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Mapping the Discursive Construction of Sustainability: A Rhetorical Perspective

Environmental Policy
Green Politics
Policy Analysis
Critical Theory
Climate Change
Policy Change
Policy Implementation
Political theory
Sophia Hatzisavvidou
University of Bath
Sophia Hatzisavvidou
University of Bath

Abstract

Environmental political discourse, as employed in academic works, the press, as well as policy documents, projects and promotes a certain affirmation of the relation of human beings to the natural environment. It consequently shapes our understanding of this relation, by advancing this affirmation as bearing an authoritative or common sense quality. The failure – of politicians, scientists, stakeholders – to articulate and effectively promote visions that go beyond ‘green policies’ or the idea of the ‘environmental state’ and rather pursue substantial social and political transformation, evidences that indeed there is a ‘blind spot’ in our attempts to address the complex – environmental, economic, social – challenge we are confronted with. This paper, then, shares the working assumption of the ‘Beyond the Environmental State’ workshop and aspires to contribute to its elaborations in a twofold way. More precisely, it seeks to contribute to our search for the ‘blind spot’ or glass ceiling that could lead to actual transformative political practice. The paper will do so by mapping the vicissitudes of the concept of sustainability in political discourse in the past 20 years and thus by demonstrating its virtues but also limitations. It is by exploring the rhetorical dynamics that have framed our political debates on sustainability that the paper aspires to also point towards the chances that need to be brought about if the ‘blind spot’ of our discursive engagement with the environmental crisis is to be addressed in a fuller, democratic way.