Working Paper Series

Andrioli, Antônio Inácio; Antunes, Ricardo Favaretto (2022):Food inequalities in Argentina and Brazil. A Dilemma of our Time. CSS Working Paper Series No 8, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-008.

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Abstract: The article aims to assess the current situation of food inequalities in Argentina and Brazil. The two countries are considered the most industrialized and economically developed in Latin America, and have historically coexisted with growing rates of social inequality, poverty, and hunger. In other words, they are rich and hungry territories at the same time. The most recent publications on hunger indicate an increase in food insecurity (FI) in this region, due to the loss of the population's purchasing power, the concentration of land, the agro-export model of commodities, and the reduction of public policies aimed at combating poverty. The potential to produce wealth contrasts with the unfair distribution of income and the increase in impoverishment, including in the countryside.

Keywords: Inequality, Food sovereignty, Food insecurity, Hunger

Toledo, Gabriel Mondragón; Niemann, Holger; Scheffran, Jürgen; Wiener, Antje (2022): Conceptualizing Strategic Narratives: The Peace Movement as a Strategic Respondent to COVID-19. CSS Working Paper Series No 7, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-007.

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Abstract: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the website ‘Humanitarian Disarmament’ issued an Open Letter calling for the reallocation of military spending to humanitarian causes. Soon, over 260 actors from a variety of policy areas collectively supported a common goal: peace and disarmament as a pathway to health. While disarmament has originally been a core issue of the peace movement, societal actors that do not necessarily belong to the peace movement have contributed to reframing the disarmament narrative as part of a broader and more inclusive concept of peace. We suggest that this move demonstrates an increasing awareness for the interdependencies and complexities of global environmental, socio-economic, political and military challenges as potential threats to peace. Furthermore, by analyzing the way the peace movement identifies and responds to the pandemic as a window of opportunity through a narrative shift, we zoom in on the connection between strategic narratives and social movements. This working paper is the first report from an interdisciplinary project at Universität Hamburg and it sets the conceptual grounds for a qualitative analysis of documents issued between 2020 and 2021 by the signatories of the Open Letter on COVID-19 and Humanitarian Disarmament. We set the methodological process that is used throughout the research where we focus on diagnostic and prognostic framing to identify how the international peace movement has strategically shifted its narrative in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, strategic narratives, trans-system social rupture, disarmament, peace movement, sustainable peace, social movements

Wendler, Frank (2022): The politicization of climate change governance. Building blocks for a theoretical framework and research agenda. CSS Working Paper Series No 6, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-006.

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Abstract: Climate change prompts political controversies of increasing reach, political salience and contentiousness, creating a dynamic of public contestation captured by the term politicization. The implications of this dynamic for policy-making remain unknown, with extant research struggling to establish theoretical concepts and hypotheses in this regard. How can observable and anticipated effects of politicization on climate policy-making be theorized? The paper seeks to advance the debate on this question by proposing four building blocks for a theoretical framework and future research agenda: first, the scope of political agendas and policy programs that frame political controversies on climate change; second, relevant arenas of public debate and their effect on structuring dynamics of interaction between policy-making agents and broader political publics; third, issue dimensions emerging from controversy on climate change involving questions of problem definition, assignment of political authority and policy evaluation; and finally, interfaces between institutional nodes of climate governance networks and their interaction with each other. The central hypothesis of this framework – namely, that the effects of politicization are mediated by the escalating or accommodating quality of these four factors – is illustrated by a comparison of climate change politics in the EU and US since the Paris Agreement.

Merschel, Oliver; Wiener, Antje; Brückner, Hauke; Datchoua-Tirvaudey, Alvine; Riebe, Lennart; Soares, Ana; Mondragón Toledo, Gabriel (2022): Global International Relations. ‘Doing Theory’ from ‘Somewhere’. CSS Working Paper Series No 5, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-005.

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Abstract: What does it mean to take the call for more ‘global’ International Relations (IR) seriously for the practice of research in IR and adjacent disciplines? This working paper presents specific themes that Global IR could engage with in the ‘pluralist’ and ‘dialogical’ spirit of the GIR initiative. To flesh out six potential themes that relate directly to the six dimensions of Acharya’s original proposal for Global IR, this paper draws on a reflexive epistemology which prioritises ‘doing’ over ‘applying theory’ based on a ‘view from somewhere’. The themes are identified and outlined in this paper as follows: (1) practicing global IR, (2) towards more global historiographies, (3) decolonising IR contextually, (4) deconstructing concepts for a post-colonial language, (5) mapping agencies, and (6) eschewing exceptionalism. Put forward by a diverse group of authors, the paper exemplifies the productive dialogue among several ‘views from somewhere’. The point of discussing these six themes is precisely to refrain from narrowing down the debate or proposing fixed agendas for future research, and to resist canonisation by conceptualizing Global IR not as a specific theory or worldview but as a continuous impulse to keep reflexivity going. In a nutshell, we argue that if this reflexivity and openness for dialogue are genuinely practiced, Global IR will enrich and advance diverse fields of research without submitting to traditional disciplinary boundaries, hierarchies and modes of knowledge production.

Keywords: agency, de-colonial approaches, doing theory, historiography, language, mapping, practices, reflexivity

Aykut, Stefan C.; Pavenstädt, Christopher N.; Datchoua-Tirvaudey, Alvine; D’Amico, Emilie; Braun, Max; Karnik Hinks, Ella; Schenuit, Felix; Wilkens, Jan; Rödder, Simone (2022): Circles of Global Climate Governance. Power, Performance and Contestation at the UN Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow. CSS Working Paper Series No 4, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-004.

