Making Representations: The SDG Process and Major Groups’ Images of the Future

Henrike Knappe and Oscar Schmidt

Global Environmental Politics, 2021, vol. 21, issue 2, 23-43

Abstract: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process aimed to be more inclusive, transparent, and participatory than prior United Nations processes. This article traces the practices of representation that were performed by civil society actors during the SDG process. In doing so, we advance a performative approach in which the very process of making representation is examined. Its aim is to conceptualize and study representation as an aesthetic and political practice. This leads to the two central research questions of this article: How do civil society organizations in global environmental politics make representative claims by picturing their envisioned future? How are future representations (that is, the representation of futures or future beings) related to actor positions during the SDG process? Special emphasis is given to representations of “the future” as an ever-present frame of reference in environmental politics. Based on a systematic content analysis of the statements of two Major Groups—Children, and Youth and Farmers—we discuss the variety of future representations between the Major Groups and how especially more radical future representations are connected to rather precarious actor positions in representative claims.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00599
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

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:tpr:glenvp:v:21:y:2021:i:2:p:23-43

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().