Affective adaptation = effective transformation? Shifting the politics of climate change adaptation and transformation from the status quo

Abstract

Alarming rates of environmental change have catalyzed scholars to call for fundamental transformations in social-political and economic relations. Yet cautionary tales about how power and politics are constitutive of these efforts fill the literature. We show how a relational framing of adaptation and transformation demands a political, cross-scalar, and socionatural analysis to probe the affects and effects of climate change and better grasp how transformative change unfolds. We bring affect theory into conversation with the literature on adaptation politics, socio-environmental transformations, subjectivity, and our empirical work to frame our analysis around three under investigated aspects of transformation: (i) the uncertain and unpredictable relations that constitute socionatures; (ii) other ways of knowing; and (iii) the affective and emotional relations that form a basis for action. Affective adaptation represents a different ontological take on transformation by reframing the socionatural, normative and ethical aspects as relational, uncertain, and performative. This directs analytical attention to processes rather than outcomes. The emphasis on the encounter between bodies in affect theory points to the need for experiential and embodied ways of knowing climate to effect transformative change. Effective transformation requires recognizing uncertainty and unpredictability as part of transformative processes. This is not because all outcomes are acceptable, but rather because uncertainty and unpredictability are elements which help generate affects (action) and emotional commitment to shared human and more than human relations in action, projects, and policies.

Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship

“…For example, Bee (2016) demonstrated how women in central Mexico utilize cultural knowledge on food gathering to protect their families during drought periods. Drawing on Haraway's (1988) theory of situatedness, this and other compelling evidence highlights the need to position resilience approaches within the lived and experiential knowledge of social actors (Nightingale, 2016;Nightingale et al, 2021). An important constituent for feminist scholars concerned with knowledge-power interactions is "reflexivity" in resilience research; it entails critical reflections on the positioning of scholars within complex power dynamics that influence how knowledge is produced and how methodologies are put into practice (Sultana, 2007).…”

“…This influences who is deemed resilient (or not), what requires intervention, and what solutions should be prioritized. This is often evident in a supremacy of cognitive knowledge deemed “scientific” or “expert” over everyday, experiential, and emotional knowledge, as highlighted across feminist scholarship (Bee, 2016; Nightingale et al, 2021; Ravera et al, 2019). In line with Castán Broto (2020), we view the “messiness” of multiple and situated forms of knowledge as intrinsic focal points for the imagining, and subsequent carving out, of alternative and liberatory resilience futures.…”

Dethroning the Planetary Perspective: Dealing with Actually-Occurring Transformations Using Dialogical Sense-Making and Critical Phenomenology

“…Various configurations of desirability and intent are possible even in the same transformative change process, and different transformations are experienced and made sense of in particular ways depending on a person's standpoint (Hoque et al, 2018;Nightingale et al, 2021). This denies the possibility of a priori categorizations of change, framed as intended or unintended, desirable or undesirable.…”

Exploring the Love Triangle of Authoritarianism, Populism, and COVID-19 Through Political Ecology: Time for a Break-Up?

“…Drawing on key political-ecology scholarship (Valdivia 2008;Sikor and Lund 2009;Nightingale and Ojha 2013;Burke and Shear 2014;Svarstad, Benjaminsen, and Overå 2018), we understand authority as being always in the making "through the process of successfully defining and enforcing rights to community membership and rights of access to important resources" (Lund 2016(Lund , 1199, including knowledge. Thus, the workings of pandemic politics in terms of both normative directives and knowledge trustworthiness will reveal the essence of such authority (Lund 2016(Lund , 1221.…”