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Abstract: The working paper examines the UN climate conference (COP26) organised in Glasgow in November 2021 as a transnational mega-event, which constituted not only an important moment in international climate talks, but also a temporary convergence point for a multitude of actors and an arena for conflicts and contestation over framing within a broader global policy space. This perspective allows us to offer a view of the current state of global climate politics more comprehensive than those of analyses focused mainly on the negotiations. Using collaborative event ethnography, over two weeks eight researchers identified the material, spatial and social dimensions of the conference. We identify three circles of climate governance, which framed practices, interactions and debates in Glasgow. These comprise an inner circle of state-led negotiations (‘The In’), an official side programme (‘The Off’) and a relatively heterogeneous wider environment of self-organised events (‘The Fringe’). Each circle is populated by a different set of actors and enacts a distinct representation of ‘the global’. Our analysis of dynamics within each of these circles shows that climate governance has entered a new and contradictory phase, where some boundaries are blurred while others are reaffirmed, and where old conflicts resurface while new dividing lines appear. The Paris architecture for reporting and review has been finalised, but thus far the new approach has failed to close gaps between pledges and objectives for mitigation and climate finance. Global political and corporate elites have seemingly come to acknowledge the climate emergency and the need for a global low-carbon transformation, but the solutions proposed in Glasgow remained partial and fragile, and tightly contained within the dominant horizon of capitalist market- and techno-fixes. The communication strategy of the UNFCCC and the UK Presidency used increasingly radical terms to convey urgency and momentum, which in turn risked emptying activist notions of their content and force. A growing part of the climate movement reacted with critiques of corporate takeover and calls for “real zero” instead of “net zero”. In the conclusion, we examine a series of contentious issues and provide avenues for reflection on the future of climate governance.

Braun, Max; Rödder, Simone (2021): Academic Air Travel. A Literature Review. CSS Working Paper Series No 3, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-003.

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Abstract: Academic air travel (AAT) is increasingly critiqued for its carbon emissions. Based on an initial interest in the relevance, persistence and change of climate-impacting practices like AAT as part of global academic interaction and collaboration, this paper presents a literature review to take stock of existing research on AAT. A two-step literature search was conducted, resulting in a range of relevant publications (N=220). The following areas of interest were identified: first, the relevance that academic travel has in the development of the research university and the international connectivity of modern science. Second, functions of meetingness and physical copresence in the context of academic communication, scientific exchange and networking appear as the main drivers of AAT, yet characteristics of the academic career system and labour market as well as tourism aspects play a role, too. Third, discourses around AAT focus on the perceived obligation to fly (“fly or die”), its politicisation with regard to the inequality of access, and justifications for upholding current (pre Covid-19) rates of AAT. Fourth, AAT is increasingly critically discussed in the context of climate change (climatisation). Fifth, alternatives to AAT are discussed, ranging from the use of virtual meetings and the re-organisation of academic conferences to more fundamental changes in the mode of research practices. The review was started before the Covid-19 pandemic brought AAT to an abrupt halt, a situation that now makes researching this social practice particularly timely. We thus conclude that AAT is an emerging and promising area for future research.

Feddersen, Hauke (2020): Sozial-ökologische Transformationskonflikte im ländlichen Raum. Eine explorative Fallstudie aus konventionssoziologischer Perspektive. CSS Working Paper Series No 2, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-002.

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Abstract: In this study, socio-ecological transformation processes in rural areas are examined from the perspective of the sociology of conventions. For this purpose, a qualitative case study based on semi-narrative interviews as well as documents from and about a small community in Schleswig-Holstein, where various transformation projects were carried out, was conducted. The focus of the work is on the analysis of the patterns of justification for the establishment of two citizens' wind companies, as well as the planning of a solidarity-based agriculture in the village. In this micro-sociological study, potential lines of conflict of the agricultural and energy transformation are revealed by analysing the respective patterns of interpretation and legitimation of the actors concerned. As an example, it can be shown to what extent historically evolved path dependencies, structural changes and changing demands in agriculture can lead to cultural and moral conflicts about the "right" way to cultivate the land. At the same time, it becomes clear in which way an active participation of the local population and the connection to existing cultural patterns of interpretation can contribute to a legitimisation of wind energy plants. [Working Paper in German]

Aykut, Stefan C.; d’Amico, Emilie; Klenke, Jan and Schenuit, Felix (2020): The accountant, the animator, and the admonisher: Global climate governance in transition. Report from the COP25 climate summit in Madrid. CSS Working Paper Series No 1, Hamburg.

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Abstract: The climate summit COP25, organised in December 2019 under Chilean presidency in Madrid, took place under the shadow of an increasingly polarized global political situation. Its objective was to complete the transition of UN climate governance to the framework laid out in the Paris agreement in 2015. The report takes COP25 as a starting point, to examine how the current transition of climate governance is unfolding in practice, and what obstacles it is encountering. It places the focus not only on states and formal negotiation outcomes, but also on side-events, happenings and the role of wider civil society. Based on our observations, we argue that UN climate governance currently faces a set of distinct and partly conflicting expectations. We condense these into three stylized roles: the accountant, the admonisher, and the animator. After discussing each of these roles in turn, we go on to explore the dissonances and disconnects accompanying the current transformation of global climate governance. We relate these to institutional features and legacies of the UNFCCC, but also to new tensions that are rooted in inherent contradictions between the three roles. We conclude by reflecting on possible evolutions of global climate governance, sketching three plausible future scenarios.