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This article maintains that the failure of critique on – and alternatives to – economic growth to translate from academic and societal into day-to-day political discourse is only to be explained by looking closer at institutions and their discursive practices. Taking Germany and an empirical study about its parliament as an example, current political discourse on growth is shown to be predominantly governmental, ornamental, dogmatic, and – most importantly – 'inert' (i.e., unresponsive to individual MP's convictions). It is made plausible that these features are linked to the suppression of growth's character as a political option that was historically configured and chosen to mitigate distributional conflicts. Thus, redistribution forms part of the growth discourse's 'political unconscious.' If this were true, a key for greater political impact of growth critique would lie in the combination with issues of inequality and redistribution, rather than only with concerns about the environment or a better quality of life.

A stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on urban areas is vital to address the global trends of rapid urban growth and urbanisation. The development of an SDG on urban areas would especially benefit local governments and regional alliances within the post-2015 sustainable development process.

Die Klimagerechtigkeitsbewegung (KB) hat in jüngster Zeit eine erstaunliche Dynamik entwickelt und dazu beigetragen, die Klimakrise in Deutschland auf die politische Agenda zu setzen. Die sichtbarsten und mobilisierungsstärksten Bewegungsakteur*innen sind Extinction Rebellion (XR), Ende Gelände (EG) und Fridays for Future (FFF). In ihrer öffentlichen Kommunikation zur Klimakrise zeigen sich unterschiedliche thematische Schwerpunkte. Die Studie analysiert vergleichend die narrativen Strukturen von Pressemitteilungen und Blog-Artikeln von XR, EG und FFF aus dem Jahr 2019 und führt die dortigen Motive und (Mikro-)Erzählungen auf ihre jeweiligen Grundwerte zurück. Es werden Potenziale identifiziert, wie XR, EG und FFF ihre politischen Anliegen innerhalb rhetorisch überzeugenderer, (strukturell vollständigerer) Erzählungen kommunizieren können. Die Untersuchung von Klima-Frames thematisiert zudem, ob und wie ein Bezug nicht nur zu Klimaschutz, sondern zu Klimagerechtigkeit hergestellt wird.

While the idea of extracting deep-seabed resources dates back to as early as the 1960s, it remained pure fiction for decades due to limited technical possibilities and prohibitive costs. In recent years, against the backdrop of changing technical possibilities and a persistently high demand for raw materials, deep-seabed mining (DSM) has returned to the international political agenda. While numerous fact-finding missions engage in mapping the ocean's resources and public–private partnerships prepare to make an active engagement in mining the seabed, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is entrusted with the development of a legal framework for possible future mining in accordance with the requirements defined under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The preparations for DSM are accompanied and ultimately shaped by a discourse on possible opportunities and risks of mining the deep seabed. The paper at hand traces dominant discursive positions and their narrative structures as a way of explaining the relative success or failure of DSM proponents who speak in favor of mining the seabed and DSM critics who warn against its striking environmental impacts and inestimable risks. We proceed from the observation that the historic discourse on the deep sea beyond national jurisdiction was rooted in what we call "narratives of promise" regarding global procedural and distributive justice, environmental health, and peaceful international cooperation. Our findings show how in today's debates the theme of global marine justice, which dominated the historic DSM discourse, is close to a "nonstory". DSM is commonly narrated as a merely technocratic and apolitical process that appears to be free of social and environmental conflict. We conclude by arguing that to arrive at more successful critical narratives on DSM will require more pronounced depictions of the negative consequences in particular for humans, exposing the "politics" in DSM policy making and developing more competitive stories on alternatives to ...

