Expected Papers
Introductory considerations
In the received view, environmental management presupposes plans and ideas: management has objectives, such as reaching a specific point or reaching a dynamic trajectory around a certain state. Two examples should suffer: the former might be the re-introduction of a specific species; or an example for the kind of target might be ensuring a specified continuing yield of resources. In response, critics conceptualise a rationality, mostly imagined as a singular but multi-backgrounded phenomenon - such as The Western, Capitalist and/or Masculine rationality of Rational Control5/6 (and opposed to an Ecological Rationality7/8) - which is heralded by hegemonic players.
While we are cautious about labelling rationalities this way (because we are unsure about how this reconfigures our understanding of the rationalities), we nevertheless assume that in a management situation, somehow some rationalist approaches are relevant. Theme IV serves to focus on how these "somehow present rationalities" meet the manager and her practice. Thus, if the workshop is interested in how management processes are enacted in practice, this particular theme serves to draw together contributions which shed light on how the rationalities of the management approach are negotiated, reconciled or co-exist in friction with the practical rationalities of the actants (Latour9) within the management situation. Specifically, this theme entails to ask how the imagined managers conceptualise the situation, themselves and the management project. Thus, this theme is supposed to be instrumental in developing grounded critiques and, consequently, providing ground for grounded utopias (Bloch), which may contribute to the theorising of better rationalities in environmental management (as exercised, for example, by Bäckstrand10).
Environments are imagined as manageable through a certain rationality. The management approach, therefore has to deem present at least some form of apt knowledge of the subjects/objects under management (a historic approach might relate to Francis Bacon11). However, actors in practice know that this knowledge is limited. Drawing on Suchman12, within this theme we take the vantage point that any management action is taking place in specific practical situations which can never be totally grasped by prescriptions and policies. As persons, they have to somehow relate to corresponding limits of manageability. How does this effect their rationality as managers or as private or political agents?
Post-hoc, at least, we know that reflexive rationalisations of management situations are possible (Asplen13). However, this does not address how rationalities are structured within management situations or before. We may suspect that the rationalities of actors are influenced by discourses of greening (e.g. Fineman14/15) while daily practices which are environmentally relevant may be partially de-coupled from discursive prescriptions16. At the same time, this issue can also be addressed as one of colonialisation. Management rationalities can be feared to colonise "indigenous" cultures17.
Questions for this theme
How are agents rational? Given the accepted complicatednesses in environmental management, how can actors imagine themselves as rational? How can we research the rationality of actors who have to perform multiple identities, caught between hegemonic environmental discourses and values while having to constantly engage in practical compromises?
- 1. "The Legal Dwelling: Taming the law in the construction sector in Norway." Workshop "How do you manage? Unravelling the situated practice of environmental management", 2012.
- 2. "Environmental management: between zooming in and out." Workshop "How do you manage? Unravelling the situated practice of environmental management", 2012.
- 3. "A dialogue about `diffuse requirements' on an environmental manager's task to report about technical and environmental safety." Workshop "How do you manage? Unravelling the situated practice of environmental management", 2012.
- 4. "The practical performance of coordination: The case of bioenergy value chains." Workshop "How do you manage? Unravelling the situated practice of environmental management", 2012.
- 5. "Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature." Organization Studies 24 (2003): 143-180.
- 6. "Scientisation vs. Civic Expertise in Environmental Governance: Eco-feminist, Eco-modern and Post-modern Responses." Environmental Politics 13 (2004): 695-714.
- 7. "Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change, and the biospheric rift." Theory and Society 34 (2005): 391-428.
- 8. "Environment and Modernity in Transitional China: Frontiers of Ecological Modernization." Development and Change 37 (2006): 29-56.
- 9. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society In Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987.
- 10. "Scientisation vs. Civic Expertise in Environmental Governance: Eco-feminist, Eco-modern and Post-modern Responses." Environmental Politics 13 (2004): 695-714.
- 11. The death of nature: women, ecology, and the scientific revolution In The death of natur. San Francisco: Harper, 1990.
- 12. Human-machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action In Human-machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- 13. "Going with the Flow: Living the Mangle through Environmental Management Practice." In The mangle in practice: science, society, and becoming, 163-184. Durham and London: Duke University Press Books, 2008.
- 14. "Constructing the Green Manager." British Journal of Management 8 (1997): 31-38.
- 15. "Fashioning the Environment." Organization 8 (2001): 17.
- 16. "Corporate Greening Through ISO 14001: A Rational Myth?" Organization Science 18 (2007): 127-146.
- 17. "Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature." Organization Studies 24 (2003): 143-180.