Brian J. Burke

Knowing climate change, embodying climate praxis: experiential knowledge in southern Appalachia

Whether used to support or impede action, scientific knowledge is now, more than ever, the primary framework for political discourse on climate change. As a consequence, science has become a hegemonic way of knowing climate change by mainstream climate politics, which not only limits the actors and actions deemed legitimate in climate politics but also silences vulnerable communities and reinforces historical patterns of cultural and political marginalization. To combat this “post-political” condition, we seek to democratize climate knowledge and imagine the possibilities of climate praxis through an engagement with Gramscian political ecology and feminist science studies. This framework emphasizes how antihierarchical and experiential forms of knowledge can work to destabilize technocratic modes of governing. We illustrate the potential of our approach through ethnographic research with people in southern Appalachia whose knowledge of climate change is based in the perceptible effects of weather, landscape change due to exurbanization, and the potential impacts of new migrants they call “climate refugees.” Valuing this knowledge builds more diverse communities of action, resists the extraction of climate change from its complex society–nature entanglements, and reveals the intimate connections between climate justice and distinct cultural lifeways. We argue that only by opening up these new forms of climate praxis, which allow people to take action using the knowledge they already have, can more just socioecological transformations be brought into being.

Cooperatives for “Fair Globalization”? Indigenous People, Cooperatives, and Corporate Social Responsibility in the Brazilian Amazon

Cooperatives and socially responsible corporations are being hailed as possible correctives to the socioeconomic and ecological exploitation of transnational capitalism. AmazonCoop—a cooperative linking indigenous Brazil nut harvesters and the multinational firm The Body Shop through trade and development projects—capitalized on indigenous symbolism to generate significant material benefits for both parties. At the same time, however, it made indigenous people more vulnerable and dependent, failed to promote participatory development, masked the effects of unfavorable state policies, and perpetuated discriminatory distinctions among indigenous people. Furthermore, the cooperative did not provide an organizational framework to ameliorate the vulnerabilities of indigenous identity politics or transform symbolic capital into enduring political-economic change. This case strongly supports arguments that cooperatives must be rooted in participation, democratic member control, and autonomy if they are to promote “fair globalization” or social transformation rather than institutionalize existing patterns of exploitation.

Nature Talk in an Appalachian Newspaper: What Environmental Discourse Analysis Reveals about Efforts to Address Exurbanization and Climate Change

As the people of Southern Appalachia confront the challenges of climate change and exurban development, their foundational beliefs about the environment and human-environment relations will significantly shape the types of individual and collective action that they imagine and pursue. In this paper, we use critical discourse analysis of an influential small-town newspaper to understand how the environment is being represented publicly and consider how these representations might affect local environmental politics and efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate change and exurban sprawl. We find that the environment is generally represented as an amenity to be enjoyed rather than a subject of concern, that environmental degradation, when represented at all, is often discussed in vague or distancing terms, and that human agency is typically presented in individualizing, hyper-local terms rather than in collective, community- or national-scale ones. In conclusion, we suggest that these representational styles are likely very effective for inspiring interest in and connection to local landscapes, but they do not provide a strong basis for collective efforts to understand and address climate change and exurbanization.

Can science writing collectives overcome barriers to more democratic communication and collaboration? Lessons from environmental communication praxis in southern Appalachia

Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community-generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.

La Revolución Ciudadana and social medicine: Undermining community in the state provision of health care in Ecuador

ABSTRACT Under President Rafael Correa (2007–2017), Ecuador’s Ministry of Health established a state-centred health care regime that incorporates elements of Latin American social medicine into post-neoliberalism. These initiatives – which are part of ‘The National Plan for Good Living (Buen Vivir)’ – include free healthcare, greater attention to social determinants of health, a focus on equity and inclusion, and increased coordination across welfare, health, and development sectors. However, the reforms also use health services to build a sense of inclusive, participatory citizenship, with the Ecuadorean state as the central figure in service provision. In this paper, we demonstrate that state-centred health care reforms have paradoxically weakened community organising for collective health. Drawing on seventeen years of ethnographic research and health solidarity work in rural Northwest Ecuador, we illustrate how Ecuador’s health reforms have reconfigured relations among local civil society, transnational NGOs, and the state. Established modes of community participation and international collaboration have been undermined largely because these reforms ignore community sovereignty and self-organisation and overemphasise the threat of neoliberalism. The lessons about balancing the state-based fulfilment of rights with community power are relevant to social medicine advocates, particularly those working in rural communities that are already organising creatively for their own health and well-being.