Climate change and the imagination

Yusoff, Kathryn; Gabrys, Jennifer

doi:10.1002/wcc.117

Cited by 169 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Recently, some authors have suggested that climate (also speculative) fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes (Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011), but so far there is neither a theory nor empirical evidence to support this argument. There has been little attention in the social sciences to the role of art and (popular) culture in political processes of change, leaving a significant knowledge gap concerning the ways in which art does and can affectpossibly support -societal change.…”

Section: Research Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Imagination requires time and space -literally, places where people can interact to think and talk about the future. Political, economic or scientific Institutions can create these conditions, and deploy "techniques of futurity" (Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011) in support of developing new ideas about possible and desirable futures. Different institutions can do so in different ways, leveraging their convening power (e.g., networks), their expertise (e.g., scientific knowledge), or their financial resources to design imagination processes.…”

Section: Structure and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Milkoreit

2017

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

107

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Climate change places major transformational demands on modern societies. Transformations require the capacity to collectively envision and meaningfully debate realistic and desirable futures. Without such a collective imagination capacity and active deliberation processes, societies lack both the motivation for change and guidance for decision-making in a certain direction of change. Recent arguments that science fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes is not yet supported by theory or empirical evidence. Advancing the argument that fiction can support sustainability transformations, this paper makes four contributions. First, building on the imaginary concept, I introduce and define the idea of socio-climatic imaginaries. Second, I develop a theory of imagination as linked cognitive-social processes that enable the creation of collectively shared visions of future states of the world. This theory addresses the dynamics that bridge imagination processes in the individual mind and collective imagining that informs social and political decision-making. Third, emphasizing the political nature of creating and contesting imaginaries in a society, I introduce the role of power and agency in this theory of collective imagination. I argue that both ideational and structural power concepts are relevant for understanding the potential societal influence of climate fiction. Finally, the paper illuminates these different forms of transformational power and agency with two brief case studies: two climate fiction novels. I contrast a dystopian and utopian science fiction novel -Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015) and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth (2015). The two books are very similar in their power/agency profile, but the comparison provides initial insights into the different roles of optimistic and pessimistic future visions.

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Section: Research Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structure and Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Milkoreit

2017

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

107

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“…A wide range of literature on the production and circulation of climate science on public stages has been emerging (Yusoff & Gabrys 2011), examining for example the place of film (Svoboda 2016 …”

Section: Conferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic geographies of climate change

Mahony

Hulme

2016

Progress in Human Geography

125

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Anthropogenic climate change has been presented as the archetypal global problem, identified by the slow work of assembling a global knowledge infrastructure, and demanding a concertedly global political response. But this 'global' knowledge has distinctive geographies, shaped by histories of exploration and colonialism, by diverse epistemic and material cultures of knowledge-making, and by the often messy processes of linking scientific knowledge to decision-making within different polities. We suggest that understanding of the knowledge politics of climate change may benefit from engagement with literature on the geographies of science. We review work from across the social sciences which resonates with geographers' interests in the spatialities of scientific knowledge, to build a picture of what we call the epistemic geographies of climate change. Moving from the field site and the computer model to the conference room and international political negotiations, we examine the spatialities of the interactional co-production of knowledge and social order. In so doing, we aim to proffer a new approach to the intersections of space, knowledge and power which can enrich geography's engagements with the politics of a changing climate.

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“…Climate science, however valuable and important it may be, in and by itself lacks the cultural reflexivity to examine such imaginaries (Yusoff and Gabrys, 2011). Gaonkar (2002) defines a social imaginary as an 'enabling but not fully explicable symbolic matrix within which people imagine and act as world making collective agents', and Jessop (2009: 344) refers to an economic imaginary as 'the semiotic system that gives meaning and shape to the economic field'.…”

Section: Imaginaries and Social Imaginary Significationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future imaginings: organizing in response to climate change

et al. 2013

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Climate change has rapidly emerged as a major threat to our future. Indeed the increasingly dire projections of increasing global average temperatures and escalating extreme weather events highlight the existential challenge that climate change presents for humanity. In this editorial article we outline how climate change not only presents real, physical threats but also challenges the way we conceive of the broader economic, political and social order. We asked ourselves (and the contributors to this special issue) how we can imagine alternatives to our current path of ever escalating greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. Through reference to the contributions that make up this special issue, we suggest that critically engaging with the concept of social, economic and political imaginaries can assist in tackling the conceptual and organizational challenges climate change poses. Only by questioning current sanitised and market-oriented interpretations of the environment, and embracing the catharsis and loss that climate change will bring, can we open up space for new future imaginings.

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Climate change and the imagination

Cited by 169 publications

References 71 publications

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Epistemic geographies of climate change

Future imaginings: organizing in response to climate change

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