Canaries in the Anthropocene: storytelling as degentrification in urban community sustainability

Chiro, Giovanna Di

doi:10.1007/s13412-018-0494-5

Cited by 16 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Consequently, it is not implausible that a continuation of the unsustainable per capita footprint from Swedish consumption will be a lived effect of unsustainability as market failure, as long as the there is money to pay for it. Hence, even if all environmental and social externalities would be internalised as costs on the procurement market, producing "optimal" compensation through the market, it would not automatically bring about environmental justice (see Agyeman, Bullard, andEvans 2003, Anguelovski et al 2016;Di Chiro 2018). As long as the rich populations' ecological footprint is larger than the sustainable level, it entails that other populations, both currently living poor and future generations, will have to be content with a smaller share of Earth's biophysical resources and sinks.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sustainable development has been, and continues to be, one of the most prominent concepts in social science as well as policy making. However, the "weak" forms of sustainable development and sustainability, permeating mainstream politics and policy (Baker et al 1997;Carter 2018;Hermele 2017;Martins 2016), is critiqued for depoliticising and excluding core issues of sustainability (Swyngedouw 2011), including environmental justice (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003;Di Chiro 2018), which is problematic from both a democratic and a sustainability perspective. Against this backdrop, we examine how the politics of sustainability becomes constituted through a central practice of new public management (NPM) that extends throughout public administration in many democracies, namely public procurement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Buying a sustainable society: the case of public procurement in Sweden

Olsson

Öjehag-Pettersson

2020

Local Environment

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In this article, we conduct a governmentality analysis of Swedish public procurement in order to show how the notion of sustainability is constructed in this circumstance. We argue that the mainstream approach to sustainability policy in most countries lies within capitalist market rationalities, thus making it crucial to study how such rationalities shape and represent the problems of unsustainability and how these "problems" limit the possibilities for politics and policy in practice. Furthermore, public procurement is a central instrument through which these rationalities are realised and maintained. Thus, the purpose is to examine how problems of unsustainability are represented through public procurement policy and the effects they constitute for the politics of sustainability. To this end we mobilise the Foucauldian based "what's the problem represented to be" approach. As data, we use policy documents published with respect to public procurement in Sweden. Our findings show that the dominant problem representation constructs unsustainability as a market failure, limiting the possibilities for politics and policies of sustainability in several ways. This includes premising sustainability upon the continued expansion of capitalism; constituting the agents of change as apolitical actors; making sustainability a voluntary ambition for the procuring organisations; and constructing the legitimate claim to earth's resources and sinks as a matter of purchasing power, with important implications for environmental justice. However, our analysis also shows a tension in the material creating openings for a politicisation of the representations of sustainability.

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Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Buying a sustainable society: the case of public procurement in Sweden

Olsson

Öjehag-Pettersson

2020

Local Environment

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“…That is, by describing the primacy of growth as a threat to human security (see O'Brien et al, 2010), this description would provide a counter-narrative to that which depicts growth as the basis for security and well-being. Moreover, a focus on these links opens up the possibility of bringing the arguments and evidence of various environmental and social injustices to the fore (e.g., Agyeman et al, 2003;Anguelovski et al, 2016;Bulkeley et al, 2014;Di Chiro, 2018;Schlosberg, 2019;Schlosberg et al, 2017), encouraging the problematization and contestation of the primacy of growth based on arguments for justice as well. This mode of resilience thinking thus creates tension points with factors that reproduce the growth addiction and arguably has potential to support a transformation toward doughnut economics.…”

Section: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, the expansion of modern development trajectories during the post-World War era has produced extraordinary progress concerning some aspects of human well-being, such as increased life expectancy and reduction of extreme income poverty (Raworth, 2017;United Nations, n.d.). On the other hand, these trajectories, and the economic rationalities underpinning them, are associated with socioecological changes posing severe threats to human wellbeing (see Raworth, 2017), such as the increased overuse of Earth's biophysical capacity (Steffen et al, 2015), rising economic inequalities (Hardoon et al, 2016;Piketty, 2014), and environmental injustices (Agyeman et al, 2003;Anguelovski et al, 2016;Di Chiro, 2018). Reflecting this contradiction, the mainstream economic rationalities underpinning governance processes and modern development trajectories across the world are subject to dispute, especially in the neoliberal guise dominating politics and policy over the past three to four decades.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Transformative Potential of Resilience Thinking: How It Could Transform Unsustainable Economic Rationalities

Olsson

2020

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

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There is an ongoing debate in the research literature on whether the neoliberal economic rationalities permeating public administration, policy, and governance across much of the world provide the means necessary for promoting sustainable development. Parallel to this debate, it has been suggested that resilience thinking, a notion with growing policy importance, could either reproduce the neoliberal mainstream or challenge it at its core, depending on the modes of resilience thinking emerging from practice. Taking the position that new economic rationalities are needed, this study examines how transformative modes of resilience thinking that emerge from practice create tensions that can support a transformation toward the economic rationalities of the so-called doughnut economics, an alternative economic model that outlines a vision and a path toward ecological and social sustainability.

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“…As many critics, myself included, have suggested, without a robust democratic and participatory public sector in place, the corporate-led, privatised, and individualistic green economy basically serves to sustain global capitalism’s pro-growth agenda while it reproduces and leaves intact deep-rooted colonialist relationships. The green economy has not inaugurated a ‘just transition’ to a new economy of care, neither for the poor nor the climate (Di Chiro, 2018; Klein, 2017).…”

Section: Caring For Climate: Keeping the Soul In Climate ‘Soul’-utionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Care not growth: Imagining a subsistence economy for all

Chiro

2019

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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Caring about the life-threatening impacts of climate change has for decades consumed the attention of climate justice advocates from every corner of the world. But what exactly does caring about the climate or caring about the future of life on earth look like? Responses to the question 'who cares?' inevitably lead to divergent calls for 'solutions'. Long-time climate justice scholar and advocate Henry Shue has called for a human rights approach to climate change solutions. He argues that any global energy transition policy framework must care about and take into account the necessary 'subsistence emissions' currently produced by poor nations, allowing them to escape poverty and rise to an established 'development threshold'. However, Shue (2019: 15) asserts that subsistence emissions have an expiration date: 'when adequate non-carbon energy is both affordable and accessible, no one will need to generate carbon emissions in order to provide for subsistence. Subsistence emissions will then no longer need to occur'. While I am in full agreement with the hastening of an accessible and affordable non-carbon economy for all, a few questions remain: does the transition to a decarbonised energy regime solve the problems of injustice associated with the histories of carbon-heavy, industrial development? And moreover, after the carbon transition, when we will have 'fixed' the carbon problem owing to new advances in climate science and technology, will caring about the climate no longer need to occur? In this essay, I want to applaud Shue's long-standing commitment to basic human rights, poverty alleviation, and advocacy of climate justice in his social and environmental policy scholarship. In the spirit of critical solidarity, I also want to probe a bit more into what I perceive to be (1) the assumptions underlying the 'non-carbon energy system' prospective scenario, which, I believe, relies too confidently on the rationality and efficacy of the 'green economy' and (2) the assumptions underlying a binary opposition between what might be considered a pre-modern, subsistence stage of development, which the privileged have a moral obligation to help others overcome, and the

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Canaries in the Anthropocene: storytelling as degentrification in urban community sustainability

Cited by 16 publications

References 11 publications

Buying a sustainable society: the case of public procurement in Sweden

Buying a sustainable society: the case of public procurement in Sweden

The Transformative Potential of Resilience Thinking: How It Could Transform Unsustainable Economic Rationalities

Care not growth: Imagining a subsistence economy for all

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