All discursive approaches assume a constructivist understanding of the social world. This has implications for the applicability of the approach to political
problems. It has particularly important implications for a political issue like climate change. In this section I will consider two potential weaknesses of the approach. First, it is argued that constructivism is unhelpful because an approach based on relativism
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cannot provide definitive solutions. If there is no ‘correct’ way to deal with a social problem, then what is the point in researching it? Second, for some people, a
constructivist approach to knowledge also implies the absence of an objective reality.
If nothing exists, then it does not make sense to talk about approaches to climate change at all. I will respond to both of these criticisms and argue that a constructivist approach can be applied to the issue of climate change and can provide some
important insights into the problem.
Traditionally, political research has taken a positivist stance:
The political science discipline has consistently aspired to be [such a] scientific community, seeking knowledge that is not merely the functionally rational stuff of organized life but the objectively true data that facilitates substantive reasoning’ (Ricci 1984, p.17).
The contention of political science was that there was a ‘truth’ to be discovered. The social world could be studied in a similar way to the natural world and the role of the political scientist was to find an objective way of arriving at definitive conclusions about political and social problems (Weisberg 2007). As such, the problem of inaction on climate change has been investigated through a number of positivist approaches.
International Relations (IR) scholars have considered the problems inherent in international climate negotiations, including procedural issues (Christoff 2010;
Dimitrov 2010), lack of enforcement (Barrett 2009) and a weak institutional backdrop (Haas 2008)4. At the national level, researchers have cited problems such as ‘short-termism’ (Carter 2008) and the limited power of governments in the global economy (Hale 2010). In addition, social scientists, economists and psychologists have sought to understand why individuals do not engage in climate protecting behaviour despite professions of concern (Kollmus and Agyeman 2002; Lorenzoni and Pigeon 2006;
Patchen 2010). This work is all based on the assumption that there is an objective reality which can be investigated through the use of positivist tools of analysis.
Patchen (2010), for example, provides a survey of existing research of people’s attitudes towards climate change. The conclusion to his article lists many factors which influence the behaviour of individuals and the measures that must be taken to
4 Haas (2008) notes that the UNFCCC has ‘only 12 senior staff...with a large number of consultants and other staff. It has a modest budget of US$ 26 million per year’ and it has ‘few synergies or horizontal linkages’ to other international regimes (p.3).
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remedy these problems. Thus, the identification of definitive problems enables the development of authoritative solutions.
A constructivist approach to climate change challenges the positivist
assumptions of the aforementioned research. For discursive theorists it is not possible to find definitive solutions to political problems because ‘solutions’, and indeed the problems themselves, are socially constructed. Discourse analysis centres on the
‘conviction of the central importance of discourse in constructing social life’ (Gill 1996, p.141). Rather than looking for particular problems inherent in climate
negotiations or barriers to individual action, a discursive approach questions the way in which climate change is constructed:
Constructivism allows us to view climate change from a new perspective with the hope of uncovering processes, actors and structures that have been obscured in the current framing of climate change...
what is it that we truly know about climate change, and how have we come to know this? (Pettenger 2007, p.7).
The main problem with this approach is that it still leaves us with many unanswered questions. It cannot offer an objective solution to the problem of climate change in the same systematic way positivists might claim to be able to do. However, it does remain a useful way to approach the problem of climate change. Despite the positivist research that has been conducted on climate change as a political problem, we have made little progress towards decreasing or even stabilising carbon emissions. A discursive approach suggests that there is perhaps something deeper going on here.
Hajer (1995) claims that ‘social constructivism and discourse analysis add essential insights to our analysis of contemporary environmental problems’ (p.3). By looking at the construction of climate change we can question the knowledge that we
currently have about causes, consequences and solutions. Constructivism can ‘lead us to understand how certain meanings have emerged and been framed, while others have been obscured’ (Pettenger 2007, p.11).
Another potential problem with a constructivist approach to climate change is that, for some people, constructivism implies the rejection of an objective reality. The epistemological position of constructivism (that knowledge is relative) leads to the ontological assumption that nothing exists. According to Jones (2002) ‘it is frequently assumed that there is an inherent incompatibility between social constructionism and environmental concern’ (p.247). This concern has been expressed by a number of
31 scholars. Milton (1996) states:
If the environment were nothing more than a cognitive construct, we could change it by constructing different truths, different meanings; we could will environmental dangers out of existence by thought alone. Thus, the constructivist model is incompatible with environmental activism, which depends on the recognition of an independent reality that can be modified by human actions (p.54).
The fundamental assumption about the problem of climate change is that we are modifying independent physical processes. If constructivism does not recognise this independent reality then it does not make any sense to talk about a constructivist approach to climate change.
Feindt and Oels (2005) acknowledge this problem and respond to the criticism:
Saying that environmental problems are socially constructed does not mean that there are no illnesses, malnutrition, loss of species and natural beauty, floods etc. caused by contaminated water and polluted air, by drought, logging or a rising ocean level. Instead, it means that there is not one authoritative interpretation of these events but multiple contested interpretations (p.162).
A discursive approach does not deny reality. Rather, it argues that the description of physical processes is interpretive. Archer et al (1998) assert that ‘science is a social product, but the mechanisms it identifies operate prior to and independently of their discovery’ (p.xii). Events can occur independently of human interaction with them.
However, these events are only comprehensible to us through our interpretation of them. Wynne (2002) argues that, ‘physical reality still courses through these contending and overtly less determinate representations and meanings’ (p.462). A discursive approach simply asserts that there can be no one ‘authoritative
interpretation’ of these processes. Thus, in the context of climate change we adopt ‘an ontologically realist yet epistemologically relativist position’ (Jones 2002, p.250).
These arguments support the critical realist perspective that I adopted at the beginning of the thesis. We can take climate change to be an independently ‘real’
problem, but then study the construction of climate change as a social phenomenon.
These latter criticisms about the reality of climate change itself do reinforce the earlier weaknesses associated with a discursive approach to political problems. It becomes even more difficult to pinpoint a ‘solution’ to the problem. Wynne (2002) concedes that ‘to question the existing realist representation of scientific framings of
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climate change prediction does undermine the realist basis which tells us what should be done’ (p.461). However, the contention of discursive theorists is that the
construction of the problem itself may tell us why certain ‘solutions’ have not worked and particular ‘problems’ have appeared entrenched.
Hence, when we study climate change in this way we acknowledge the physical processes, but we focus our analysis on the construction of our knowledge about them and the behaviour that follows from this. A constructivist approach to climate change allows us to question our own assumptions about the subject and think more deeply about the related knowledge and behaviour that we have, thus far, taken for granted.