Governing Moth and Man

AbstractThis paper analyses, in southern Gotland, an island located on the southeast coast of Sweden, the political process for handling the outbreak of an insect, the moth, causing human allergic reactions. Given the human nuisance and possible long-term damage to the tourist industry, the affected populace demanded spraying to reduce and control the insect population. However, there were warnings against such a treatment because of gaps in knowledge of its wider ecological consequences, not least its effects on biodiversity. Key actors were interviewed to investigate their understanding of the problem and how they tried to make it governable. The point of departure is that regulation not only governs specific objects, but is also deeply involved in their construction. The empirical analysis investigates involved actors’ conceptualizations of the problem and the proposed remedy. Despite local residents’ demands for spraying, public agencies took no substantial action to control the insect population, but instead deliberately acted to manage the local population’s claim-making. Thus, what took place was a process of governing not just moths, but men too.RésuméCe texte analyse, dans la partie méridionale de l’île de Gotland, située sur la côte sud-est de la Suède, le traitement politique de l’invasion de la mite, un insecte provoquant des réactions allergiques chez l’homme. Compte tenu de cette nuisance et de ses effets possibles à terme sur le tourisme, la population affectée exigea l’aspersion de produits pour réduire et contrôler cet insecte. Cependant, on se prononça contre ce type de traitement, et ce en raison du manque de connaissances quant à ses répercussions écologiques, notamment sur la biodiversité. Des entretiens furent menés avec des acteurs de premier plan afin de comprendre comment ils appréhendaient ce problème et comment ils essayaient de le gérer. Le postulat de cette étude, c’est que la régulation ne porte pas seulement sur des objets spécifiques mais qu’elle contribue aussi largement à créer ces objets. L’approche empirique s’intéressera à la façon dont les acteurs perçoivent le problème et aux solutions qu’ils proposent. En dépit des demandes des résidents locaux pour que soient aspergés des insecticides, les instances publiques n’entreprirent aucune action particulière pour contrôler la population d’insectes mais choisirent délibérément de gérer les demandes formulées par la population locale. Le résultat en fut qu’on ne se contenta pas de gérer des mites mais qu’on géra aussi des hommes

Stakeholder Engagement in the Making: IPBES Legitimization Politics

Esguerra A, Beck S, Lidskog R. Stakeholder Engagement in the Making: IPBES Legitimization Politics. Global Environmental Politics. 2017;17(1):59-76

Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise the cases of the IPCC and the IPBES

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation

Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene

This paper asks how the social sciences can engage with the idea of the Anthropocene in productive ways. In response to this question we outline an interpretative research agenda that allows critical engagement with the Anthropocene as a socially and culturally bounded object with many possible meanings and political trajectories. In order to facilitate the kind of political mobilization required to meet the complex environmental challenges of our times, we argue that the social sciences should refrain from adjusting to standardized research agendas and templates. A more urgent analytical challenge lies in exposing, challenging and extending the ontological assumptions that inform how we make sense of and respond to a rapidly changing environment. By cultivating environmental research that opens up multiple interpretations of the Anthropocene, the social sciences can help to extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics

Conditions for transformative learning for sustainable development: a theoretical review and approach

Continued unsustainability and surpassed planetary boundaries require not only scientific and technological advances, but deep and enduring social and cultural changes. The purpose of this article is to contribute a theoretical approach to understand conditions and constraints for societal change towards sustainable development. In order to break with unsustainable norms, habits, practices, and structures, there is a need for learning for transformation, not only adaption. Based on a critical literature review within the field of learning for sustainable development, our approach is a development of the concept of transformative learning, by integrating three additional dimensions—Institutional Structures, Social Practices, and Conflict Perspectives. This approach acknowledges conflicts on macro, meso, and micro levels, as well as structural and cultural constraints. It contends that transformative learning is processual, interactional, long-term, and cumbersome. It takes place within existing institutions and social practices, while also transcending them. The article adopts an interdisciplinary social science perspective that acknowledges the importance of transformative learning in order for communities, organizations, and individuals to be able to deal with global sustainability problems, acknowledging the societal and personal conflicts involved in such transformation

Leaving the Minors : The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and the 2011 General Election

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has emerged as a successful environmentally focused party with a solid base. The 2011 General Election represented a high-point for the party, distancing it from the other minor parties. This article explores examples of factors affecting the success of Green parties, and examines the strategy of the New Zealand Green Party prior to the 2011 election. The findings indicate that the party has developed stable support through the development of a consistent policy base and pragmatic approach to its role in parliament. This has allowed the Greens to establish a position following the 2011 election as the third party in New Zealand politics

Miljösociologi i går, i dag och i morgon

Denna artikel ger ett historiskt perspektiv över miljösociologins utveckling i Sverige de senaste tre decennierna. Den diskuterar miljöfrågan och miljöforskningens förändring och hur det lett till den paradoxala situationen att miljösociologin blivit mer efterfrågad men samtidigt mer osynlig. Skälet till det är dels att stora delar av den sociologiska miljöforskningen sker inom ramen för mångvetenskapliga forskningsprogram, dels att den utförs av sociologer som inte definierar sig som miljösociologer utan till exempel politiska sociologer, konsumtionsociologer eller vetenskapssociologer. Därefter presenteras tre olika, men ofta delvis överlappande, sätt att definiera miljösociologi; epistemiskt (miljösociologin som ett distinkt kunskapsfält), organisatoriskt (de sociologer som samlas i miljösociologiska nätverk) och empiriskt (all sociologisk forskning på miljöområdet). I artikeln diskuterar för- och nackdelar med dessa tre synsätt och den avslutas med att diskutera (miljö)sociologins roll i pågående och kommande transformationsprocesser, vilket väcker frågan om vilken kunskap sociologer bör utveckla och vilken expertroll de vill axla. This article provides a historical perspective on the development of environmental sociology in Sweden over the last three decades. It discusses changes in environmental issues and environmental research and how this has led to the paradoxical situation that environmental sociology has become more in demand but at the same time more invisible. This is partly because much sociological environmental research takes place within multidisciplinary research programmes, and partly because it is carried out by sociologists who do not define themselves as environmental sociologists, but as political sociologists, sociologists of consumption or sociologists of science, for example. The article then presents three different, but often overlapping, ways of defining environmental sociology: epistemic (environmental sociology as a distinct field of knowledge), organisational (the sociologists who come together in environmental sociology networks) and empirical (all sociological research in the environmental field). The article discusses the pros and cons of these three approaches and concludes with a discussion of the role of (environmental) sociology in sustainability transformation, raising the question of what knowledge sociologists should develop and what expert role they should take