Imagination and critique in environmental politics

Abstract

Against environmentalism’s roots in radical re-thinking of society, mainstream environmental politics has become a largely technical, problem-solving matter of realising concrete targets. Environmental politics scholarship seems to have followed suit, with most publications in journals such as Environmental Politics focusing on realist analyses of mainstream politics as opposed to radical and critical thought. This article contends a solely target-driven discourse loses sight of two vital dimensions of environmental politics: radical imagination and ideology critique. Insofar as the late-capitalist mainstream drives both environmental destruction itself and forms of political domination entwined with it – such as depoliticisation and colonisation – critical and imaginative research that challenges this is urgently needed. I argue environmental politics scholarship, and thus the journals that give it its platform, have a responsibility to actively withstand the biases produced by ideology, by promoting critical and radical work and engaging with the movements for democratisation and decolonisation of academic practice.

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Imagination and critique in environmental politics
Marit Hammond
To cite this article: Marit Hammond (2021) Imagination and critique in environmental politics,
Environmental Politics, 30:1-2, 285-305, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2021.1880062
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Imagination and critique in environmental politics
Marit Hammond
School of Social, Political and Global Studies, Keele University, UK
ABSTRACT
Against environmentalism’s roots in radical re-thinking of society, mainstream
environmental politics has become a largely technical, problem-solving mat-
ter of realising concrete targets. Environmental politics scholarship seems to
have followed suit, with most publications in journals such as Environmental
Politics focusing on realist analyses of mainstream politics as opposed to
radical and critical thought. This article contends a solely target-driven dis-
course loses sight of two vital dimensions of environmental politics: radical
imagination and ideology critique. Insofar as the late-capitalist mainstream
drives both environmental destruction itself and forms of political domination
entwined with it – such as depoliticisation and colonisation – critical and
imaginative research that challenges this is urgently needed. I argue environ-
mental politics scholarship, and thus the journals that give it its platform, have
a responsibility to actively withstand the biases produced by ideology, by
promoting critical and radical work and engaging with the movements for
democratisation and decolonisation of academic practice.
KEYWORDS Environmental Politics; critical theory; critique; ideology; imagination; decolonisation
1. Introduction
It is clear that urgent action is needed in environmental politics today. The
climate crisis is now acute, with numerous governments declaring emergen-
cies. Anthropogenic pressures on several ‘planetary boundaries’ have created
an ‘existential’ risk (Rockström 2015; see also Steffen et al. 2015). In the
context of such urgency, it has become commonplace in the formal political
and mainstream societal discourse to see environmental politics as the
targeted realisation of concrete goals and indicators. High-level examples
include the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Kanie
and Biermann 2017) and the centrality of numerical targets in climate
governance, such as targets for national greenhouse gas emission reductions
(Fankhauser 2011). Albeit intuitive in one sense, I argue the problem-solving
focus of this approach is problematic insofar as it forefronts a managerial
approach to environmental politics at the expense of room in the political –
and, I will show, even scholarly – discussion for the critical and imaginative
CONTACT Marit Hammond m.hammond@keele.ac.uk
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
2021, VOL. 30, NOS. 1–2, 285–305
https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1880062
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way.

thought that would be needed to address the most significant political
dimension of the environmental crisis: the role of (late-capitalist) ideology
in driving both environmental destruction itself and the deep injustices of
political domination that are entwined with it, such as depoliticisation and
colonisation.
A managerial problem-solving perspective, broadly, sees the parameters
guiding the necessary action as set by scientific measures of ecological
boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009, Rockström 2015) which, through the
architecture of multilateral environmental governance, are translated into
national-level targets and then policy through the specialised administrative
and regulatory structures of ‘environmental states’ (Duit et al. 2016).
Characterised by ostensibly objective goals and administrative efficiency in
translating these into policy, a managerial perspective sidelines the political
within environmental politics; the contestations, deeper value discussions,
and alternative worldviews. In particular, I argue, it therefore obscures the
forms of political domination that are entwined with the crisis of unsustain-
ability: the ways in which environmental destruction is not an isolated or
coincidental problem, but rather interacts with, and is conditioned by, the
stronghold of ideology over political structures and processes, including its
effects of depoliticisation and colonisation. A managerial problem-solving
perspective predestines environmental politics to remain within the bounds
of mainstream environmentalism, which seeks environmental improvement
compatible with, and ultimately in service of, the prevailing ideology of late
capitalism that reproduces and normalises these structures. What remains
outside of the picture of mainstream environmentalism is the ‘ecocritique’ of
critical and ‘deep’ environmentalists who seek to unsettle this very ideology’s
assumptions about Western dominance over the rest of the planet (Luke
2019). Such a critical perspective, in contrast to mainstream environmental-
ism, seeks to show that these assumptions are not inevitable or without
alternative, by
‘unsettling conventional ways of seeing and doing things; casting things in
a new light; making quick judgements and small violences more problematic;
increasing the political and conceptual resources available to those who have
been marginalised, silenced, or damaged; and disrupting the status quo’ (Death
2014, p. 6).
Yet in the mainstream and formal political discourse across Western socie-
ties, and thus in what is translated into policy, the critical perspective
remains marginalised next to the managerial problem-solving perspective.
Since ‘universities do much to construct our understanding of the natural
world’, it is imperative to reflect on the role of academic publishing on
environmental politics in contributing to the primacy of either a foremost
problem-solving and managerial, or a critical discourse (and corresponding
286 M. HAMMOND

policy-making) in the mainstream of society (Luke 1999, p. 103). In what
follows, I argue that the bias within the mainstream discourse on the
environment toward target-driven problem-solving action is reflected in
academic scholarship in the field of environmental politics, including in
the journal Environmental Politics. I argue this is a deeply problematic bias
within the field of environmental politics scholarship, which should centrally
feature critical and imaginative thought alongside more narrowly realist and
problem-solving approaches. Arguably its central sub-dimensions today, as
illustrated by Environmental Politics as a leading generalist journal within the
field, are Western perspectives on, and analyses of, environmental policy,
international environmental negotiations and agreements, green party per-
formance, stakeholder governance, and mainstream public opinion. This
bias is problematic insofar as it undergirds a view or even an expectation
of environmental politics scholarship; one that is naturally oriented toward,
and in service of, identifying and explaining the patterns and conditions of
(in mainstream-managerialist terms) successful environmental politics.
Notwithstanding the valuable insight produced by this work, environmental
politics scholarship is also uniquely placed, and thus has a responsibility, to
uncover the highly political nature of the environmental crisis, both in order
to address the crisis at its roots as opposed to merely treating its symptoms,
and to contribute to correcting the deep injustice of political domination that
is as much part of this crisis as its directly ecological manifestations.
Therefore, I argue journals such as Environmental Politics should proactively
aim to redress this bias by inviting and promoting scholarly work that
challenges any overly dominant, ideological mainstream; that is, by inviting
and promoting work from a more diverse set of perspectives within explicitly
critical and imaginative environmental thought, and democratising and
decolonising its own practice.
To make this argument, I first highlight why targeted problem-solving
action within realist parameters is not only ineffective in the current context,
but indeed complicit in the perpetuation of existing unsustainability, dom-
ination, and colonisation. The current deadlock is political and cultural in
nature, and reproduced by the covert power of ideology. To break through
what has been termed a resulting ‘glass ceiling’ of transformation of envir-
onmental states (Hausknost 2020, Hammond 2020), it is therefore not just
managerial solutions that are needed, but rather new perspectives and forms
of knowledge that politicise, democratise, decolonise, or otherwise unsettle
the ideological nature of the technical-scientific discourse and open up
imaginative visions of alternative future paths. Next, I argue environmental
politics scholarship has been complicit in, rather than a counterforce to,
the strategic bias in contemporary environmental politics by favouring
a pragmatic-realist, yet overly narrow stance. I illustrate the failure thus far
of environmental politics scholarship to sufficiently foreground critical and
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 287

imaginative thought with a simple analysis of abstracts in one of the field’s
leading journals, Environmental Politics. I conclude with some reflections on
how a journal like this might tap into democratisation and decolonisation
movements to help free academic scholarship on environmental politics
from the influence of ideology, and redress the current bias.
2. Environmental politics between targeted problem-solving and
critical imagination
2.1. Problem-solving versus critical environmental politics
In the contemporary political discourse, environmental politics is often
portrayed as a matter of turning scientific guidance into behaviour change
so as to achieve specific environmental targets. This view, which I term the
‘problem-solving view’, is well-summarised as follows: ‘[a]nthropogenic
climate change is a problem in need of a solution; [. . .] confirmation of the
problem is rooted in science; solutions are linked to energy technologies,
economics and politics, as well as to human operations and behavior’
(Incropera 2016, 13–4, emphases added). Thus the scientific assessments of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set the parameters
for international negotiations about climate goals and targets, and national
governments and their administrations then translate these into effective
policy solutions. The modern administration of environmental states cannot
admit a fundamental, systemic crisis; rather, ‘the ‘crisis’ ha[s] to be viewed
and treated in a manner which identifie[s] manageable problems [. . .] cap-
able of being solved in a manner which [match] the functional differentiation
of the administrative apparatus’ (Torgerson 2005, 106, original emphasis).
Needless to say, these targets matter: a world in which global warming has
been limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be very different from one in which
there has been global warming of 2, 3 or 4 or more degrees Celsius. Yet
a discourse revolving around ‘solutions’ and numerical targets portrays the
matter as a technical one. Rather than calling for political action, science has
itself become regulatory (Beck and Mahony 2018). The administrative,
problem-solving nature of the policy process in turn leaves insufficient
room for creative and imaginative responses to the complexity of the crisis
(Connelly et al. 2012, p. 155). Instead, the target-setting approach is followed
up with sets of measurable indicators to define a successful policy response.
For example, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) in the UK assesses
progress toward the ‘net zero’ emissions target by 2050 with the help of
‘indicators [that] are based on our assessment of the cost-effective path to
meeting the targets’ (Committee on Climate Change 2019, p. 51). Indicators
are grouped by sector and include targets for items such as the uptake of
electric cars and biofuels, building insulations, and CO
2
emissions from
288 M. HAMMOND

