BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:The uses of messiness: understanding climate governance in practic
 e - Professor Vanesa Castán Broto\, Urban Institute\, The University of S
 heffield
DTSTART:20191120T130000Z
DTEND:20191120T143000Z
UID:TALK128395@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:83266
DESCRIPTION:Coordination\, organisation\, alignment\, integration\, multi-
 level governance\, subsidiarity\, coalition-making\, harmonisation\, orche
 stration: these are all different words which have become a standard part 
 of the climate change governance vocabulary. They all have one thing in co
 mmon: they represent attempts to introduce ‘order’ in governance insti
 tutions to facilitate the delivery of climate change policy. While the act
 ual vocabularies to describe governance arrangements across spaces and sca
 les have changed in the history of climate change policy\, they have maint
 ained a core idea: institutional ordering makes the climate change landsca
 pe governable. \nWhat if governing would require\, instead\, a deliberate 
 engagement with messiness? In this lecture I will offer an initial explora
 tion of the uses and risks of messiness as a form of climate change govern
 ance. My proposal emerges against the backdrop of multiple\, overlapping p
 roposals to deliver order as a priority response to the urgent challenge o
 f climate change. Ordering is part of the collective quest to make sense o
 f an indeterminate World. An engagement with on-the-ground contexts of act
 ion suggests that ordering efforts tend to be inadequate\, incomplete\, an
 d often deviate attention from immediate priorities at hand. From the acti
 ve designation of the pure and impure as a form of social regulation (cf. 
 Douglas\, 1956) to the fortress of consciousness that helps us to typify n
 ormality (cf. Foucault\, 1961) ordering efforts are linked to multiple for
 ms of conscious and unconscious oppression.\nClimate change imposes a diff
 erent perspective. The scale of the challenge asks for acting without cert
 ainty\, and for embracing hope and possibility as a means to reach more su
 stainable futures. My hypothesis is accepting messiness is a workable alte
 rnative for delivering realistic\, on-the-ground climate change action wit
 h the potential to transform this world. Governance as messiness resonates
  with feminist alternatives to despair in the Anthropocene. In an urban co
 ntext- the setting that my scholarship explores- embracing messiness requi
 res: 1) a revisable approach to climate action strategies\, 2) an openness
  to multiple forms of climate knowledge and the role of knowledge holders\
 , and 3) a recognition of the body as a mediator of climate change action.
  \n
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Department of Geography\, Downing Site
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR