Jahrestagung BAA, 6.-8.7.23 in Munich: Environmental Citizenship: Politics, Practices, Representations
Young Scholars’ Forum: Call for Papers
Deadline: April 28, 2023
One of the key questions of our time is how to act – individually and collectively – at a time of climate crisis that needs a fundamental rethinking of the relation between humans and the more-than-human environment. The concept of ‘environmental citizenship’ has had resonance across academic disciplines as well as in political, educational, and activist practice. However, not only the urgency of present debates about climate change, energy use, extraction policies, but also the critical reflection of citizenship’s normative implications and the increasing importance of posthumanist scholarship have called into question some of the taken-for-granted assumptions of the concept over the past years. The declared anthropocentrism of ecological and environmental citizenship has come under scrutiny in the context of a broader understanding of kinship and interdependence; the concept’s limited attention to diversity within and across societies and cultures has given way to more systematic, yet nuanced explorations of the impact of “diverse differences” (Fleras) on the rights, obligations, attitudes, and positionalities associated with ecological and environmental citizenship. And, last but not least, the critical attention the concept has received in literary and cultural studies has highlighted the importance of cultural forms and their societal function.
With this call, we invite papers from emerging scholars from all disciplines that explore conceptualizations, implications, representations, and practices of, but also alternatives to ‘environmental’ or ‘ecological citizenship’. Is it productive to think citizenship and ecocriticism together, and if so, how? Can the notion of environmental citizenship be an adequate response to global phenomena like climate change? How metaphorical is the term, and what are productive spatial and institutional frameworks of reference? Does the concept of ‘environmental citizenship’ as deployed in policies risk supporting greenwashing by pushing individual responsibility instead of systemic action or, on the contrary, can it rather help anchor environmental issues as elemental to democratic society? What is the potential role of fiction, film, and other genres and media in reconceptualizing human and more-than-human relationalities? How does a historical perspective help us evaluate the possibilities and limits of environmental citizenship and explore alternative concepts of responsibilities and agency?
Please send a proposal of 300-500 words by Friday, April 28, 2023 to Heike.Paul[at]fau.de and Katja.Sarkowsky[at]uni-a.de.