x PROLOGUE
limit, beyond which manipulation cannot make up for legitimation deficit.
In the contemporary context of increasing right-wing authoritarian tendencies and climate scepticism, informed exposure is not straight-forward
but tautly contested and requires rigorous evidence.
Questioning a practice of legitimation is a way of bringing an act to
account, by holding accountable its doer, its authoriser, or both, to the
broader publics affected by their actions. There is no singular public or
normative standard (West and Davis 2011), as scholarly theorisations of
institutional orders and orders of worth remind us (Boltanski and Thévenot
2006; Patriotta et al. 2011). Yet environmental governance and political
ecology research have made inroads into questions of power and representation, and a normative goal such as sustainability has secured broad, albeit
not uncontested, social legitimacy in terms of the desirability of decarbonisation that also enhances social equity. Nation states—and, in a polycentric world, trans-local networks of multi-scalar actors—have made
strong verbal, political, policy and in some cases even legal commitments
to achieving substantive transitions to sustainability. Nonetheless, global
carbon emissions continue to increase, and human-made disasters are
becoming normed into the anthropocene, with exacerbated threats of
wildfires and floods causing widespread loss of human life, infrastructure
and biodiversity. With a crisis of accountability of this magnitude—where
societal foundations such as the energy system must open up to questioning—being increasingly recognised with public demands to address it,
practices of legitimation occur wherever action is observable, whether to
resolve the crisis or to profit by prolonging it. These practices are our windows to institutional change in the making (Dansou and Langley 2012),
and our points of entry to not only examine and understand but also to
inform and intervene.
To me, this is both a professional and personal quest: 45 °C summer
days with no electricity for half the day is not just a memory from my
childhood; it embodies the reality of the current lives of mind-bogglingly
many people. We continue to shy away from some of the most pressing
and difficult questions when it comes to acting on climate change: how is
it that the powerful continue to act in unacceptable, unabashedly consumerist ways without being held to account, while highly vulnerable groups
bear the brunt of the impact with precious little say?
We cannot change everything at once; what is in place keeps the world
as we know it in play and nourishes very powerful parts of it. But we must
limit, beyond which manipulation cannot make up for legitimation deficit.
In the contemporary context of increasing right-wing authoritarian tendencies and climate scepticism, informed exposure is not straight-forward
but tautly contested and requires rigorous evidence.
Questioning a practice of legitimation is a way of bringing an act to
account, by holding accountable its doer, its authoriser, or both, to the
broader publics affected by their actions. There is no singular public or
normative standard (West and Davis 2011), as scholarly theorisations of
institutional orders and orders of worth remind us (Boltanski and Thévenot
2006; Patriotta et al. 2011). Yet environmental governance and political
ecology research have made inroads into questions of power and representation, and a normative goal such as sustainability has secured broad, albeit
not uncontested, social legitimacy in terms of the desirability of decarbonisation that also enhances social equity. Nation states—and, in a polycentric world, trans-local networks of multi-scalar actors—have made
strong verbal, political, policy and in some cases even legal commitments
to achieving substantive transitions to sustainability. Nonetheless, global
carbon emissions continue to increase, and human-made disasters are
becoming normed into the anthropocene, with exacerbated threats of
wildfires and floods causing widespread loss of human life, infrastructure
and biodiversity. With a crisis of accountability of this magnitude—where
societal foundations such as the energy system must open up to questioning—being increasingly recognised with public demands to address it,
practices of legitimation occur wherever action is observable, whether to
resolve the crisis or to profit by prolonging it. These practices are our windows to institutional change in the making (Dansou and Langley 2012),
and our points of entry to not only examine and understand but also to
inform and intervene.
To me, this is both a professional and personal quest: 45 °C summer
days with no electricity for half the day is not just a memory from my
childhood; it embodies the reality of the current lives of mind-bogglingly
many people. We continue to shy away from some of the most pressing
and difficult questions when it comes to acting on climate change: how is
it that the powerful continue to act in unacceptable, unabashedly consumerist ways without being held to account, while highly vulnerable groups
bear the brunt of the impact with precious little say?
We cannot change everything at once; what is in place keeps the world
as we know it in play and nourishes very powerful parts of it. But we must