The governmentality of climate change: (In)security, risk and responsibilization

Panel Chair:         

Benjamin Stephan University of Hamburg, Benjamin.Stephan@uni-hamburg.de

Discussant:

Maria Julia Trombetta, Delft University of Technology

Abstract

This panel draws together empirical work that uses a post-structuralist perspective in order to challenge conventional interpretations of global climate governance. Post-structuralist perspectives centering around the Foucauldian concept of governmentality understand power as discursive/knowledge-based, relational and constitutive of subjects and objects.

The panel seeks to apply these Foucauldian insights to two recent developments in climate governance. On the one hand, climate change is increasingly conceived as a security issue. But other than conventional theories of 'securitization' suggest, this does not lead to privileging exceptional measures. A governmentality approach, in contrast, reveals how securitization is translated into routine security practices employing strategies of risk management. Hence, it can enhance theoretical debates about the securitization of climate change. On the other hand, many policy makers promote a global carbon market. While conventional perspectives treat carbon trading as a neutral policy tool to achieve efficient solutions, a Foucauldian perspective emphasizes  the genealogy of this concept and shows how it has been discursively constituted as a legitimate and effective policy instrument. Moreover, governing climate change in such an 'advanced liberal' way turns climate protection into an empty signifier and allows for its hegemonic expansion - at the cost of its critical content. Studying these procedural dimensions of climate governmentality might also enrich theoretical debates about discourse and power.

The case studies presented in this panel will explore these two themes - contributions of governmentality studies to the securitization debate and the genealogical and hegemonic aspects of climate discourses - and delineate the added value of a Foucauldian perspective for these recent debates. In addition, it seeks to contrast these two developments and discuss how securitization and advanced liberal government merge into a new governmentality of climate change.