“Governance in transition”: the transformation of governance in the wake of the emergence of the sustainability imperative
The CRC T2S work feeds into the development of a multidimensional and multi-scale sustainability governance theory towards a socio-ecological transition, based on the analysis of empirical experiences (ex post) and of the theoretical preconditions for societal change (ex ante), organically integrating theories of action with theories of social order/change.
Dimensions of analysis: discourses/imaginations, institutions /structures, actors, and social practices.
Relevant interfaces: culture-politics, elites-social base, material-symbolic worlds.
Commons governance
At present, the Earth is confronted with a genuine tragedy akin to that of the “unmanaged commons" described by G. Hardin in his famous 1968 essay. Over the years, we have abused the planet's life-supporting systems, leading to their severe degradation. Now, we face the daunting challenge of converting this unmanaged resource into a well-managed and responsibly governed commons.
This theoretical project, which is run partially in collaboration with the Chilean Coastal Commons Project, investigates the commons on a double account:
Commons governance: How the commons as a “thing” that is associated with publicly owned or openly accessible property can be effectively governed.
Commons as a governance paradigm: How the "commons'' provide a political framework suitable for the Anthropocene era, where “commons”, building on the conceptual framework of J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist critique of political economy, is reframed as a process (“commoning”) that is applicable to any form of property, be it private, state-owned or open access.
Related publications
WP Conceptual and theoretical approaches to Commons Governance (forthcoming), based on a joint literature review with the Coastal Commons Project
An effective politics for the Anthropocene: Circular politics and para-governance
This program on Circular politics and para-governance searches for the reasons of the “sustained unsustainability” of our prevailing model of social organization in the implicit and unquestioned assumptions about the social that underpin our political theory and praxis. The central question for a politics of the Anthropocene is this: how can the emancipatory social imaginary (as a basis of political legitimation) be decoupled from the trajectory of social and ecological degradation?
Hence, the Anthropocene faces social and political theory with the fundamental challenge of redefining the problem of the social, if they are to contribute to a “politics of the Anthropocene” (Arias-Maldonado, 2018; Dryzek & Pickering, 2019; Latour 2014) that is not merely descriptive but capable of shaping the possible.
Seeking to address this challenge, the program “Circular politics and para-governance” inquires into the role of politics and governance more broadly in shaping subjectivities and socio-cultural matrices, and asks how they can contribute to reshaping subjectivities and cultures underpinning prevailing yet inherently unsustainable ways of life, within the framework of democratic legitimacy.
Related publications
Beling & Krass (Forthcoming). Making the political great again
Beling Circular politics (Forthcoming)
Beling Para-Governance (Forthcoming)