Climate Change: How Debates over Standards Shape the Biophysical, Social, Political and Economic Climate
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Published
Dec 5, 2011
Lawrence Busch
Abstract
In their understandable zeal to ward off the ‘nay-sayers’, for whom climate change is merely an illusion, rural sociologists have defended the modern constitution that separates the natural from the social. Yet, standards must be developed to identify the phenomena of concern to both climate scientists and the public. Standards must be identified to stabilize the phenomena of interest, making them into something that can be acted on. In addition, standards must point the way forward and measure progress toward the amelioration of the problem(s). In short, standards simultaneously perform, measure, and point toward the transformation of ‘the climate.’ Yet, even as standards are necessary, they may actually lead us astray. Drawing on Foucault and recent work in Science Studies, I argue that grappling with climate change will require changing the political and even epistemological climate, re-enacting the sciences as well as agriculture and food.
How to Cite
Busch, L. . (2011) “Climate Change: How Debates over Standards Shape the Biophysical, Social, Political and Economic Climate ”, The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. Paris, France, 18(3), pp. 167–180. doi: 10.48416/ijsaf.v18i3.242.
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National Science Foundation.
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May 30–31, 2008, Washington, DC: National Science Foundation.
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Porter, T.M. (1995) Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ:
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Ravetz, J. (2005) The No-Nonsense Guide to Science. Toronto: Between the Lines.
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Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, Policy Sciences, 4, pp.
155–169.
Roberts, P. (2004) The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Rogers, E.M. (1995) Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.
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Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shackley, S., Young, P., Parkinson, S. and Wynne, B. (1998) Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of good
science in climate change modelling: are GCMs the best tools?, Climatic Change, 38, pp. 159–205.
Wainwright, J. (2010) Climate change, capitalism, and the challenge of transdisciplinarity, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 100, pp. 983–991.
Wimsatt, W.C. (2007) Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Wood, G. (2009) Moving heaven and earth, Atlantic Monthly,.
Wynne, B. (2005) Reflexing complexity: post-genomic knowledge and reductionist returns in public science,
Theory, Culture and Society, 22, pp. 67–94.
pp. 1176–1191.
Blok, A. (2010) Topologies of climate change: actor-network theory, relational-scalar analytics, and carbon-
market overflows, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, pp. 896–912.
BBC (British Broadcasting Company) (2007) UK to Tackle Bogus Carbon Schemes. London: BBC.
Busch, L. (2000) The moral economy of grades and standards, Journal of Rural Studies, 16, pp. 273–283.
Busch, L. (2011) Standards: Recipes for Reality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Callon, M., Lascoumbes, P. and Barthe, Y. (2009) Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Crane, D. (1972) Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
Demeritt, D. (2001) The Construction of Global Warming and the Politics of Science, Annals of the Association
of American Geographers, 91, pp. 307–337.
Derman, E. and Wilmott, P. (2008) Perfect models, imperfect world, BusinessWeek.
Dewey, J. (1927) The Public and Its Problems. New York: Henry Holt.
Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking.
Dunlap, R.E. (2009) The conservative assault on climate science: a successful case of deconstructing scientific
knowledge to oppose policy change, in: Nagel, J., Dietz, T. and Broadbent, J. (eds) Workshop on
Sociological Perspectives on Global Climate Change, May 30–31, 2008. Washington, DC: National Science
Foundation.
EPA (Environmental Protection Agency Office of Mobile Sources) (n.d.) Automobile Emissions: An Overview.
Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency.
Ferreira, P. (2009) Do I look flat in this? The interplay between dark energy and the shape of the universe
leaves the fate of the cosmos hanging in the balance, warns physicist Pedro Ferreira, New Scientist, 203,
pp. 40–43.
Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Funtowicz, S.O. and Ravetz, J.R. (1993) Science for the post-normal age, Futures, 25, pp. 739–755.
Grain (2009) Corporate candyland: the looming GM sugar cane invasion, Seedling, 714, 2-11.
Green, H. and Capell, K. (2008) Carbon confusion, BusinessWeek, 4075, pp. 52-55.
Haraway, D.J. (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets OncoMouse™. New York:
Routledge.
Henke, C.R. (2008) Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power: Science and Industry in California Agriculture. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Hilgartner, S. (2000) Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Hill, J., Nelson, E., Tilman, D., Polasky, S. and Tiffany, D. (2006) Environmental, economic, and energetic
costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 103, pp. 11206–11210.
Howarth, R.W., Bringezu, S., Bekunda, M., Fraiture, C.D., Maene, L., Martinelli, L. and Sala, O. (2009)
Rapid assessment on biofuels and the environment: overview and key findings, in: Howarth, R.W. and
Bringezu, S. (eds) Biofuels: Environmental Consequences and Interactions with Changing Land Use, Gummersbach:
International Council of Scientific Unions.
Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hulme, M., Dessai, S., Lorenzoni, I. and Nelson, D.R. (2009) Unstable climates: exploring the statistical and
social constructions of ‘normal’ climate, Geoforum, 40, pp. 197–206.
Jasanoff, S. and Wynne, B. (1998) Scientific knowledge and decision making, in: Rayner, S. and Malone,
E. (eds) Human Choice and Climate Change, Columbus, OH: Battelle Press.
Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lansing, D.M. (2010) Carbon’s calculatory spaces: the emergence of carbon offsets in Costa Rica. Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, pp. 710–725.
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2004) Politics of Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Law, J. (2008) On sociology and STS, Sociological Review, 56, pp. 623–649.
Mackenzie, D., Muniesa, F. and Siu, L. (eds) (2007) Do Economists Make Markets? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
McCright, A.M. (2009) The political dynamics of climate change, in: Nagel, J., Dietz, T. and Broadbent, J.
(eds) Workshop on Sociological Perspectives on Global Climate Change, May 30–31, 2008, Washington, DC:
National Science Foundation.
Nagel, J., Dietz, T. and Broadbent, J. (eds) Workshop on Sociological Perspectives on Global Climate Change,
May 30–31, 2008, Washington, DC: National Science Foundation.
Parnas, D.L., Schouwen, A.J.V. and Kwan, S.P. (1990) Evaluation of safety-critical software, Communications
of the ACM, 33, pp. 636–648.
Pimentel, D. and Patzek, T.W. (2005) Ethanol production using corn, switchgrass, and wood; biodiesel
production using soybean and sunflower, Natural Resources Research, 14, pp. 65–76.
Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Porter, T.M. (1995) Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Ravetz, J. (2005) The No-Nonsense Guide to Science. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Renewable Fuels Association (2009) Statistics. Washington, DC: Renewable Fuels Association.
Rittel, H.W.J. (1972) On the planning crisis: systems analysis of the ‘first and second generations’, Bedriftsøkonomen,
8, pp. 390–396.
Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M. (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, Policy Sciences, 4, pp.
155–169.
Roberts, P. (2004) The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Rogers, E.M. (1995) Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.
Rohde, R.A. (2009) Reconstructed Temperature. Oakland, CA: Global Warmng Art.
Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shackley, S., Young, P., Parkinson, S. and Wynne, B. (1998) Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of good
science in climate change modelling: are GCMs the best tools?, Climatic Change, 38, pp. 159–205.
Wainwright, J. (2010) Climate change, capitalism, and the challenge of transdisciplinarity, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 100, pp. 983–991.
Wimsatt, W.C. (2007) Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Wood, G. (2009) Moving heaven and earth, Atlantic Monthly,.
Wynne, B. (2005) Reflexing complexity: post-genomic knowledge and reductionist returns in public science,
Theory, Culture and Society, 22, pp. 67–94.
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