Wirtschaftswachstum ist als Politikziel zwar gesellschaftlicher Konsens, wird aber auch immer wieder infrage gestellt. Argumente gegen dieses Ziel sind durch die Enquete des 17. Deutschen Bundestages nachvollzogen worden. Ein entsprechender Lerneffekt aber lässt sich auf der Ebene öffentlich sichtbaren parlamentarischen Sprachhandelns nicht beobachten, wie unsere Inhaltsanalyse von 120 offiziellen Dokumenten der 18. Legislaturperiode zeigt. Der von den regierenden Parteien geprägte Diskurs ist eigentümlich randständig (ornamental) und frei von Argumentationen (dogmatisch). Es gibt keine Debatte zum Thema. Dies ist nicht hinreichend durch kommunikative Strategien oder Positionen erklärbar, sondern deutet auf den Effekt eines historisch verfestigten Diskurses. Die Frage stellt sich, inwiefern auch andere nicht-tagesaktuelle Grundsatzfragen im Parlament marginalisiert werden. Methodisch ist für die politische Diskursanalyse außerdem generell das Verhältnis von Zweck und Mittel bei der Aussagenbildung von Interesse. ; Economic growth as a policy objective remains consensual, but not unchallenged. The enquiry committee set up during the German Bundestag's 17th electoral period has reproduced some of the arguments against said objective. Via content analysis of 120 official documents from the 18th electoral period, however, we show that this apparent learning process has left no traces at all. Growth discourse is predominantly governmental, weirdly marginal (ornamental) and devoid of argumentative reasoning (dogmatic). These results cannot be sufficiently explained by communicative strategies or positions, instead they point to the effect of a historically consolidated discourse. A resulting question is whether other fundamental, yet not-current political issues might be marginalized within parliament, in a similar manner. Furthermore, the general ratio between means and objectives is of methodological interest for political discourse analysis.

This article analyses the narratives of impact-driven transition research in the field of sustainability studies. It reconstructs patterns of narrations at a discourse level. Departing from the understanding that narrating is a fundamental mode of communication and education, this contribution is ultimately driven by the commitment to understand how narrativity can be improved in order to reach more effective rhetoric for sustainability research. The article starts by describing the dilemma sustainability researchers might find themselves in regarding their position vis-à-vis society and politics. This dilemma seems to shape the narratives researchers use for describing their work. After conceptualizing narratives on a structural level, findings from a comprehensive qualitative interview study are presented and discussed. We find that sustainability researchers can be clustered in five different types, depending on their affinity or distance to real-world sustainability processes, their propensity to either incremental reforms or transformative change and the relationship between environmental and social concerns in the context of the sustainability concept. Furthermore, we find that critical-constructive transformative research encounters challenges when narrating about its position vis-à-vis society and policy-making in the process of formulating goals and working towards them. We identified a tension between leaning stronger either towards independent, critical goal formulation or towards an engagement with actual political processes. Maintaining the ability to change roles between the process-involved and the process-observing sustainability researcher might be a promising way out for those dedicated to workings towards sustainability transitions.

With the emergence in the 1960s of international interest in the exploitation of deep-sea mineral resources, a majority of the actors involved at the time quickly established a position strongly oriented towards global justice with regard to the distribution of possible profits from this novel activity. The idea that people in the developing countries of the global South, in particular, should benefit from the treasures from the ocean floor finally found its way into the International Convention on the Law of the Sea in the form of the "Common Heritage of Mankind" principle. Current discussions on the subject of deep-sea mining (DSM) also point to areas of conflict which, at least in theory, are closely linked to central issues of environmental justice. Negotiations currently underway at the International Seabed Authority on the regulation of DSM, for example, are being held on both the fair distribution of costs and risks and the fair access to and distribution of possible profits from mining. In this context, questions of procedural justice also arise time and again. Our paper examines the question to what extent and in what way debates on justice and other value references find their way into broader public discourse on DSM. On the basis of a content analysis of documents from the fields of media, business, civil society, science and politics, we draw a picture of dominant discursive positions and their narrative structures. Working with Greimas's actantial model and Burke's dramatistic pentad, we pay particular attention to value references through acts and goals described in the narratives, i.e., the qualities and motives assigned to protagonists and their actions. As a result, we find that the discussion on global justice, which was originally so central in the DSM discourse, hardly plays a noteworthy role today. Instead, both supporters and opponents of technical exploitation of the deep sea are far more likely to find references to various motives for protection. The respective stories can be read as ...

Mit Beteiligungskultur verbinden sich Forderungen nach mehr Mitsprache der Öffentlichkeit an politischer Entscheidungsfindung, einer stärkeren Institutionalisierung ergänzender Verfahren, aber auch nach bestimmten Haltungen und Deutungen. Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass solche Forderungen die konzeptionelle Bestimmung von Beteiligungskultur eher behindern denn fördern. Vielmehr gilt es, Qualitäten der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ob und Wie partizipativer Prozesse zu bestimmen. Zentral dafür sind die Kategorien Voraussicht, Umsicht und Einsicht, sofern sie für Beteiligungspraktiken konstitutiv werden. Dann können diese Praktiken individuelle und kollektive Lernprozesse stimulieren und so den Sinn von Beteiligungskultur selber fortlaufend aktualisieren.

