The%20Quest%20for%20Green%20Knowledge

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The Quest for Green Knowledge
Mixing Science and Politics in Environmental
Governance

• Andrew Jamison

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A Story of Hubris

• ...impious disregard of the limits governing
  human action in an orderly universe. It is the
  sin to which the great and gifted are most
  susceptible, and in Greek tragedy it is usually
  the hero's tragic flaw.
• (Encyclopedia Britannica)

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For example Al Gore
The climate crisis is not a political issue, it
is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of
humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to
lift global consciousness to a higher level.
from Al Gores Nobel acceptance speech
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...and Hybrids
offspring of parents that differ in genetically
determined traits (Encyclopedia Britannica)
or, more colorfully By the late twentieth
century, our time, a mythic time, we are all
chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of
machine and organism...
(Donna Haraway)
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For example?
California is mobilizing technologically,
financially and politically to fight global
warming change.What we are doing is changing the
dynamic, preparing the way, and encouraging the
future.

Arnold Schwarzenegger at the UN
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...versus (Habit)us
...a set of dispositions which generates
practices and perceptions. The habitus is the
result of a long process of inculcation,
beginning in early childhood, which becomes a
second sense or a second nature. (Randal
Johnson on Pierre Bourdieu)
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For example Bjørn Lomborg
it seems very unrealistic and conservative to
assume that we will not adapt to rising
temperatures throughout the 21st century. from
Cool It The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide
to Global Warming
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The Making of Green Knowledge

• Awakening 1960s
• Public education, criticizing (big) science
• Organization 1970-1980s
• Social movements, appropriate technology
• Normalization 1990s
• Sustainable development, green business
• Globalization 2000s-
• Dealing with climate change and the skeptics!

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From the Cognitive Praxis of Environmental
Movements

• Cosmological dimension
• social ecology, limits to growth
• Technological dimension
• appropriateness, radical technology
• Organizational dimension
• participatory research, citizen science

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...to Contending Regimes of Environmental
Governance
Green Business Skepticism
Green Knowledge (Hubris) (Habitus)
(Hybrids) key actors experts
entrepreneurs change agents
forms of research and business as
usual exemplary action
development mobilization organizational
(multi)disciplinary transnational
cooperative form
teams actor-networks
alliances type of specialized,
subjective,
integrative, knowledge objective
constructive situated
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Tvindmøllen 1977-1978
From a social movement...
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...to Green Business
The Toyota Prius
VESTAS, the Danish wind energy company
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Changing Contexts of Knowledge Making
Mode 1 Mode 1½ Mode 2
Little Science Big Science
Technoscience Before
WWII 1940s-1970s 1980s-
Type of Knowledge disciplinary multidiscip
linary transdisciplinary Organiz
a- individuals and RD departments
ad hoc projects and tional form research
groups and institutes
networks Dominant values academic
bureaucratic commercial
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From Little Science to Big Science

• change in size and scale
• mission orientation, external control
• university-government collaboration
• bureaucratic norm, or value system
• new role for the state science policy
• the emergence of environmentalism

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Big Science as Hubris...
...and as Habitus
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The Hybrid Imagination Lewis Mumford
(1895-1990)
The whole industrial world and instrumentalism
is only its highest conscious expression - has
taken values for granted...

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The Hybrid Imagination Rachel Carson (1907-64)
The road we have long been traveling is
deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which
we progress with great speed, but at its end lies
disaster.
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From Big Science to Technoscience

• change in range and scope
• market orientation, global reach
• university-industry collaboration
• entrepreneurial norm or value system
• the state as strategist innovation policy
• the emergence of green business

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The Emergence of Green Business




natural capitalism
ecoefficiency
ecological modernization
sustainable development
industrial ecology
pollution prevention, cleaner technologies
renewable energy
environmental economics and policy
pollution control, end-of pipe
Environmental awareness, or consciousness
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The fundamental assumption is that
economic growth and the resolution of ecological
problems can, in principle, be reconciledMaart
en Hajer, The Politics of Environmental
Discourse, 1995
The Discourse of Ecological Modernization
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Green Business as Cognitive Praxis

• From movement to institutions
• appropriate technology green products
• organizational alliances competing
  firms
• ecological society sustainable growth
• public education popularization/market
  ing
• integrating knowledge seeking market niches
• movement intellectuals green salesmen

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Science and Green Business

• Environmental problems seen primarily as
  providing new opportunities for scientists and
  engineers
• A multidisciplinary, big science model of
  research (IPCC) and a linear model of innovation
• A tendency toward hubris the myth of
  science-based progress and the technical fix
• A continuing belief in the distinterested
  objectivity of science, and on a rational,
  science-based politics

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The Anti-Environmentalist Backlash

• an outgrowth of neo-conservatism and
  neo-nationalism
• supported financially by big oil and
  agro-industry
• skeptical about importance of environmental
  problems
• an organized opposition to green business
• technosciences nemesis the entrepreneurial
  academic

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Skeptical Environmentalism, a la Lomborg

• mode 2, or socially robust knowledge
• the context speaks back (in this case, the
  Danish habitus)
• the political manipulation of facts and numbers
• the academic goes to market and the media
• commercial epistemic criteria
• more environment for the money (cost-benefit
  analysis)

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Transdisciplinarity, or mode 2

• Knowledge which emerges from a particular
  context of application with its own distinct
  theoretical structures, research methods and
  modes of practice but which may not be locatable
  on the prevailing disciplinary map.
• Michael Gibbons et al, The New Production of
  Knowledge (1994168)

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The Need for a Mode 3, or Change-Oriented
Research

• Problem-driven, rather than solution-driven
• Intervention in ongoing political process
• Active, rather than explanatory ambition
• Narrative form of presentation, telling stories
• Participatory, dialogue methods (e.g. focus
  groups)
• Engagement, or involvement in what is studied

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...and a Hybrid Imagination

• At the discursive, or macro level
• connecting environmentalism and global justice
• At the institutional, or meso level
• creating contexts, or sites for collective
  learning
• At the practitioner, or micro level
• combining different forms of knowledge and action

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For example Vandana Shiva
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Vandana Shivas Hybrid Imagination

• On the discursive level
• ecofeminism, public accountability, earth
  democracy
• On the institutional level -
• organic agriculture, political ecology,
  global justice
• On the personal level
• rhetorical knowledge, advocacy research,
  public science

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Or, in the words of Peter Garrett, Australias
new Environment Minister
Out where the river brokeThe bloodwood and the
desert oakHolden wrecks and boiling
dieselsSteam in forty five degrees The time
has come, to say fair's fairTo pay the rent, to
pay our share The time has come, a fact's a
factIt belongs to them, let's give it back How
can we dance when our earth is turningHow do we
sleep while our beds are burning Four wheels
scare the cockatoosFrom Kintore East to
YuendemuThe western desert lives and breathesIn
forty five degrees
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In other words (and please sing along)We need
to change our ways                
We need to change our ways And how we spend our
days,Stop taking so much from the earth And
learn what life is really worth.  We've taken
more than we should And we've done less than we
could, We've taken chances with our fate Oh, let
us hope it's not too late.  We need to change
our minds Before the world unwinds, Learn of the
patterns and the flows, From where life comes and
where it goes.  We need to change our
schools And rearrange our tools, Teach our
children how to share And teach each other how to
care.