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Discursive Mobilization for Green Transformation: Culture, Policy and Methodology

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 820

Special Issue Editors

Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU), 0653 Oslo, Norway
Interests: innovation studies; international economics; economic geography; econometrics
Department of Economic History, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
Interests: green conversion through resilient cities and new production platforms; the Swedish model regarding arms exports; technocratic housing models and extreme right parties

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to bridge the gap between discussions of discursive mobilization related to ideas, culture, and ecological consciousness and material mobilizations which, in their deconstructive form, involve divesting and dismantling fossil fuel generating activities and, in their reconstructive form, involve deploying technology, creating green industries, and building alternative spaces/platforms to sustain green action (Delina, 2016; Feldman, 2010). Ecological thinking increasingly focuses on “knowledge circulation”, promoting ecological ideas and representation of highly ecological commitments. This supply-side view often fails to examine demand side reception by audiences differing by region, interest or social background. This “demand side”, related to the concerns of audience and cultural studies as well as social history, is often missing from discussions and represents a focus for this Special Issue.

Discussions set around the current environmental emergencies have shed light on a possible abuse of natural resources. Environmental concerns have generated a strand of economic and political thinking, attempting to reconcile economic growth with a renewed attention on planetary boundaries (Stern et al., 2006). The emission of greenhouse gases damages constitutes a negative externality for society, which challenges standard economic theories because of its long-term horizon and intrinsic uncertainties (Nordhaus, 2007; Weitzman, 2007). Under the umbrella expression of “green growth”, policy-makers have brought forward several strategies which would be able to sustain economic value creation in spite of a lower environmental footprint, possibly by changing prices to include environmental externalities (Hallegatte et al., 2011). In line with a progressive adoption of the expression in official texts of international organizations, the paradigm of green growth has been seen as projecting the world toward the goal of sustainable development (Borel-Saladin and Turok, 2013). Governments and their industrial policies could acquire a renewed role by expanding the global supply of clean technologies (Rodrik, 2014).

However, an exclusive view of nature as a material resource for economic development, by ignoring all its other roles and meanings for the population, can bias an analysis about the possibilities for green growth (Capasso, 2021). Instead, a look at the philosophical premises behind the meaning of the word “green” would help to assess, first of all, whether green growth can be achieved and, second, how it could be achieved. The way in which the value attributed to nature, by the population, has evolved, as mirrored by the media, has changed over time. During recent decades, the “protection of nature” has been meant as a protection of existing ecosystems, a protection of a system of relations between living beings. Instead, in recent years, public attention has shifted, probably also following an evolution of values, toward problematics connected to the climate emergency. Similar types of evolution in the ethics toward nature emerge in relation to personal behavior and consumption patterns.

The current studies of discursive ecological mobilizations are often disconnected from a standardized measurement of comprehensive outcomes. A comprehensive ecological policy should encompass various different criteria. Comprehensiveness means the speed with which changes are made, their policy depth, and their geographic breadth. Depth requires material changes (mobilizations) and transparent or comparable definitions of what is “green”. Past displacement of comprehensive ideas providing a key mechanism for benchmarking comprehensive changes are often neglected. Another metric for comprehensive includes social inclusion as defined by ethnicity, gender, class, and other intersectional categories. 

This Special Issue welcomes contributions on:

  • Cultural and philosophical origins of the environmental discourse;
  • Methodological issues related to how environmental ideas are conveyed over time;
  • Platforms for circulating knowledge and practices related to ecological transformation;
  • Views of ecological transformation as manifested in literature and other cultural outputs;
  • Ecological visions in the Global South;
  • Bridges between discursive mobilization and material mobilization, defined as an economic and political practice which leads to reduced emissions;
  • Relation between industries, environmental movements and production choices;
  • Criteria for a sustainable economy in terms of: specific budgetary commitments scale; inclusiveness to diverse occupations; procedures for economic adjustment.

References

Borel-Saladin, J.M. and Turok, I.N. (2013), The green economy: Incremental change or transformation? Environmental Policy and Governance 23: 209- 220.

Capasso, M. (2021), Degrowth or green growth: A reflection on the recent public discourse in Norway. Sustainability 13 (698).

Delina L.L. (2016), Strategies for rapid climate mitigation: Wartime mobilisation as a model for action? Routledge: Abingdon-on-Thames, United Kingdom.

Feldman, J.M. (2010), The foundations for extending green jobs: The case of the rail-based mass transit sector in North America. International Journal of Labour Research 2 (2): 269-291.

Hallegatte, S., Heal, G., Fay, M. and Treguer, D. (2011), From growth to green growth - A framework. Policy Research Working Paper 5872; The World Bank: Washington, DC, USA.

Nordhaus, W.D. (2007), A review of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Journal of Economic Literature 45: 686-702.

Rodrik, D. (2014), Green industrial policy. Oxford Review of Economic Policy 30: 469-491.

Stern, N. (2006) The economics of climate change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Weitzman, M.L. (2007) A review of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. Journal of Economic Literature 45: 703-724.

Dr. Marco Capasso
Dr. Jonathan Michael Feldman
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • environmental discourse
  • sustainable development
  • green policy
  • climate change
  • ecological transformation

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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