Suchergebnisse

Abstract Despite widespread acknowledgement of the value of sustainability, the transition towards more sustainable economies and societies remains a challenge around the world. Civil societies play an important role not only in supporting government efforts on sustainability by 'filling gaps' and raising social awareness, but also in pioneering new practices and disrupting particular governmental or corporate strategies, as well as engaging and empowering previously marginalised individuals and groups. Yet civil society is not always a champion of sustainability nor of democracy; these actors may of course also destabilise innovations, depoliticise sustainability issues by reifying certain concepts or approaches and reinforce social hierarchies and patterns of exclusion that can undermine any transformative potential and bolster the unsustainable status quo. This Special Issue is therefore dedicated to interrogating what we see as the ambiguous, yet critical, role played by civil societies in sustainability politics. This introductory paper intends not only to draw attention to some of the arguments, theories and challenges found in each of the individual papers collected here, but also to pull on the common threads that run through them, as well as to unpick some of the different uses of the key terminology that they employ. We aim, moreover, to highlight the inevitable tension between the 'democratic side' and the 'dark side' of civil society and its politics of sustainability.

Abstract As one of the major causes of climate change, there is an urgent need for a fundamental transformation of the food system. Calls for greater sustainability underscore the importance of integrating civil society and the local knowledge of citizens in this transformation process. One increasingly relevant organisation that can actively engage a plurality of actors from across civil society is the Food Policy Council (FPC). In this paper, we explore the potential role of FPCs in sustainability politics to create an alternative food system, with a focus on the co-production of knowledge for policy-making. We propose that the co-production of knowledge requires knowledge inclusion, exchange and transmission, and we focus on the challenges that can arise for FPCs. Our paper shows that bottom-up emerging FPCs constitute a new form of alternative food organisation that can integrate and support the critical capacity of civil society in food system transformation, but also face potential struggles in the co-production of knowledge for sustainable food policy-making. The paper further highlights that co-producing knowledge in and for sustainability transformation is fundamentally a political process, with politics broadly conceived. It not only has relevance for the institutions of formal politics, but emerges in and is intrinsically linked to the grassroots collective action of contentious and prefigurative politics in civil society. FPCs (re)politicise food by combining these various kinds of sustainability politics, which constitutes their transformative potential.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: A Political Remembering of Bodies -- Introduction -- Thinking the Body -- Modes of Politics and Chapter Outline -- References -- Chapter 1. Embodied Representation: Performances of Identity -- Introduction -- 1.1 Delegates and Trustees: Acting for Others -- 1.2 Descriptive Representation: Standing for Others -- 1.3 Constitutive Representation: Performing for Others -- 1.4 Bodies of Representation -- 1.5 "I am what you call a hooligan" -- 1.6 "Mother of the Nation" -- 1.7 Strange Democracy -- References -- Chapter 2. Embodied Deliberation: Conditions, Excesses, Disruptions, Opportunities -- Introduction -- 2.1 Disembodied Deliberation -- 2.2 Bodies Matter: Conditions -- 2.3 Bodies Matter: Excesses -- 2.4 Bodies Matter: Disruptions -- 2.5 Bodies Matter: Opportunities -- 2.6 Bodies of Deliberation -- 2.7 Beyond Deliberation -- References -- Chapter 3. Embodied Disagreement: The Agony of Others -- Introduction -- 3.1 Us and Them -- 3.2 Habits of Us -- 3.3 Bodies of Others -- 3.4 Cultivating Agonistic Respect -- 3.5 Democratic Disagreements -- References -- Chapter 4. Embodied Protest: The Politics of the Hunger-Strike -- Introduction -- 4.1 Hunger as protest -- 4.2 Irish republicans -- 4.3 Suffragettes -- 4.4 Anti-apartheid -- 4.5 The spectacular body -- 4.6 The identifying/identified body -- 4.7 The dissenting body -- 4.8 Hunger and Paradox -- References -- Chapter 5. Embodied Occupation: Disciplined Bodies in Counter-Conduct -- Introduction -- 5.1 Conducting and Countering -- 5.2 Twyford Down -- 5.3 Dimensions of Occupying Bodies at Twyford Down -- 5.4 Roads to Resistance -- References -- Chapter 6. Embodied Counsel: Bodies of Knowledge -- Introduction -- 6.1 Scientific Knowledge -- 6.2 Knowledge of Bodies -- 6.3 Bodies of Knowledge -- 6.4 Expertise and Democracy -- References -- Conclusion: Recalling Bodies -- References

Where are all the bodies? Political institutions are populated by living breathing human beings, who eat, sleep, gesture, desire and suffer. And yet participants of the political realm are often depicted as disembodied minds, detached and distinct from their corporeal existence. Amanda Machin considers six embodied modes of democratic politics: identification, deliberation, disagreement, protest, occupation and counsel. Drawing on diverse thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polyani, Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler, she offers an absorbing illustration of the ways that human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics, but the generative subjects of democracy.

Magic and markets : the techno-economic approach -- Good consciences : the ethical-individual approach -- Responsible citizens : the green republican approach -- Beyond conflict? The green deliberative democratic approach -- Celebrating disagreement : the radical democratic approach -- Political identity and climate change : being green.

A figure of enduring ingenuity, the nation has for centuries played a part on the socio-political stage. Whether centre stage or background scenery, it has featured in violent tragedies, revolutionary drama and nostalgic fable. Today, the nation is cast simultaneously in the roles of villain and hero. While it is renounced by those advocating trans-national, post-national and cosmopolitan forms of belonging, it has lately also been asserted as the solution to various social failures in liberal democracies. This appears to leave us with two alternatives: to jettison the nation in order to move.

Abstract
Hunger striking is a form of protest that escapes conventional forms of political participation. I argue that as a spectacular performance of death, the hunger strike not only draws attention to a particular cause or exert moral pressure on an opponent but can galvanize and strengthen a nascent political identity. Drawing on the example of the hunger strike of suffragette Marion Wallace-Dunlop, which I argue performatively constructed the identity of the disciplined "true suffragette," I explain the hunger strike as a political becoming. Undertaken behind bars, by those denied citizenship rights, this protest should be understood not necessarily as the free expression of an already existing member of the demos but instead as a way of becoming a political subject while contesting and reconfiguring political boundaries.

AbstractStymied by preoccupation with short-term interests of individualist consumers, democratic institutions seem unable to generate sustained political commitment for tackling climate change. The citizens' assembly (CA) is promoted as an important tool in combatting this "democratic myopia." The aim of a CA is to bring together a representative group of citizens and experts from diverse backgrounds to exchange their different insights and perspectives on a complex issue. By providing the opportunity for inclusive democratic deliberation, the CA is expected to educate citizens, stimulate awareness of complex issues, and produce enlightened and legitimate policy recommendations. However, critical voices warn about the simplified and celebratory commentary surrounding the CA. Informed by agonistic and radical democratic theory, this paper elaborates on a particular concern, which is the orientation toward consensus in the CA. The paper points to the importance of disagreement in the form of both agony (from inside) and rupture (from outside) that, it is argued, is crucial for a democratic, engaging, passionate, creative, and representative sustainability politics.