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[Commlist] Call for papers: Environmental Communication: from Yesterday's Roots to Tomorrow's Horizons. For an epistemological construction of a new academic field and practice

Sat Jul 20 17:58:35 GMT 2024




Call for papers: Environmental Communication: from Yesterday's Roots to Tomorrow's Horizons. For an epistemological construction of a new academic field and practice

Symposium led by the “Communication, Environment, Science and Society” Study and Research Group (“GER ComEnSS”)

12-13 December 2024, Université Catholique de l'Ouest,  Angers, France

Numerous reports and resources, on a local (Regional Biodiversity Agency in France), national (French Biodiversity Office, Viginature) or global (IPCC, IPBES, IUCN, WWF) scale, are now warning of the climate emergency and the collapse of biodiversity. We thus observe that "nature is declining globally at a rate unprecedented in human history - and [that] the rate of species extinction is accelerating, already having serious effects on human populations worldwide" (IPBES, 2019, translation ours). These sources highlight, among other things, the importance of institutions, governance and policies in the proposals for solutions and new knowledges:

Effective climate action is made possible by political commitment, well-aligned multi-level governance, institutional frameworks, laws, policies and strategies, and improved access to finance and technology … Climate-resilient development benefits from the diversity of knowledge (IPCC, 2023, our translation).

Such sources also underline the importance of the Humanities and Social Sciences when it comes to environmental and ecological issues, which are closely linked to our relationship with knowledge on this subject and its construction in time and space. Similarly, they also echo the media coverage and visibility of the many forms of mobilization on these issues that are now being grasped by researchers (GER ComEnSS Colloquium, 2023).

From the perspective of Communication and Information Sciences (CIS),
and more specifically Environmental Communication, the aim of this CFP is to try understanding the multiple relationships that science, technology, society, their discourses, and their narratives "in the complexity of their times and their objects" (Coutellec, 2015, translation ours). The aim is to discuss the sciences, but also the knowledge that nourishes and constitutes the (multi)disciplinary field of Environmental Communication, without forgetting the plural and porous nature of this field, which is necessarily underpinned by ethical and philosophical reflections.

Numerous scholarly works in French-language CIS have already shown the importance of this research dynamics and such current of thought in our discipline and its links with other major currents (CPDIRSIC, 2019) Thus, the work done by Andrea Catellani, Céline Pascual Espuny, Pudens Malibabo Lavu and Béatrice Jalenques Vigouroux (2019), which takes stock of the scholarship within the study of Environmental Communication. Likewise, in an effort to epistemize Communication and Information Sciences, we should also highlight the major contribution of Françoise Bernard's initial work, based on the concept of the Anthropocene4, to "explore the questions of interrelations" among techniques, cultures, sciences and societies extended to nature, and thus to go beyond "the categories of anthropocentrism, technocentrism and naturocentrism" (Bernard, 2018, our translation).

Although environmental communication originated in the West, a whole literature appeared in France in the 1970s (Boillot Grenon, 2015). However, we should not forget the precursory texts such as Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac published in 1949, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring published in 1962 or J. Baird Callicott's collection of essays In Defense of the Land Ethic published in 1989. Over the last few decades, however, it has become clear that with the rise of discourses and narratives on 'environmental' and 'ecological' issues in the public arena (Catellani & Errecart, 2023), Environmental Communication is both a field of academic research and a burgeoning area of practice (Vigneron and Francisco, 1996; Kane, 2016) that needs to be examined. Finally, there are other voices that are also becoming increasingly visible in the Western media on environmental issues and problems, and which intersect with other questions specific to the ethical, political and philosophical dynamics of communication. One can cite, for example, the publication of Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary in 2019; Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development, published in 1988 and republished in 2010 or, more recently, Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements, published in 2022 by writer and activist Vandana Shiva.

These networks of researchers and thinkers have put into words, images, and sounds these new challenges that call for their objects of study to be defined or redefined. From this perspective, they invite attention to the construction of knowledge, leading to a necessary epistemological critique. For example, there is a need to question certain conceptions (such as those which oppose Nature and Culture in the West, inherited from the Enlightenment (Lévi-Strauss, 1962; Descola, 2005, 2021; Martin, 2016, 2022; Stépanoff, 2021, 2022). How, then, do the resulting concepts, fields, scientific devices and knowledge bring to light the reality of a view, a vision of the world, an ecology of relationships, subjectivities, and intentionalities? Thus, the challenges facing CIS, and in particular, Environmental Communication and the disciplinary fields that intersect with them, raise "critical and reflexive questions" (Babou, 2017, translation ours) about the substance as well as the form of diverse and varied knowledge. In the words of anthropologist Nastassja Martin, there is a need "to make two forms resonate: the detailed description of situations experienced, and the analysis often involving the construction of an intellectual edifice to understand them" (Martin, 2021, translation ours).

Beyond a simple investigation of the origins and historical and social institutionalization of this field of research, it seems appropriate to examine and question, at this stage of its development, the epistemological dimension of Environmental Communication, i.e. "the way in which scientific knowledge is acquired and validated" (Ibekwe-Sanjuan & Durampart, 2018, translation ours). Making explicit the underlying epistemological theories developed in works within a discipline thus makes it possible to appreciate the knowledge produced, as well as its complexities (Ibid.). These elements also resonate with the epistemological issues at stake in the transition from the concrete object to the scientific object (Davallon, 2004) of "environmental communication", i.e. what makes it specific within CIS, while in turn nourishing the latter with new "objects" capable of "constructing" new practices, dynamics, mediations and knowledge.
As part of this call, we aim to bring together:

… in the same space of reflection, interrogations on knowledges – in their diversity – as well as their contexts and manners they are inhabited by societies. This questioning of knowledge is accompanied by demands for the renewal of epistemologies (Babou 2017, translation ours).

As such, we want to focus on discussions on the foundations, legacies, and future of this fertile and relatively recent field of study, but also to provide a platform for other voices. How do they provide answers, or rather new questions and postures, based on the knowledge they have acquired, preserved, and transmitted (whether scientific or other). How do they confront the current environmental and ecological challenges? In the light of existing work, it is possible to characterize certain salient, almost defining features, of the field of Environmental Communication:

- Its interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scope
- Its ethical imperative
- Its pragmatic dimension
- Its sensory aspect

More specifically, in an attempt to reflect on this design, we feel it would be interesting to consider it from a number of perspectives that are likely to displace it in order to enrich and deepen it, questioning in the process the rationality of the “Moderns” when faced with Nature (Babou, 2010). This call for papers will therefore be approached from five angles:

1 - Situating Environmental Communication within "ecological thinking":

How does Environmental Communication make sense within the broader framework of ecological thinking, which "consists of a fresh interpretation of humanity's place within nature, in terms of the limits of the biosphere, the finitude of man, and solidarity with all living things", bearing in mind that it "proposes a displacement and reconfiguration of the frameworks of thought themselves" (Bourg & Fragnière, 2014, translation ours)? With this first line of research, we wish to place the field of Environmental Communication within contemporary ecological thought and to acknowledge our adherence to this structuring basis of thought.

2 - Historicizing Environmental Communication: from its American origins to contemporary developments

An archaeological investigation of the emergence of Environmental Communication in the American context will provide an insight into the conditions that made this field of research possible, with its scientific, institutional, social, and cultural presuppositions. Initially stemming from the rhetorical academic tradition, the field of American Environmental Communication has now become “a transdisciplinary field of investigation” (Cox & Depoe, 2022, p. 13). It is based on certain “working hypotheses” which are also “epistemological assumptions”, such as the constructionist hypothesis according to which social and symbolic processes and environmental processes are mutually implicated, or the hypothesis which postulates that representations of nature and the environment embody self-interested orientations which result from them (Ibid. p. 16). A number of "heuristic questions" have also been identified that have given rise to a wide range of themes in the field of American Environmental Communication: representations of nature and the environment by people from different communities and under different social, geographical, and ethnic or indigenous conditions; the relationships between communication, values, beliefs, and perception of individuals and their environmental behavior (Ibid. p. 17), to cite just a few important examples.

It should be noted that the dynamic development and heuristic force of American Environmental Communication stems from a wide range of theoretical and disciplinary traditions, such as critical rhetoric and discourse analysis (Peeples J. & Murphy M. 2022); the social sciences (Cantrill, 2022), where it is thematized either as a “crisis discipline” (Cox, 2007), a “care discipline” (Pezzullo, 2017), or an “environmental justice” discipline (Johnson et al. 2022).

The theme of this conference could lead to a comparative understanding of the emergence of this field in other contexts (French, European, or others).

