Power and Empowerment in Ecological Perspective
Pouvoir et empouvoirement : une perspective écologique
Annual conference of the Association française d’études américaines (AFEA)
Congrès annuel de l’Association française d’études américaines (AFEA)
Published on Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Abstract
Our workshop will explore how the tension between power and empowerment can be applied to the field of environmental studies, conceived here in the broadest sense, from environmental history to anthropology, political science and sociology. For instance, how do questions of emancipation and social or political transformation apply to ecological activism, the energy transition and the various struggles for environmental justice?
Announcement
Argument
The relatively tense political and social context in the United States in recent years, due to a clear crisis of democracy – political attacks on the rights of women, African-Americans, LGBTQIA+ people and other minority communities – is indicative of conflicts and even yawning rifts within American society. In order to study these increasingly complex tensions, questions of power and empowerment offer an original lens through which to address the societal, economic and political issues that are causing the greatest concern in North America. They are particularly relevant when it comes to understanding ecological issues and related policies and actions. Indeed, in the context of a dual environmental and climate crisis, and faced with the inadequacy and/or inaction of the political, economic and institutional players who could attempt to remedy the situation, many individuals are becoming actively involved to compensate for the absence of concrete measures, and in some cases, are opposing head-on economic choices and decisions that have harmful consequences for the climate, biodiversity or even simply for an acceptable quality of life. Whether activists or ordinary citizens, these individuals have been and continue to be involved in a variety of ways, either locally (the neighborhood) or globally (the planet). These actions on different scales are hardly new: the concept of ecological empowerment has been around since the 1960s, but it has rarely been used in environmental studies until now. If we define empowerment as “a progression that helps people gain control over their own lives and increases the capacity of people to act on issues that they themselves define as important” (Luttrell et al., 2009, p. 16), then dynamics of empowerment and challenges to established power are indeed at work in the multiple reactions triggered, at various levels, by the growing realization of threats weighing on the global environment.
Our workshop will explore how the tension between power and empowerment can be applied to the field of environmental studies, conceived here in the broadest sense, from environmental history to anthropology, political science and sociology. How do questions of emancipation and social or political transformation apply to ecological activism, the energy transition and the various struggles for environmental justice? Does the sum total of isolated initiatives by individuals who decide to practice “eco-friendly actions” (limiting the use of plastic, composting food waste, cycling, etc.) constitute an example of emancipation in that it aims to destabilize a consumerist economic and social model, identified as outdated? Workshop participants could question these notions by looking at them from different scales of analysis: the individual, society, even the entire ecological system (Skene, 2021). The question – always crucial in ecology – of the relationship between knowledge and power (how can we defend something when the threat to it is not clearly understood?) could be placed at the heart of reflections on notions of power or biopower in an environmental context (Foucault, 2004). The issues of cultural appropriation and the study of indigenous populations' resistance to the plundering of their resources (raw materials and/or technical knowledge) can also be explored.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- Dynamics of power relations in environmental history;
- Analysis of ecological discourses of power and empowerment, ecolinguistics;
- Political movements, radicalism, ecofeminism;
- Power and culture: culture as a modality of empowerment;
- Indigenous peoples and the dispossession/reappropriation of traditional knowledge; Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and decolonial approaches to the environment.
Submission guidelines
Please send your proposals (500 words maximum), along with a brief resume, to Yves Figueiredo (yves.figueiredo@u-paris.fr) and Mélanie Cournil (melanie.cournil@sorbonne-universite.fr)
Deadline: January 19, 2024.
This workshop will be part of the annual conference of the Association Française d'Études Américaines (AFEA), to be held in Aix-en-Provence on May 21-24, 2024.
Short bibliography
- Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
- Bacqué, M.-H. and Willmott, H., “Different Manifestations of the Concept of Empowerment: The Politics of Urban Renewal in the United States and the United Kingdom,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (6), 2013, p. 2198-2213.
- Berkes, F., “Indigenous Ways of Knowing and the Study of Environmental Change,” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 39 (4), 2009, p. 151-156.
- Calvès, A.-E., « “Empowerment” : Généalogie d’un concept clé du discours contemporain sur le développement,” Revue Tiers Monde, 200 (4), 2009, p. 735-749.
- Foucault, M., Naissance de la biopolitique : cours au Collège de France, 1978-1979, édition établie sous la direction de François Ewald et Alessandro Fontana, Paris : Seuil, 2004
- Luttrell, C., S. Quiroz, C. Scrutton and K. Bird, Understanding and Operationalising Empowerment, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2009.
- Skene, Keith R., “What Is the Unit of Empowerment? An Ecological Perspective,” British Journal of Social Work, 00, 2021, p. 1-20.
- Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness. Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
Subjects
- America (Main category)
- Zones and regions > America > United States
- Zones and regions > America > Canada
- Periods > Early modern
- Periods > Modern
- Society > Geography
- Society > History
- Society > Political studies
Places
- Aix-en-Provence, France (13)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Friday, January 19, 2024
Keywords
- enjeu écologique, histoire environnementale, lutte politique, empowerment
Contact(s)
- Mélanie Cournil
courriel : melanie [dot] cournil [at] sorbonne-universite [dot] fr - Yves Figueiredo
courriel : yves [dot] figueiredo [at] u-paris [dot] fr
Information source
- Mélanie Cournil
courriel : melanie [dot] cournil [at] sorbonne-universite [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Power and Empowerment in Ecological Perspective », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/vlju
