Arora-2019-Regional_Environmental_Change.pdf (414.08 kB)
Admitting uncertainty, transforming engagement: towards caring practices for sustainability beyond climate change
Transformations to sustainability for addressing climate change are now more urgent than ever. This paper argues that such transformations are firstly required in modernist practices that militate against sustainability due to their constitution by the fallacy of human control. The latter points to the conceit of suppressing uncertainties in knowledge, commandeering agency from ‘above’, standardising governance, harming marginalised ecologies and disqualifying practices inferiorised as ‘primitive’, ‘irrational’ or ‘vernacular’. Undoing the fallacy of control, by admitting uncertainties, modernist practices may become caring through transformative engagement with others. I propose four aspects of such transformative engagement: (a) egalitarian commitment to distributing epistemological privilege; (b) ontological sensitivity, by taking seriously the relational bases of others’ knowing; (c) learning for divergence from others; and (d) affinity in alterity across widening divergence. These aspects are proposed not as fully formed principles, but rather as questions to be reworked in ongoing encounters and struggles for sustainability and climate justice. The aim is to nurture other-than-modern understandings of climate challenges
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Regional Environmental ChangeISSN
1436-3798Publisher
SpringerExternal DOI
Volume
19Page range
1571-1584Department affiliated with
- SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2020-08-27First Open Access (FOA) Date
2020-08-27First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2020-08-26Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC