Elspeth Oppermann

The discourse of adaptation to climate change and the UK Climate Impacts Programme: De-scribing the problematization of adaptation

Discourse describes our reality, at once depicting and delimiting our understanding of the world and our place in it. Discourse can also be de-scribed; the script unpicked to reveal the contingency of what it includes and excludes. The discourse of adaptation to climate change is one such description. This article uses critical discourse analysis to describe and de-scribe the discourse of adaptation as (re)produced through one UK Climate Impacts Programme report. It identifies within the report a core, techno-scientific problematization of adaptation and a series of supplementary moments that are in ontological and epistemological tension with the core problematization, particularly regarding the conceptualization of knowledge and uncertainty, actors and agency, and the practices and politics that are understood to constitute adaptation. This tension is used to de-scribe the discourse; the supplementary moments highlight the limits of the core problematization, revealing points of extension or departure for the discourse. This is particularly apparent when these moments are articulated together into a supplementary, socio-systemic problematization. This demonstrates significant conceptual resonances with systems and complexity-based accounts of adaptation, including the discourse of sustainable adaptation, all of which offer further discursive resources for the extension or replacement of the discourse as produced in the report.

Emotional Athletes, Brainy Workers and other Hot New Developments: Multiple (re)problematizations of Heat Stress as an object of governance in northern Australia

This paper presents an effort to think about ‘heat stress’ as multiple objects of governance. In seeking to analyse this ‘object’ we draw on Foucault’s account of ‘problematization’ (1985, 2009). Accordingly, heat stress is not understood as a mere description of an aspect of reality, but instead emerges as an object of knowledge from particular practices in particular times and places which draw together certain elements (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Oppermann, 2013) such as concepts, measures and rules: Problematization doesn’t mean the representation of a pre-existent object, nor the creation through discourse of an object that doesn’t exist. It denotes the set of discursive or non-discursive practices that makes something enter the play of the true and false and constitutes it as an object for thought. (Foucault, as cited in Flynn, 2005, pp.26-7). Problematized in a particular way, the object becomes ‘governable’. In analysing problematizations as producing a particular objects of governance, we consider four analytical questions: what is made visible, how is it known, how is it intervened in, and what subject(ivities) are produced (Dean, 2010)? That is, why are certain elements considered to be significant and problematic, how are these things understood and communicated, and what techniques and practices seek to manage these things to produce an idealised outcome, population or subjectivity? Because problematizations thus produce the social world as well as ‘represent’ it, problematizations are inherently political. To trace the problematization heat stress as an object of knowledge and governance, we present extracts from a conversation between the authors, which explored the investigations and interventions of Dr Matt Brearley, an exercise scientist addressing heat stress. Re-telling some of Matt’s experiences in trying to ‘understand’ heat stress brings into focus the contingency through which problematizations emerge. These stories also highlight how objects of governance are not necessarily singular, but can change over time and can be multiple (Mol, 2002). We notice in our conversation the ruptures of a singular heat stress that prompt its emergence as multiple objects, and the work that Matt finds himself doing to (re) problematize heat stress as a local object of knowledge and governance in different places and times. Having journeyed through these multiple objects produced by different problematizations of ‘heat stress’, we then raise questions about how these objects of governance may come to relate as they participate in an emerging northern Australian governmentality centred on labour-intensive development.

Regional disparities in apprentice attrition rates: heat and quarter four’s significance in northern Australia

Abstract Apprenticeship completion rates have remained persistently low for decades in spite of broad agreement over the causes of non-completions. A possible factor missing from these explanations is climate, particularly in northern Australia where traditional trade apprentices are exposed to extreme conditions and exert themselves. We hypothesize that: the onset of hotter, more humid weather in northern Australia during the fourth quarter of the calendar year would be reflected by an increase in trades’ apprenticeship withdrawals and cancellations. Using the entire National Apprentice and Trainee Collection, completion and attrition data were geographically categorized into north and south Australia. Statistical analyses identified a clear difference in trade occupation’s cancellations and withdrawals. Regionally specific climate variables are briefly examined, further supporting the claim that heat stress appears a likely contributor. These cross-disciplinary findings have a broader significance as apprenticeship completions contribute to socio-economic growth and the public policy agenda of northern development.

Immersed in Thermal Flows: Heat as Productive of and Produced by Social Practices

All social practices draw on and intervene in thermodynamic flows: hastening, retarding, redirecting, collecting, converting, or producing thermal energy. Excesses and deficits of heat help render these background flows sensorially conspicuous and materially compelling. We consider how to conceptualise heat in theories of social practice, arguing that rather than seeing heat as ‘an’ element of practice, it is better understood as a dynamic energy within which all practices are immersed. Heat then emerges as inherently both productive of and produced by practices, a conceptualisation which adds energetic-material relations to the array of ‘non-humans’ to be integrated into social practice theory. We explore such thermal flows through the social practices of outdoor manual workers in northern Australia’s tropical monsoon zone.

From Skin to Strategy: Repositioning the Terrain and Temporality of Heat Stress through Social Practices

Heat stress has been a topic of military research for over half a century. It has been managed largely as a technical and medical problem. This approach frames heat stress management as a response to environmental conditions. As a result, in practice, heat management protocols may be ignored in favour of achieving a mission. This chapter draws on emergent, cross-disciplinary research that combines thermal physiology with Social Practice Theory, in order to make two related conceptual arguments. First, if heat stress emerges at the interface of activity and the environment, operational activities themselves all inherently shape heat stress. This makes all of the drivers of heat stress more visible, thereby opening up the times, spaces and ways in which heat stress can be prevented, mitigated and managed. Second, heat management goes beyond tactical decisions; it can have strategic and operational implications. We close by briefly considering what such thinking means for military personnel and for society more broadly.