Coal and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

Conceptualising the commercial determinants of suicide: broadening the lens on suicide and self-harm prevention

“…11,15,16 Such actors can influence public health by promoting a particular problem definition over alternative definitions that may threaten business interests, thereby setting the terrain on which responsibility for an issue is assigned and restricting the solutions that come to be seen as necessary and legitimate. 17,18 Corporations whose products and practices are health harming or environmentally destructive often seek to emphasise the benefits they provide through job creation, taxation or through corporate philanthropy, while deflecting from the negative impacts of their practices and products. Indeed, the activities of specific industries and their allies to cast doubt, shift blame and resist regulation, from lead, silica, and asbestos to tobacco, sugar, opioids, highly hazardous pesticides, and fossil fuels, for example, have led to (and indeed are often designed to create) delays in taking action to prevent harm with devasting outcomes for people and the planet.…”

Rhetorical citizenship and the environment

“…Moreover, by promising to unite environmental and economic concerns, discourses about “sustainable development” often reproduce a neoliberal logic of continued economic growth that may obstruct pro‐environmental action (e.g. Bricker, 2012; Schneider et al., 2016).…”

“…Environmental rhetoric scholarship is often oriented to political rhetoric and concerned with the democratic potential of the public debate. For instance, several studies have examined how various actors, such as the fossil fuel industry, think tanks with strong industrial ties and political strategists, have acted rhetorically to undermine the public's trust in the climate sciences, thereby undermining possibilities for meaningful public deliberation about environmental issues (Bricker, 2013(Bricker, , 2014Ceccarelli, 2011;Paliewicz & McHendry, 2017;Schneider et al, 2016).…”

Publicity and Transparency

“…In practice, however, elites may use participatory forums to manage supporters’ voices, relying on public engagement as legitimizing spectacle rather than politically efficacious talk (Lee, 2014). While participation is typically presented as a means to flatten social hierarchies and redistribute power, it may in practice entrench existing inequalities (Lee et al, 2015), or simply allow elites to ventriloquize through their assembled publics (Schneider et al, 2016). Publicizing new voices, in other words, is not inherently democratizing.…”