More critical reflections on climate justice
Posted by Vito on August 16, 2010 |
We just had the pleasure to read the article “Point of Reference for a counter hegemony or nebulous empty phrase?” offering critical reflections on climate justice. Two elements made the article - a summary of discussion ongoing within the BUKO working group on social ecology - particularly interesting (to us): its emphasis on the discursive ambiguity implicit in the expression climate justice; and the gramscian lens through which the authors bring to focus the ongoing struggle for the appropriation of the expression’s symbolic and hegemonic significance. The article tries to offer an answer to the question of whether climate justice can have counter-hegemonic force, or whether it’s just a plastic word comprising all or nothing at all. Further, it asks, “Does it make sense or is it even necessary for emancipatory movements to take part in a discursive struggle over the term? Is Climate Justice a suitable reference point for criticism of and demands on the present climate policy?” We share the same interest for the hegemonic significance of the expression climate justice, and for the key role of civil society in the construction and re-negotiation of hegemony, a civil society both “object and medium” of the hegemonic struggle (to quote Ulrich Brand). For further (critical) reflections have a read at Vito De Lucia’s article Hegemony and Climate Justice: a Critical Analysis (PDF), which was published in occasion of COP15 in the edited collection Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets.