manufacturing, power generation, agriculture, and transport. According to
their latest report, seven out of 24 climate indicators from the previous year
were met (Committee on Climate Change 2019, p. 52–3). Meeting the net
zero emissions target by 2050, another report argues, will depend on ‘beha-
vioural shifts’ and ‘household consumption’ urgently playing a greater role
(Carmichael 2019, p. 5). Tellingly, the report stresses the behaviour change
should ‘build optimism’, it ‘need not be expensive or reduce well-being’, and
key to it is ‘consumer choice’ (Carmichael 2019, p. 5). Issues such as meat
consumption can be ‘approached as a technical rather than societal chal-
lenge’ through new technologies and the creation of new markets; and
paternalistic labelling such as ‘traffic light’ food labelling is sold as respond-
ing to ‘consumer demand’ (Carmichael 2019, p. 8).
As the CCC indicator list shows, being guided by measurable and achiev-
able targets focuses the policy response to climate change on the technolo-
gical solutions fitting with an ecological modernisation approach. Ecological
modernisation theory challenges deep environmentalism’s claim that funda-
mental social change, away from capitalism and industrialism, is necessary to
solve the environmental crisis, and instead deliberately sees as the solution
not the abolishment, but rather the adaptation of capitalism such that it
integrates environmental concern into its logic (Mol and Spaargaaren 2000).
Thus environmental improvement is sought with the very instruments of
neoliberal capitalism, such as technological innovation, individual consu-
merism, and economic incentives. While some of these undoubtedly promise
valuable improvements in the short run, I problematise any approach or
scholarship that remains consistent with, and thus further buttresses, the
underlying late-capitalist ideology in light of its producing and normalising
structures of political domination, exploitation, and colonisation – of people
as well as Nature. This mainstream, formal – and, I argue below, scholarly –
discourse is consistent with Robert Cox’s characterisation of a ‘problem-
solving theory’ as ‘a guide to tactical actions which, intended or unintended,
sustain the existing order’ (Cox 1981, 130, emphasis added). The managerial
administration of environmental states can thus at best aim for a form of
‘lifestyle sustainability’ in the form of perceived environmental quality in
Western societies that, however, remains predicated on a fundamentally
unsustainable reproductive system (Hausknost 2020).
Cox juxtaposes ‘problem-solving theory’ with ‘critical theory’ that is
concerned with ‘big picture’ analysis of the underlying system and geared
toward bringing about an alternative order (Cox 1981, Death 2014). An
alternative order here encompasses the deep socio-ecological change
required for systemic sustainability, including not only ‘a massive reduction
of overall environmental throughput’ (Hausknost 2020, p. 17) but
a transformation also of the society’s fundamental values, beliefs, and devel-
opmental patterns (Olsson et al. 2014) beyond the norms valued by the late-
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 289

capitalist ideology. According to Connelly et al. (2012, p. 159), deflecting
such critiques in the mainstream discourse amounts to a covert exercise of
power – that form of power which critical theorists refer to as ideology – that
ensures that
‘there is a societal “consensus” around the value of the market economy and
therefore it is conceptions of sustainable development such as ecological
modernisation that do not offer a structural challenge to economic relations
that find favour and are reproduced by the daily activities of governments,
businesses, consumers and other actors.’
2.2. Unsustainability and political domination driven by ideology
Ideology is the form of power that covertly exerts domination by compelling
individuals to develop false belief systems that legitimate the given order and
hide its contradictions (Strecker 2008, 86, Flood 2002). For Habermas, the
late-capitalist ideology stabilises its social order by ‘colonising’ people’s life-
worlds; it ‘serves to legitimate existing conditions by unilaterally substituting
its own instrumental sphere of validity for the multivalent whole’, in other
words, for any more holistic, systemic sense-making of the state of the world
(Cook 2004, p. 110). Rather than exerting power in an open, repressive
manner, ideology penetrates citizens’ very thinking, ‘delud[ing] actors
about their actual interests and their visions of a good life’ and masking
the structural power pervading the functioning of social structures (Strecker
2008, 86, p. 88–9). At the level of the society, this power is reproduced
through a discursive sphere that is not a rational space, but one in which
arational myths and symbols decisively influence behaviour and decision-
making – even ‘what is unconsciously felt’ (Bottici and Kühner 2012, 99; see
also Bottici 2007). Precisely because of the intangibility of something ‘uncon-
sciously felt’, myths are a covert, but exceedingly pervasive and powerful way
in which political ideology influences people to ‘act and think’ in the way that
supports the functioning of a particular social order (Fromm 2009 [1962],
p. 70). For example, Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg (2014, p. 206)
show how the centrality of technological innovation and greener production
and consumption in the public-political discourse on climate change has
created a myth of the corporation as an omnipotent civil actor well-placed to
deliver social and economic needs – and thereby absorbed any political
critique of capitalism.
Myths arise and evolve when a certain narrative responds to a need for
significance in a group or population, and in turn justify certain political
conditions (Bottici and Kühner 2012, p. 99). Crucially, the more threatening
a reality – for instance, due to an unprecedented sense of ecological emer-
gency and unpredictability – the greater people’s psychological need for
290 M. HAMMOND

significance. Thus, even – or particularly – in the face of clear evidence of the
ever more acute climate crisis, ideology is able to influence the political
discourse toward power being maintained, and social transformation pre-
vented, by making the status quo appear normal, beyond critique, or without
alternative.
In late-capitalist societies, politics itself is thus structured so as to legit-
imate and entrench those political players that benefit from capitalism
(Holcombe 2018). Ever less room remains for democracy, which would
demand an open rather than a priori unequal discursive space to be mean-
ingful. Within this space, an emancipatory and critical politics could then act
as the social force unmasking and challenging ideological power, opening up
alternative visions for the world (Hammond 2020). Yet the very structures of
the modern state, and liberal democracy, have evolved with the imperative to
prioritise economic growth over ecological sustainability – to the point that,
according to Ingolfur Blühdorn, even democracy itself is being hollowed out
and rendered complicit in the perpetuation of unsustainability (Blühdorn
2020). Without a change in politics itself, environmental politics thus effects
only the re-interpretation of the formerly critical environmentalist agenda
into a distinctly neoliberal, status quo-supporting line as the dominant
discursive framing of the crisis and its required response.
In describing this dynamic, Habermas and Frankfurt School critical
theory, which puzzlingly has not substantively engaged with the emancipa-
tory project of postcolonial and decolonial theory (Allen 2016), might rightly
be criticised for using the term ‘colonisation’ as a metaphor that equivocates
and thus dilutes its actual meaning (Tuck and Yang 2012). Yet in the context
of environmental sustainability, it is indeed a political dynamic of colonisa-
tion that is at the bottom of driving ecological destruction and political
domination in simultaneous and intertwined ways. Colonisation is ‘a form
of domination in which at least one society seeks to exploit some set of
benefits believed to be found in the territory of one or more societies, from
farm land to precious minerals to labor’ (Whyte 2017, p. 154). Colonialism is
entwined with the environmentally destructive ideological domination
implied by capitalism insofar as it has at its root the same profit-driven
exploitation of people and land by self-proclaimed rightful ‘owners’ that also
drives capitalist societies’ exploitation of the natural environment (Whyte
2017). It was colonial exploitation that decisively ‘grease[d] the wheels of
capitalism’ (Olivier 2019, p. 9), based on rationalising as supposed property
Indigenous lands and people as much as – or indeed (in settler logic) as part
of – Nature as a whole (Tuck and Yang 2012, Whyte 2017). Resulting crises,
such as anthropogenic climate change, are thus themselves a colonial legacy,
and the colonisation of Indigenous domains its underlying political dynamic
and driving force (Howitt 2020, p. 5884).
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 291

The way in which capitalism drives unsustainability, then, is not just in the
form of concrete environmental externalities of production, but more fun-
damentally through a worldview that sees capitalist elites as having a rightful
claim to ‘stewarding’ and exploiting the planet and its resources – including
people. Because environmental crises such as climate change are global in
nature, an approach to environmental politics that normalises this under-
lying anthropo- and Western-centric worldview, by portraying it as scientific
and non-political, effectively extends such a claim of rightful mastery to the
planet as a whole. This not only ‘neo-colonises’ non-Western domains
(Olivier 2019), but also once more overpowers alternative forms of knowl-
edge and perspectives on environmental politics that are not in the same way
predicated upon exploitation and domination – such as the Indigenous
‘memories, knowledges, histories, and experiences of oppression that differ
from many of the nonindigenous scientists, environmentalists, and politi-
cians who are prominent in the framing of the issue of climate change today’
(Whyte 2017, p. 153).
The way in which these forms of pervasive domination implied by the
late-capitalist ideology – depoliticisation and colonisation – underlie the
environmental crisis and undermine transitions to sustainability is what
makes threats such as climate change a political rather than technical chal-
lenge: a political crisis (Parr 2014). The case of climate change illustrates
particularly well the ‘inverse relationship between power and privilege, on
the one hand, and the interest to transform social structures, on the other’
(Eckersley 2016, p. 352). Inasmuch as it is power-stabilising ideological
myths and worldviews, not a lack of technical solutions to the known
problems, that play the key role in obstructing effective action on climate
change, critiques of ideological and colonial power and alternative imagin-
aries and knowledges are all the more needed in environmental politics the
more urgent the crisis becomes. Both externally (in the domains effectively
(neo-)colonised by Western settlers) and internally (within the myth-driven
political discourses of Western societies themselves), environmental politics
can be effective in addressing the crisis of unsustainability only insofar as it
decolonises (in both the literal and the Habermasian sense) and democratises
its discourses and practices.
2.3. Critique and imagination as safeguards against ideology
For a more radical environmental discourse and transformative environ-
mental politics, then, the very terms of politics would need to change, through
contestation and critique that stems from outside of the given order (Machin
2020, Hammond 2020). In this context, I want to make a case in particular
for critical and imaginative thought channelled into the wider political
discourse through environmental politics scholarship. Perspectives on
292 M. HAMMOND

environmental politics that are deliberately critical or imaginative in
a mainstream-transcending sense have the potential to change the way we
see the world; to effect the ‘defamiliar[isation] [of] the familiar’ (Levitas 2007,
p. 56) that is the starting point toward alternative pathways away from the
status quo.
As defined above, critical theory (or broader: thought) is the intellectual
movement aimed at exactly this; the unsettling of the dominant order so as to
uncover the domination inherent in it, with the practical aim of ‘man’s
emancipation from slavery’ (Horkheimer 1982, p. 246). Critical theory chal-
lenges the ‘instrumental rationality’ of targeted problem-solving through the
critical clarification of pertinent human ‘struggles and wishes’ it otherwise
represses and hides (Biro 2016, p. 89–91). Critique can be defined as
a reflexive process that illuminates and ameliorates the contradictions of
modernity – such as totalitarian conceptions of progress – through dialogue
and democracy (Death 2014, p. 4). Moreover, although it has only recently
been incorporated into the scholarly field of critical theory in the narrower
sense, the wider intellectual project of emancipation from slavery must also
logically include the work of postcolonial and decolonial theorising (Allen
2016, xiv). Indeed, this implies that ‘the emancipatory transformations in the
world may follow grammars and scripts other than those developed by
Western-centric critical theory’ (Boaventura 2014, viii), and the definition
of critical theory must thus expanded beyond a narrow Western-led defini-
tion. Likewise under the umbrella of a wide definition of critical theory falls
any political theory that promotes emancipatory aims by uncovering injus-
tices, power structures, and problematic assumptions within the ideological
status quo, such as feminist theory, poststructuralism, critiques of capitalism,
and environmental justice and ecocentric thought.
Imagination, in turn, is not a distinct intellectual project, but it also
unsettles the familiar for the sake of opening up new realms of possibility.
Radical imagination – utopian thought or art – presents alternative views on
the world not as pointless dreaming, but as a cognitive shift resisting an
undesirable state of society and enabling critique (Böker 2017). Imaginative
visions deliberately ignore the assumptions and transcend the boundaries of
the status quo with the effect of not only exploring new alternatives, but also
uncovering supposed boundaries that may have only been portrayed as
unmovable by powerful interests vested in the status quo, such as corporate
interest in late capitalism (Levitas 1990, p. 21). Thus, radical imagination is
itself an important form of political critique, and entirely compatible with
democracy (Böker 2017). Imaginative impulses can come not just from
utopian studies and from engagement with the full diversity of non-
Western thought but also from the emerging field of interdisciplinary envir-
onmental humanities, which are set to inhabit the space ‘between, on the one
hand, the common focus of the humanities on critique and an “unsettling” of
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 293

dominant narratives, and on the other, the dire need for all peoples to be
constructively involved in helping to shape better possibilities in these dark
times’ (Rose et al. 2012, p. 3). Moreover, art plays a key creative role in
‘unlocking’ and thus enabling the imagination of new, previously unthink-
able societal futures by ‘exploring, shaping, testing and challenging reality
and images, thoughts and definitions of reality’ (Dieleman 2008, 2; see also
Clammer 2014, Hammond and Ward 2019).
3. The role of environmental politics scholarship
In this context, scholars have highlighted the urgent relevance of critical
perspectives on the environmental crisis, in light of their potential impact on
mainstream discourse and on formal politics. Its reflexivity can offer
a ‘contrapuntal schematization to those advanced by big business, grand
science, or national governments’ – in short, those driving the formal
political discourse in Western societies – ‘about what the future good life
could be’ (Luke 2003, p. 239). Eva Lövbrand and her co-authors argue the
more recent ‘Anthropocene’ framing of the crisis in particular has over-
emphasised the role of the natural sciences, producing a post-political nar-
rative around ‘environmental rather than social change’ (Lövbrand et al.
2015, 212, original emphasis). They argue critical and interpretive social
sciences are needed to re-politicise the discussion and to diagnose and
destabilise the institutions and power relations at fault (Lövbrand et al.
2015, p. 215). Rather than painting a picture of a singular crisis facing
humanity as a whole, this requires research that is attentive to the diversity
of human experiences as a result of ‘space, place, politics, power and culture’
(O’Brien 2013, p. 593), and thus also to how this diversity is conditioned by
colonialism (Whyte 2017, p. 159).
These perspectives imply a link between the nature and ambition of envir-
onmental politics scholarship, on the one hand, and environmental politics
and resulting policy-making as practiced in a given society, on the other.
Critical and imaginative environmental politics scholarship is uniquely placed
to challenge an overly managerial, non-critical practice of environmental
politics in society. Albeit itself impeded by the effects of neoliberalism
(Canaan and Shumar 2008), academia ought to be a space of unconstrained,
unbiased research and critical reflection on the state of society and its ideology.
Yet, at the same time, academic environmental politics scholarship is not
necessarily critical; it also comprises non-critical, problem-solving scholarship
that itself matches the assumptions and ambition behind problem-solving
environmental political practice. Thus, it is imperative to reflect on any biases
within environmental scholarship, and to challenge an overly non-critical
culture within this field.
294 M. HAMMOND

As a simple, illustrative analysis, it is instructive (although the reality is
always more complex than conceptual categories could capture) to categorise
environmental politics scholarship into what can be termed ‘problem-solving’
(or targeted, realist) environmental politics scholarship, on the one hand, and
‘critical’ as well as ‘imaginative’ environmental politics scholarship, on the
other. Critical and imaginative scholarship together form the overall category
of scholarship that challenges the opposing problem-solving scholarship and
practice. The critical approach, on the one hand, challenges problem-solving
scholarship and practice in that its ‘big picture analysis’ (Death 2014, p. 5) is
expressly oriented toward questioning the state of society, its institutions and
power dynamics. Imaginative scholarship, in turn, challenges the implicit
ambition behind a problem-solving approach to sustain the current order by
exposing this ambition as an unnecessary bias through the envisioning, for-
mulation, and practical realisation of alternative orders that the ideological (in
this case, late-capitalist) status quo would have otherwise portrayed as unavail-
able. Together, contributions on this side of the overall dichotomy thus
‘[unsettle] conventional ways of seeing and doing things’ (Death 2014, p. 6)
so as to cast them in a new light and thereby ‘extend the realm of the possible
for environmental politics’ (Lövbrand et al. 2015, p. 212). Indeed, as one
subtype of critical theorising, the poststructuralist tradition is especially con-
cerned with the role of thought and theory itself in maintaining a harmful or
inequitable status quo (Death 2014, p. 4). This implies a need for critical
analysis of pertinent scholarship itself.
Here I focus on the journal Environmental Politics to evaluate where its role
falls in terms of advancing a targeted-realist discourse committed to solving
problems within the existing order, on the one hand, or unsettling this very
discourse through critical-imaginative thought that extends its remit toward
alternative orders, on the other. Environmental Politics is a good candidate for
this analysis in that it is widely regarded as one of the leading journals in the
field. Founded in 1992, its importance in the field of environmental politics,
and indeed political science in general, is underscored by its impact factor of
4.320 (2019), which in the metricised culture of global academic publishing
makes it the third most influential journal in political science.
1
Reflecting its
growth and success, its frequency increased from six to seven issues per year in
2019.
2
Its scope is general, as opposed to tied from the outset to one particular
sub-tradition within environmental politics scholarship. Indeed, there is no
indication that it would marginalise critical and imaginative thought as
a matter of editorial preference, with critical environmental scholars well-
represented on the editorial board.
3
Thus, I take Environmental Politics to be
one of the most important generalist journals in the area of environmental
politics, and as such likely to be broadly reflective of the overall orientation of,
and research undertaken by, scholars in this field of Western academia.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 295

Of course, what a journal publishes depends on the submissions it
receives, which are not fully in its control; and while journal editors inevi-
tably play a role in steering academic discourse, it would compromise their
integrity to do so for any self-interested reasons. However, an overly tar-
geted-realist focus is not only reproductive of political domination, but
thereby also intellectually counterproductive, as it narrows the space for
the generation of new ideas, voices, and perspectives. Thus, the journal has
a responsibility here to help reduce this existing bias by prioritising scholar-
ship that has thus far been marginalised, and promoting the overall diversity
and inclusivity within the scholarly discourse it facilitates.
3.1. Method
Based on Meyer and Chang’s (2021) dataset of abstracts of articles published
in Environmental Politics from its first issue in 1992 to issue 28(4) in 2019,
I analysed, as a snapshot of what is currently being published, the perspec-
tives of published research articles since 2015 (issues 24(1) in 2015 to 28(4) in
2019). Only the abstracts of research articles were included in the analysis.
On the basis of how the abstracts described the respective article approach
and contribution, my aim was to categorise each article into either
a problem-solving, status quo-supporting contribution or a critical/imagina-
tive and thus status quo-transcending one. The analysis of abstracts quickly
showed more nuanced categories to be needed. Table 1 lists the categories
employed for the analysis.
On the ‘problem-solving’ side, there is only one category of articles very
clearly falling into this perspective; namely, articles that analyse – whether
empirically or conceptually – instances of concrete real-world environmental
politics, including scholarship in the areas of public policy, public opinion,
comparative politics, governance, and also green parties and green move-
ments, unless they specifically engaged with radical politics. Despite employ-
ing a wide range of substantive foci, and not necessarily consciously aiming
to support the social order of the status quo, the articles in this category
appear to stay within the assumptions defining the political status quo, in
which policy targets and their realisation through the administration of
environmental states are central.
Table 1. Analytical categories.
Problem-solving/status
quo-supporting Status quo-transcending
Problem-solving perspectives Critical perspectives Imaginative visions
Realist analysis of status quo
environmental politics
Realist analysis specifically
of radical politics
Critical theory Non-critical, but status
quo-transcending
theoretical visions
296 M. HAMMOND

On the ‘status quo-transcending’ side, I include in the first sub-category
analyses also of ‘real-world’ environmental politics if these specifically engage
with radical politics or radical possibilities, including politicisation, radical
protest, deep societal transformation, agonism, alternative environmental
narratives, or indeed an explicit focus on ‘counter-hegemonic potential’, as
in Shane Gunster and Robert J. Neubauer’s (2019) article on de-legitimating
extractivism. Other articles in this sub-category include, for example, Erik
Hysing and colleagues’ (2016) survey research with a specific focus on radic-
alism, and Carolina Valladares’ and Rutgerd Boelens’ (2017) research specifi-
cally laying bare how the re-politicisation of an environmental issue against the
government’s attempt to portray it as a mere technical issue opens up new
space for different political outcomes.
In a second sub-category, articles are included if they expressly employ
critical theory; that is, if they unmask and challenge the influence of hege-
monic ideology over environmental discourses (or other contradictions
within the given order). Thus articles were categorised into this sub-
category if their abstract either explicitly mentioned a critical theory
approach, or if the article undertook a discourse analysis of a particular
phenomenon that laid bare the neoliberal framing of environmental politics.
Examples include Elise Remling’s (2018) poststructuralist analysis of the
implicit values and assumptions behind European Union Green and White
Papers on climate adaptation, Brian Coffey’s (2016) critical discourse analy-
sis of the role of economic metaphors in environmental policy discourse, and
Lucian Vesalon and Remus Creţan’s (2015) examination of the neoliberali-
sation of natural resources in Romania.
Finally, a third sub-category, imaginative perspectives, is included for
completeness’ sake in line with the above theorisation of status quo-
transcending perspectives; however, no publication fell into this sub-category.
Categorisations like this one are crude simplifications. Judging a research
contribution by the abstract only could have resulted in wrong judgements at
times, and even without errors it is only a weak indication of the researcher’s
full perspective and ambition behind their work. However, as I show below,
even such an approximate analysis reveals a significant imbalance between
research published within the ideological frame and focus of the status quo,
on the one hand, and critical or otherwise radical or imaginative perspec-
tives, on the other. This suggests that, even in the event of any minor
misjudgements, these would not have made a difference. Moreover, if in
doubt, a paper was assigned to the radical category. The analysis is intended
only as a simple illustration of how little critical and imaginative thought
features in contemporary environmental political scholarship. Future
research building on this, employing more extensive or intricate analysis
techniques, would no doubt be a useful addition to this debate.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 297

4. Findings and discussion
Not unremarkably, over the past five years, 17 pieces were published that
employ an explicitly critical perspective and methodology. However, as
shown in Figure 1, out of a total 226 research articles in this time frame,
176, or 77.9%, were in the category of ‘realist-status quo-oriented’ work. 33,
or 14.6%, fell into the category of ‘realist-radical’. The 17 explicitly ‘critical’
publications amount to 7.5% of the total.
This shows that there is an overwhelming bias toward reformist perspec-
tives working within, and thus implicitly reproducing, the dominant ideolo-
gical framing of mainstream, problem-solving environmentalism. Radical
perspectives, critical analysis, and imaginative theoretical work together
make up less than a quarter of recent publications.
In light of the influence of mainstream-normalising ideology as a form of
covert power and political domination, this is problematic both from an
environmental sustainability perspective and for politics in general.
Inasmuch as socio-environmental crises such as climate change constitute
structural injustices – ‘undeserved harms that are collectively produced
through recurrent social practices that are considered “normal”’ – which
all social actors are answerable for (Eckersley 2016, 436–7; see also Young
2011), Environmental Politics, too, is complicit in entrenching this ideology.
From the injustice – let alone the planetary state of emergency – created and
reproduced by the discursive power game it, too, is part of, follows
a responsibility to promote scholarly discourse within the journal that is as
Figure 1. Share of each category of article in overall articles published in EP between
2015 and 2019.
298 M. HAMMOND

free from, and resilient toward, (any) ideology as possible, in the face of
a clear risk of otherwise being affected by it. Promoting a greater share of
a broad range of critical work and engaging with and providing a platform
for imaginative thought would contribute to this end.
4.1. A journal’s contribution to the movements for democratisation
and decolonisation
Finally, while much has been written about the neoliberalisation of (that is, the
influence of the late-capitalist ideology on) Western academia (Canaan and
Shumar 2008), movements toward democratisation and decolonisation are
playing an increasingly important role as well. Beyond encouraging and
publishing more diverse, critical and imaginative scholarship, journals such
as Environmental Politics may also contribute to and learn from these wider
movements in order to rethink not just their practice, but also their self-
understanding as actors within the wider politics of knowledge and discourse.
To start with, the democratisation of academic practice is one direct impli-
cation of a critical focus, whose commitment to uncovering and challenging
domination applies not only to the substance matter a researcher addresses,
but also to their own practice. Thus critical theorists ought to ‘[pay] close
attention to the role played in social change by intellectuals and academics
themselves’ (Death 2014, p. 5). In order to actually reduce, and not inadver-
tently perpetuate, ideological oppression, critical theory itself must ‘continually
hold itself open to the possibility that its own concepts make it blind to some
dimensions of power and self-deception’ (White 1986, p. 424). Rather than
theory in a ‘monologic’ or privileged sense (Habermas 1974, p. 2), it must
understand itself as a ‘fallibilistic and open’ practice (Hoy and Thomas 1994,
p. 19–20) within a wider, democratic social space. The democratisation of
academic practice means a transformation of academics’ self-understanding
away from any assumption of epistemic or ideological superiority, and instead
toward actively cultivating a reach far beyond the academic community so as to
submit its own practice to the ‘verification’ (Bohman 1999, p. 477) provided by
‘reflective participants’ (Bohman 1999, p. 463–4) within the actual practice of
emancipatory social change (Hammond 2019). The democratisation of acade-
mia in this sense can act as a check on the influence of ideology on research and
publication by fostering a closer dialogue with, and responsiveness to, wider
social audiences and their diverse reactions and concerns. Journals such as
Environmental Politics can support this through internal democratic struc-
tures; by broadening their readership toward non-academic audiences; by
prioritising norms of academic integrity and inclusivity over being led by
metrics such as the impact factor; through open-access publishing; by encoura-
ging research that engages not only narrowly with scholarly theory, but also
with non-academic work, including artwork; by encouraging critical responses
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 299

to scholarly publishing from broader audiences; and by favouring not-for-
profit or university presses over corporate control over the journal’s own
practice (on the last point, see Padula et al. 2017, Okune 2019).
Decolonisation, when applied to universities or indeed knowledge in
general, requires that we recognise that knowledge production is not neutral,
but always political (Jansen 2019). This puts journal editors, who have the
final decision about what knowledge they ‘allow’ into the scholarly discourse
and which is left out, in a position of significant power. Disrupting the undue
centrality of Western frameworks of knowledge demands of them not just an
openness to including a greater diversity of work, but engagement with
a more general ‘forensic understanding and critique of where, how, why
and by whom “legitimate” knowledge is produced and [. . .] the way this
knowledge does or does not reflect ongoing global political crises and
ideological shifts around the world and their effect on subaltern populations’
(Saini and Begum 2020, p. 1). For example, insofar as the journal invites
research from scholars based in non-Western societies, it should then like-
wise expressly invite and welcome research topics of interest to, and support-
ing the local well-being of, their own societies, not just Western audiences; as
well as reflecting on what its editors regard as high-quality scholarly knowl-
edge, to ensure editorial decision-making does not entrench a Western or
corporate-driven bias (see Okune 2019). Recognising ‘that “the master’s tools
will never dismantle the master’s house”, [d]ecolonisation requires a critical
historical lens and a transformative approach to knowledge building’ (Saini
and Begum 2020, p. 2), of their (albeit small) part within which a journal
editor ought to become aware, for example through genuine engagement
with and incorporation of the contingency and multiplicity of knowledge
beyond Western assumptions (Clemens 2020). Ultimately, however, decolo-
nisation cannot be a merely symbolic move, but will be complete only when
actual change and a shift in power – within society as much as within global
academia – occur (Prinsloo 2016, p. 166).
5. Conclusion
The fact that times of emergency and unpredictability are psychologically
experienced as threatening understandably heightens general interest in
effective ‘solutions’ that can promise progress and reassurance. When it
comes to environmental sustainability, however, such a focus on targeted
goals and solutions is a fallacy: by falsely portraying the crisis as a mere
technical matter, obscuring its profound ethical, social, and political dimen-
sions, the progress it promises is an illusion and distraction. In fact, I have
argued, such depoliticisation further entrenches unsustainability by serving
those who unjustly benefit from the political status quo of late capitalism and
preventing the necessary societal transformation beyond it.
300 M. HAMMOND

In this constellation, the scholarly field of environmental politics – and,
within it, the journal Environmental Politics – have a responsibility to repo-
liticise and criticise the role of the pervasive late-capitalist ideology as the
underlying driving force toward the exploitation and colonisation of both
people and Nature. The opposite to narrow, ideology-entrenching policy and
research are critical and radically imaginative interventions which contribute
to the democratisation and decolonisation of the knowledge discourse. In light
precisely of the acute socio-ecological emergency, which is collectively repro-
duced by all social actors including academics, these must now be the priority.
Notes
1. Clarivate Journal Titles Ranked by Impact Factor, https://jcr.clarivate.com/
JCRJournalHomeAction.action?pg=JRNLHOME&categoryName=
POLITICAL%20SCIENCE&year=2019&edition=SSCI&categories=UU (last
accessed 10/01/2021)
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fenp20 (last accessed 10/01/2021)
3. As of October 2020; https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?
show=editorialBoard&journalCode=fenp20 (last accessed 12/10/2020)
Acknowledgments
I would like to wholeheartedly thank John M. Meyer, Joice Chang, and Ileanna
Spoelstra for kindly making their original dataset of EP articles available to me.
I would further like to thank John M. Meyer, Graeme Hayes, and two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this piece.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/
M010163/1].
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