The Environment as a Meta-narrative: Introduction to a Special Issue

Abstract

Narratives about protecting, speaking/acting for the environment are ubiquitous in a wide variety of heterogenous social situations. The essays in this special issue examine the form, content, context and materiality of the discourse of environmental protection. Based on field studies in India, the essays each examine the discourses in and of the courtroom, logic of state bureaucracy, legitimating frames of neoliberal urban policy, regional development narratives and subjectivities developed in indigenous social movements against land acquisition. In each of these contexts the environment is invoked, sometimes in strategic or even instrumental ways; in others, a green discourse is normative, even constitutive of subjectivities of the people involved. It is shaped by material relations in each specific context. The malleability of form and content of the environmental narrative encourages its appropriation in multiple registers and allows meaningful expression of diverse material contestations through it. It is in this diversity of appropriation that we suggest that the environment is a meta-narrative of our times.

Reframing Resilience Narratives for (Rural) Communities Using the Actantial Model

“…Yet, as observed more recently by Ameel, supporting the enhancement of narrative literacy in planning practice [41] "little systematic analysis has been carried out to examine the different kinds of narrative used in urban planning" [42]. Concomitantly, the fundamental integration of environmental narratives, eco-narratives, and ecocriticism into spatial planning practices through institutional discourses has been the object of attention of recent scholarly works inviting scientists and practitioners to better critically assess how environment material, representation, and discourse intertwine to produce and shape (notably through metaphors and rhetoric) our understanding of the environment and its 'crises' [43][44][45][46]. Taking advantage of new computational approaches, Purves et al [47] provide some relevant directions to examine the multitude of voices and the diverse horizon of discourses on the environment.…”

Sustentabilidade Alimentar: Do Futuro Incerto à Resposta Certa

“…Sobre o conceito de metanarrativa associado às alterações climáticas, veja-se a tese de doutoramento de João Santos (2020). Veja-se também SudhaVasan (2021), que se refere ao ambientalismo como metanarrativa.…”