From Climate Issue to Oil Issue: Offices of Public Administration, Versions of Economics, and the Ordinary Technologies of Politics

Kristin Asdal
Additional contact information
Kristin Asdal: Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, PO Box 1108 Blindern, NO-0317 Oslo, Norway

Environment and Planning A, 2014, vol. 46, issue 9, 2110-2124

Abstract: Economics does not come in only one version. In order to understand the emergence of carbon markets, this paper turns to the offices of politics and administration and argues that carbon markets ought to be seen as an effect of different versions of economics. Hence, the paper suggests that, in analysing and exploring the emergence of carbon markets, it is not sufficient to focus on market devices. We must study a wider set of devices, such as modelling practices, planning documents, and paper trails. The basis for this analysis is a study of a particular office, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. The paper traces how, within this office, the climate issue was transformed into an oil issue and how accounting and planning technologies took part in enacting the macroeconomy, rather than the environment, as an endangered object. Hence, when studying the performativity of economics, the macroeconomy must be included, the paper argues, and so must the study of the issue that is being enacted. In pursuing the analysis in this way, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the emergence of carbon markets pertained to not only an emergent climate issue but also to an emergent oil issue.

Keywords: performativity; climate issue; environment; economics; public administration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a140048p (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:9:p:2110-2124

DOI: 10.1068/a140048p

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().