3 - "Decolonizing" Environmental Communication, particularly from the “Global South”:

While the ecological crisis is global, it affects countries, their inhabitants (human or non-human), and their territories (mountains, forests, waters, etc.) differently. How do authors (from the South, for example) work and deal with the ecological issue from their own backgrounds, possibly using specific frameworks of thought? It will be highly heuristic to look at the so-called “subalternist” current of environmentalism (Charbonnier, 2022), such as the Indian environmentalism illustrated in Gandhi's avant-garde thinking on ecological sobriety (Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South, 1997), or Ramachandra Guha's (How Much Should a Person Consume? Environmentalism in India and the United States, 2006).

This geographical shift to other countries and other continents will also enable us to discover and explore in greater depth certain non-Western “ecological thoughts” that will give rise to other approaches to Environmental Communication. One example of this is the work of the Japanese naturalist Imanishi Kinji, who, in opposition to a Western "scientific ecology", argues for the emergence of a genuine "natural science", a "sociology of living things" based on fieldwork and intuition (Comment la nature fait science, 2022).

One of the problems also raised here is that of legitimacy: "What is to be done with the otherness studied, and who is legitimate to translate it in the academic field, on the one hand, and in the world, on the other?" (Martin, 2021, translation ours).

4 - "Decompartmentalizing" Environmental Communication research:

How can Environmental Communication be enriched when we are aware of the extremely complex nature of the environment, marked by "a multiplicity of players, fields concerned, issues and also concepts" (Vigneron and Francisco, op. cit., translation ours)? What does it mean to adopt "a global, cross-disciplinary, and multidisciplinary approach" (Ibid.)? In Bruno Latour's pioneering work on the anthropology of science since the 1990s, he has made an epistemic effort to deal with a "crisis of criticism" by trying to articulate "facts, power and discourse" (Latour, 1997, translation ours) in order to turn them into the "hybrids" that he studied in the anthropology of science. This awareness of the need to break down disciplinary barriers is a key feature of the approach adopted by researchers working on environmental issues in general, and Environmental Communication in particular, as described by Schoenfeld, who is credited with the initial use of the term “Environmental Communication”:

Whatever their roots, are there common denominators between the different forms of environmental communication? Yes, they all focus on a holistic rather than compartmentalized approach to the people-resources-technology system. A fundamental theme of environmental communication is therefore interdependence - the fact that everything is connected to everything else (Schoenfeld, 1981, translation ours).

This decompartmentalization is also aimed at the interrelations to be built between different players, for example, between researchers and activists (Kane, 2016).

5 - Finally, imagining and inventing one or more "ecological paradigms" to stimulate emulation in environmental communication (its mechanisms, mediations, discourses, etc.).

It is highly significant to note that the call for a change of cosmology in order to understand the current ecological emergency is echoed by another equally pressing call for a change of epistemological paradigm in order to understand and inhabit this world. A “compositionist” approach (Latour, 2015) and a “relationalist” perspective (2019)9, to name but two examples, bear witness to the need to invent a new epistemology.

In the more specific context of francophone information and communication sciences, François Bernard's proposal to integrate the “Anthropocene” into the epistemology of this disciplinary field, or Amélie Coulbaut-Lazzarini and Frédéric Couston's proposal to “define environmental communication not as a study of anthropocentric environmental discourses and practices, but as committed research aimed at changing the links between humans and non-humans” (translation ours).

From this perspective, how can we revisit and renew the key concepts
that have until now underpinned the epistemological construction of CIS, such as "mediation", "device", "system", "circulation", "discourse", etc.? What would have to be invented? Would it be relevant and heuristic to develop, for example, an “ecological paradigm” (Hoang et al., 2022) as an attempt to epistemize the field of communication in general, and Environmental Communication in particular?

Practical information

Timetable and procedure for submitting proposals
- 30 September 2024: deadline for submitting proposals for papers
- 15 October 2024: feedback to authors
Format of proposals: Please send a file in Word or PDF format, including the following elements: • An abstract in French or English of between 4,000 and 6,000 characters (including spaces), excluding the bibliography.

• An indicative bibliography
• 4 to 6 key words
• A short biography of the author(s)
• Submission of the abstract will be available soon on the platform: https://comenss2024.sciencesconf.org (the platform will be ready soon).
• Contact us if needed: (contact.comenss2024 /at/ gmail.com)
• A post-conference publication will follow (details to be announced later).

