Ecocritical focus on a plurality of narratives (novels, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, documentary films, feature films, digital media, games, artistic artefacts, and anti-ecological texts) underscores the significance of the environmental humanities as the field’s transdisciplinary milieu. Moreover, salient conjunctions between ecocriticism and critical studies of ecomedia, animals, and plants signify the continuing diversification of the field beyond its anglophonic origins in British and North American nature writing. In addition to a prevailing focus on the Anthropocene and new materialism, ecocritical work this year intersects with cognitive and affective theory, offering potential for further analysis of the role of science, perception, emotion, and embodiment in environmental narratives.

Changing Narratives of Race and Environment in the Nineteenth‐Century and Early‐Twentieth‐Century Brazilian Amazon

The Amazon has been the object of numerous reflections upon the relationship between the natural environment and the categories of human society. This article analyses Brazilian writers who considered the relations between space and race over the course of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It focuses on João Henrique de Mattos, José Veríssimo and Euclides da Cunha, placing them in relation to each other and within local, national and international discourses on race, nature and development. Its aim is to examine how a racialised geographical understanding of the Amazon changed over the course of the nineteenth century and was tied to Brazilian nation‐building.

Recoverable Earth: a twenty-first century environmental narrative

Rewilding may signify the emergence of a new environmental narrative. Discussion of underlying policy narratives is important because they shape understandings of the state of world and how society should act. I summarise the origins of twentieth century environmental narratives and argue that their influence derives from components telling of the dire state of nature, the catastrophic consequences of this and the need for competent authorities to act to govern the perpetrators of harm. Reflecting on my engagements with rewilding science and practice, I posit that stories of rewilding are adopting a quite different narrative structure: one that involves components telling of feelings of despondency and processes of awakening, action, and reassessment leading to the recovery of natural and social well-being. These components align with the narrative structure of accounts of mental health. I label this emerging narrative ‘Recoverable Earth’ and suggest that it signifies action by grassroot conservationists to reassert their ability to lead change locally and produce better outcomes for nature and society.

Taming Godavari River: Navigating through religious, developmental, and environmental narratives

Exploring the production and the social construction of Godavari riverscape in Nashik, this article presents a case of ongoing socio‐ecological transformations in the Indian cities. This case‐study aims to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on the political ecology of urban water bodies in India and expands the political ecology of waterscapes by engaging with the cultural politics of water. The Godavari, one of the seven sacred rivers in Hinduism, meanders through the fast urbanizing and a religious city of Nashik. Thousands of pilgrims converge every day along the Godavari in the Nashik and millions throng during the Hindu pilgrimage festival of Kumbh Mela—one of the biggest congregations in the world. Here, religious tourism coupled with modernist developmental agendas is rapidly (re)shaping the river into a prized religious and real estate commodity while ignoring the river ecology. This article nuances the perception, investigation, and management of rivers by examining three interrelated questions: How do the performance, circulation, and contestation of the multiple narratives surrounding the river transform its ecology and relationship with the city? In what ways do notions of control and exploitation of rivers normalize in the collective conscience of the societies? How do social relations (re)create and configure the emotional ties with the river in public imagination?This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness

Environmental Pragmatist Narratives in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood

Environmental Pragmatist Narratives in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood