Overflowing with Issues: Following the Political Trajectories of Flooding

Andrew Donaldson, Stuart Lane, Neil Ward and Sarah Whatmore
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Andrew Donaldson: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England
Stuart Lane: Faculté des geosciences et de l'environnement, Université de Lausanne, Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland
Neil Ward: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7JT, England
Sarah Whatmore: School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, England

Environment and Planning C, 2013, vol. 31, issue 4, 603-618

Abstract: The paper is based on a research project that engaged with and intervened in flood risk management in national policy and in two localities. Building on recent work in STS, we develop a framework for political analysis that complements existing understandings of environmental governance by focusing on the materiality of an issue and the ways in which it is articulated through various sites, shifting between different political modalities (its political trajectory). Each modality represents a different way in which an issue is framed such that it is opened to questioning and contestation, or subject to closure and containment. We conclude that differing understandings of what makes an environmental issue political mean that researchers need to pay close attention to how their own work is political and to different meanings and constitutions of ‘the public’, as well as looking for more ways of engaging with the politics of environmental issues in different modalities.

Keywords: flood risk management; politics; publics; environmental governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:31:y:2013:i:4:p:603-618

DOI: 10.1068/c11230

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