More than half of the world's population currentlylives in cities and, consequently, urbanization hasbeen among the major drivers of global environmentalchange. The fast urban growth, likely to result ina share of 75 % of people living in cities by 2050, hasresulted in the development of cities which are unfriendlyto people as well as to the environment. Asa contribution to reverse this trend, various institutionshave organized competitions between citiesby ranking the degree of their "greenness," based onquantitative and qualitative indicators accessing economic,social and environmental performances. Mostof these competitions have only been conducted onceand the studies include different cities because theirattendance was voluntarily. In this paper we analyzethe potential of city rankings to contribute to a positivedevelopment of cities. The first part of this paperanalyzes and defines the "Green City" conceptcomparing the definitions in the literature. Three keywords have been identified to characterize a"Green City": the "environmental quality," "humanwell-being," and the "political and social action" thataims at the first two dimensions. For measuring the"greenness" of cities, we analyzed the urban indicatorsof four popular indices, representing 13 categorieswhich were then grouped into the three "GreenCity" dimensions. Regarding "environmental quality"and "human well-being," quantitative indicatorsare used, while qualitative indicators seem bettersuited to define the "societal and political action."By monitoring the quantitative indicators over time,we are also able to assess the "Green City" performancesand at the same time verify the effectiveness of"social and political action." Thus, more clarity in the"Green City" definition is achieved, making constantmonitoring of cities' performances possible. The useof quantitative and multidimensional indicators canbe a valuable tool for urban governance and planning.

Este trabajo tiene por objeto presentar una caracterización del proceso de producción y consumo de leche y sus derivados, e identificar algunos problemas sobresalientes. Se tratará de plantear algunos aspectos relevantes de la expresión de dicho proceso en los estados fronterizos del norte del país. Esta problemática se centra en la insatisfacción del consumo; lo cual tiene su origen, por una parte en que la producción interna es deficitaria, por lo que las importaciones de este producto han aumentado de manera notable. En las ciudades fronterizas se presenta un volumen representativo de importaciones de alimento debido a la desarticulación de la zona con los centros productores, por no haber restricciones para su importación y por las ventajas en cuanto a calidad. Por otro lado, no se trata sólo de un problema de oferta, sino que el bajo consumo de este alimento está estrechamente relacionado con el ingreso de la población.

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo analizar la relación existente entre las competencias de los directivos con el desempeño de sus negocios. Para ello se abordó el estudio desde el enfoque cuantitativo, aplicando un cuestionario estructurado a 114 empresarios de pequeñas y medianas empresas familiares de los estados de Tamaulipas y San Luis Potosí, México; este trabajo comparte los resultados del piloto del cuestionario para explorar su construcción al contexto empresarial de las empresas familiares. Se aplicó la técnica de ecuaciones estructurales para la validez de constructos y de las hipótesis de investigación. Se infiere que no todas las competencias de los gerentes están relacionadas con los resultados empresariales.

Quantifying livelihood vulnerability to wildland fires in the United States is challenging because of the need to systematically integrate multidimensional variables into its analysis. We aim to measure wildfire threats amongst humans and their physical and social environment by devel-oping a framework to calculate the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) for the top 14 American states most recently exposed to wildfires. The LVI is computed by assessing each state's contributing factors (exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity) to wildfire events. These contributing factors are determined through a set of indicator variables that are categorized into corresponding groups to produce an LVI framework. The framework is validated by performing a principal component analysis (PCA), ensuring that each selected indicator variable corresponds to the correct contributing factor. Our results indicate that Arizona and New Mexico experience the greatest livelihood vulnerability. In contrast, California, Florida, and Texas experience the least livelihood vulnerabil-ity. While California has one of the highest exposures and sensitivity to wildfires, results indicate that it has a relatively high adaptive capacity, in comparison to the other states, suggesting it has measures in place to withstand these vulnerabilities. These results are critical to wildfire managers, government, policymakers, and research scientists for identifying and providing better resiliency and adaptation measures to support states that are most vulnerable to wildfires.