Scientific Committee:
• François Allard-Huver, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Vincent Carlino, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Andrea Catellani, Université catholique de Louvain
• Céline Cholet, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Amélie Coulbaut-Lazzarini, Université de Grenoble
• Frédéric Couston, Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis - Université Côte d'Azur
• Anne Gagnebien, Université de Toulon
• Thomas Hoang, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Emilie Kohlmann, IUT2 Grenoble
• Amina Lasfar, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Claire Mahéo, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Joyce Martin, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Marcy Ovoundaga, Université catholique de l’Ouest • Céline Pascual-Espuny, Université Aix Marseille
• Nicole Pignier, Université de Limoges
• Magali Prodhomme, Université catholique de l’Ouest
• Emilie Remond, Université de Poitiers

Organizing Committee:
• _François Allard-Huver, UCO
• _Céline Cholet, UCO
• _Vincent Carlino, UCO
• _Thomas Hoang, UCO
• _Amina Lasfar, UCO
• _Claire Mahéo, UCO
• _Joyce Martin, UCO
• _Magali Prodhomme, UCO

References
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Bourg D., Fragnière A., La pensée écologique, Paris, PUF, 2014.
Callicott J. B., In Defense of Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, State University of New York Press, 1989. Cantrill J. G. “Social science approaches to environment, media, and communication” in Anders Hansen & Robert Cox (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, 2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, 2022.
Carson R., Silent Spring, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
Catellani A, Pascual Espuny C., Malibabo Lavu P. et Jalenques Vigouroux B., « Les recherches en communication environnementale », Communication, Vol. 36/2, 2019.
Charbonnier P., Culture écologique, SL, Presses de Sciences Po, 2022.
CPDIRSIC : Conférence permanente des directeurs·trices des unités de recherche en sciences de l’information et de la communication, Dynamiques des recherches en sciences de l’information et de la communication, 3e édition revue et complétée, 2019 Coulbaut-Lazzarini A., Couston F., « Manifeste pour penser la communication environnementale à la lumière des liens humains/non-humains », Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, 21, 2021. Coutellec L., La science au pluriel. Essai d’épistémologie pour des sciences impliquées, SL, Éditions Quæ, 2015. Cox, R. (2007), « Nature’s “crisis disciplines”: Does environmental communication have an ethical duty ? », Environmental Communication: A Journal of Culture and Nature, 1(1), p. 5-20. Cox R. & Depoe S. “Emergence and growth of the field of environmental communication”, in Anders Hansen & Robert Cox (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, 2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, 2022. D’Almeida N., de Cheveigné S. et Jeanneret Y. (dir.), La Place des NTIC dans l’emergence, l’appropriation et le débat autour d’un objet environnemental : le cas des rejets polluants, rapport de recherche GRIPIC pour le Programme « Concertation, décision, environnement », Paris, ministère de l’Environnement et du Développement durable, 2004. Davallon J., Grandmont G., Schiele B., L’Environnement entre au musée, Lyon/Québec, Presses universitaires de Lyon/Musée de la civilisation, 1992.
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Martin N., « Dire la fragilité des mondes. L’anthropologie ou l’écriture du commun », Revue du Crieur, 2021/1 (N° 18), p. 4-19. Martin N., À l'est des rêves. Réponses Even aux crises systémiques, Paris, La Découverte, 2022. Martin N., Les âmes sauvages. Face à l’Occident, la résistance d’un peuple d’Alaska, Paris, La Découverte, 2016. Peeples J. & Murphy M. “Discourse and rhetorical analysis approaches to environment, media, and communication”, in Anders Hansen & Robert Cox (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, 2nd edition, Taylor & Francis, 2022. Pezzullo, P. C., & Cox, R. (2017). Environmental communication and the public sphere. SAGE Publications. Ramachandra G., How Much Should a Person Consume? Environmentalism in India and the United States, Berkeley (Calif.), University of California Press, 2006. Ramachandra G., Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South (avec Joan Martinez Alier), Londres, Routledge, 1997. Serres M., Relire le relié, coll. “Essais & Documents”, Paris, Éd. Le Pommier, 2019. Theys J., L’Environnement, à la recherche d’une définition, Notes de méthode, n° 1, Paris, IFEN éditeur, 1993. Vandana S., Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development, London, Zed Books, 1988. Vandana S., Terra Viva : My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements, Vermont, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022. Vigneron J., Franscisco L., La Communication environnementale, Paris, Economica, 1996.


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