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4 - Concepts

Selecting, Applying and Innovating Concepts

from Part I - Developing a Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

By
Hannah Hughes  and
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Edited by
Hannah Hughes  and
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Hannah Hughes
Affiliation:
Aberystwyth University
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Affiliation:
Universität Wien, Austria
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Summary

In this chapter we explore how to identify and select concepts from the work of political theorists, using Pierre Boudieu, Michele Foucault, and Jacques Lacan as examples. Starting with Foucault’s notion of discourse, we explore how scholars of environmental politics have adapted this term to develop an analytical framework that enables them to address their research puzzle and sites of study. We then use our study of IPCC and IPBES to recount how the scholarship of Bourdieu and Foucault has informed our individual study and how adopting key concepts from these theorists has enabled us to understand and explain the power asymmetries observed during intergovernmental meetings. However, there may come a point when the concepts adopted and applied, and the analytical approach developed from these, no longer provide adequate explanations for the observations made, and this may signal the need for combining different approaches or developing new concepts, as explored through the weighted concept. At the same time, the chapter reflects on why as a research community we are attracted to particular theorists – often dead, white, French, men – and the limitations this choice has the potential to impose and reproduce on present observation and analysis of global environmental politics.

Keywords

conceptual frameworkcritical theoryBordieuFoucaultweighted conceptsepistemic selectivity
Type
Chapter
Information
Conducting Research on Global Environmental Agreement-Making , pp. 58 - 73
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

1.Inoue, C. Y. A. (2018). Worlding the Study of Global Environmental Politics in the Anthropocene: Indigenous Voices from the Amazon. Global Environmental Politics 18(4), 25–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inoue challenges us to think hard about our methodological starting points in the study of global environmental politics, and it is increasingly important to engage with this from the outset.Google Scholar
2.Litfin, K. (1994). Ozone Discourse: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
This is an excellent study of the role of science and scientists in treaty making and an example of how Foucault’s notion of discourse can inspire a new approach that results in further conceptual development.Google Scholar

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