| Chapter 1: | Reinventing the Political |
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as a political subject, result from discursive processes and structures, they are contingent and not fully fixed. Hence political subjectivity depends on subject positions in a discursive structure, but possibilities for action remain always within that structure.
We maintain that combining the study of politics with communication is vitally important to understanding social processes, especially around complex issues, such as climate change. Integrating discourse theory, as well as other contributions from communication studies, into the analysis of political matters can make a positive contribution in that direction. As this volume illustrates, different ways of viewing communication, with specific theoretical and epistemological underpinnings, generate diverse readings of climate change politics that complement each other.
Book preview
Chapters in this book account for all three modes of engagement with the politics of climate change. Some cases primarily discuss communication strategies played out within the limits of top-down agendas, but others refer to alternative understandings of climate change politics that have been developed or advanced by citizen groups. Categorizing the chapters that follow comes with all the attendant weaknesses of any modernist system for describing reality. It oversimplifies relationships among the essays, creating false dichotomies between those that could fall into multiple categories, and it masks differences among those we place in the same category. We are certain there is room for argument regarding whether any individual essay is best described as representing one category as opposed to another. The point is not to use a Procrustean approach to force essays into particular categories so much as to find a way of organizing the analyses that helps the reader think about how they engage each other and with our larger concern about the politics of climate change communication. Chapters 2, 3, and