Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change: Devices, Desires and Dissent

Description

Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change provides a new perspective on how climate change matters in policy-making, business and everyday life. It argues that the work of low carbon transitions takes place through the creation of devices, the mobilisation of desires, and the articulation of dissent. Using case studies from the US, Australia, and Europe, the book examines the creation and contestation of new forms of cultural politics - of how a climate-changed society is articulated, realized and contested. Through this approach it opens up questions about how, where and by whom climate politics is conducted and the ways in which we might respond differently to this societal challenge. This book provides a key reference point for the emerging academic community working on the cultural politics of climate change, and a means through which to engage this new area of research with the broader social sciences.

Harriet Bulkeley is a Professor of Geography at the University of Durham. Her research focuses on the processes and politics of environmental governance. Her recent books include Transnational Climate Change Governance (Cambridge, 2014), An Urban Politics of Climate Change (2015) and Accomplishing Climate Governance (Cambridge, 2016) and the edited volume Governing the Climate (Cambridge, 2015). Professor Bulkeley has undertaken commissioned research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Friends of the Earth, UN-Habitat and the World Bank. In 2014, she was awarded the King Carl XVI Gustaf's Professorship in Environmental Science and a Visiting Professorship at Lund University, Sweden. Matthew Paterson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the political economy of global environmental change. His publications include Automobile Politics (Cambridge, 2007), Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy (with Peter Newell, Cambridge, 2010), and most recently Transnational Climate Change Governance (with Harriet Bulkeley and eight others, Cambridge, 2014). He has recently acted as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, working on the chapter on international cooperation for their Fifth Assessment Report. His current research is focused on the political economy and cultural politics of climate change. Johannes Stripple is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lunds Universitet, Sweden. His research is concerned with the politics of climate change and its governance through a range of sites, from the insurance industry to carbon markets; from the UN to the everyday. Johannes has edited Governing the Climate (Cambridge, 2014), leads the 'ClimGovern' (FORMAS) research project and convenes the 'Pufendorf Decarbonisation Laboratory'. In 2014, he was awarded 'outstanding achievement for Lund University' for his work establishing a clean-tech centre of excellence in Botswana.

'Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change contains a collection of essays on the broad cultural dimensions of the climate discussion that engage with the question of resistance. They do so by emphasizing how deeply embedded energy consumption is in the cultures of modern states. There is considerable engagement with contemporary political and cultural theories in these pages. The dense conceptualizations in this text reflect the richly detailed analysis contained in the case studies.' Simon Dalby, Academic Council on the United Nations System