Contested environments EG26

Turner 2011

Knowing Nature. Knowledge claims by diverse actors "compete for influence" over how knowledge is applied + circulated. Environments contested because scientific knowledge is never singular, neutral, or complete

30% by 2030. Scientists vs Scientists. Same ecological data produced opposite conclusions. The European People’s Party

EU nature restoration law. What % by what year? Who was the battle between and what was happening. Name of disagreeing Party. Links to Sarewitz 2004

NASEM. $2 million. Refusal to use co-production methods in study about co-production. Dissmisal of indigenous committee member. Mervis 2024

Indigenous-Western knowledge coproduction study collapse. study on braiding Indigenous and Western environmental knowledge was disbanded in May 2024. Links to Braun, Haraway, Whatmore. Name of organisation, how much was spent, what 2 things led to failure.

100,000 Maasi People, Tanzania, Al Jazeera 2024

Example of removal of indigenous people for capitalist expansion (hotels, safaris). Removal of ____ in _____ (citation). Links to Braun 1997

Lewicki et al 2002

Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts. Framing is operative: how risks, environmental values, + fairness are framed determines who wins + who is marginalised. Contestation is structural, not accidental

Haraway 1988

Situated Knowledges. Replace the "god trick" (view from nowhere) with situated knowledge, views from somewhere shaped by place, time + power. Core tool to dismantle claims to neutral, universal scientific authority

Demeritt 1996

Social Theory + the Reconstruction of Science + Geography. Science "constructs + brings into view" environmental objects (greenhouse gases, viruses). Knowledge production is active constitution, not passive discovery

Sarewitz 2004

How Science Makes Environmental Controversies Worse. Competing disciplines carry competing values, so more science can intensify controversy rather than resolve it. GM corn/Mexico: molecular biologists + ecologists, same data, opposite conclusions

Wynne 1990

(cited in Hinchliffe + Blowers 2003) Cumbrian sheep farmers post-Chernobyl. Deficit model inverted: experts ignorant of local peat soils + sheep behaviour, wrong on both counts. "They think you stand at the fell bottom + wave a handkerchief." Deploy to show lay knowledge systematically excluded from policy

Hinchliffe + Blowers 2003

Three types of scientific uncertainty: inaccuracies, ignorance (unknown unknowns), indeterminacy (known unknowns). How uncertainty is classified is itself a political act, shaping whose concerns receive a policy response

Barry 2002

Metrology: techniques to make uncertain futures measurable + governable, emissions targets, safe levels, ppm. Strategy for managing uncertainty but also a depoliticising move, reducing contested values to technical thresholds

Adey + Anderson 2011

Affective technologies: scenario-building, planning + testing as government devices to render uncertain futures governable. Science made actionable through instruments, not just facts

Callon 1998

Hot situations: "moments of ontological disturbance" where things we rely on become uncertain + nonhuman agency is felt. Environmental science uniquely prone because nature exceeds expert models

Whatmore 2009

Mapping Knowledge Controversies. Controversies are generative, not just paralyzing. Hot situations force reasoning to slow down, open interdisciplinary space + redistribute expertise. Competency groups + demoscience as practical methods

Hulme 2016

Weathered. "No unmediated access to climate." Climate as a public object is co-produced through choices of measurement, visualisation + equivalence. Deploy to show environmental knowledge is always mediated, never raw

Braun 1997

Buried Epistemologies. Colonial surveys (Dawson, BC 1880s-90s) constituted landscapes as "empty nature" open to settlement, writing out First Nations land claims. Buried epistemology naturalised in institutions, persists in contemporary conservation + environmentalism

Buller 2008

Safe from the Wolf. Wolves in the Mercantour: conservationists celebrate biodiversity gain, sheep farmers mobilise biosecurity. Competing ontologies of nature, not just competing interests. "No single version of nature, and to suggest otherwise is to shortcut politics"

Lorimer + Driessen 2014

Wild Experiments at OVP. De-domesticated horses + cattle starving provokes public outrage because animals are embedded in local knowledge as domestic creatures with moral claims. The environment is never an "external world out there"

Lennon 2017

Decolonizing Energy. Renewable transitions replicate colonial logic when imposed on tribal lands without engaging indigenous ontologies. Navajo activist Goldtooth: utility-scale renewables "built on the same capitalist model that is depleting Mother Earth." Decolonisation is not just historical

Swyngedouw 2014

Post-Political. Consensus-based expert governance forecloses genuine political antagonism. Environmental technocracy frames distributional questions as technical ones, making science complicit in depoliticisation

Martin + Richards 1995

"Widespread public perception that experts can + do disagree, that they are not infallible." Foundation for critiquing third-wave environmentalism's reliance on expert authority as politically stable

Devall 1994

(in Gruen + Jamieson) Third wave environmentalism: experts negotiate directly with corporations + government, preferably via market mechanisms. Critique: embeds Swyngedouw's post-political logic, substituting expert authority for democratic contestation

Palmer 2020

Knowledge, Expertise + Trust (Routledge Companion to Environmental Planning). Environmental planning "deeply situated in place-specific contexts," where knowledge + power are entangled. Single-stream science insufficient; calls for open-ended, multi-actor processes

Gonzales-Hidalgo + Zografos 2020

Emotional geographies + environmental conflicts. Feelings are constitutive of environmental politics, not peripheral. Emotions power social movements, inform power relations + shape personal-spatial experience of contested landscapes