TY - JOUR
T1 - Reframing adaptation
T2 - The political nature of climate change adaptation
AU - Eriksen, Siri H.
AU - Nightingale, Andrea J.
AU - Eakin, Hallie
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Jesse Ribot and Tor Håkon Inderberg for helpful insights on earlier drafts. Some of the theoretical development and empirical research reported in this article and special issue were carried out as part of the Research Council of Norway funded project “The politics of climate change adaptation: An Integrative Approach of Development and Climate Change Interventions in Nepal and Mongolia” (2011–2014) and a British Academy funded International Partnership and Mobility Award “Political Violence and Climate Change” (2012–2015). A big thanks to Marianne Mosberg for helping with the many practicalities connected to getting this whole special issue together.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities - and thus the potential for transformational adaptation - can be supported.
AB - This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities - and thus the potential for transformational adaptation - can be supported.
KW - Authority
KW - Climate change adaptation
KW - Knowledges
KW - Politics
KW - Power
KW - Subjectivity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84959548279&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84959548279&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.09.014
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.09.014
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84959548279
SN - 0959-3780
VL - 35
SP - 523
EP - 533
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
ER -