Anneleen Kenis
Biographic Data
| ID | 99796 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anneleen Kenis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anneleen |
| FAMILY NAME | Kenis |
| SIGNATURE | KENIS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6106-6340 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 277 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Modern Slavery‐Climate Change Nexus
The modern slavery‐climate change nexus is emerging as a trendy topic. It combines two powerful consensus narratives, modern slavery and climate change, and has been uncritically embraced by scholars, charities, campaigners and corporations. In this article, we argue that rather than representing an exciting advancement in society–environment scholarship, the modern slavery‐climate change nexus resurrects the long‐discredited theory of environmen…
A Race Against the Clock? On the Paradoxes of Acting "Now" in the Climate Struggle
Taking inspiration from Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," this article discusses how new climate movements try to break with the empty time of conventional climate discourses in order to politicize the "now." Pointing at the catastrophe looming on the horizon, new climate movements question understandings of history as progress. These are underpinned by linear, gradual, and homogeneous conceptions of time, as present in a w…
Just air? Spatial injustice and the politicisation of air pollution
Properly equipped racing pigeons can gather continuous real-time air pollution data while moving through the air at key heights not accessible to the official instruments, as well as from the ground where they are released for their homing flights" (Haraway, 2016). Grasping the airExposure to air pollution and its health risks varies greatly according to the place where one lives (Kelly & Fussell, 2015; WHO, 2013).Not only differences between cou…
The genetically modified organism shall not be refused? Talking back to the technosciences
Starting from Marcel Mauss' observation that "one has no right to refuse a gift", this paper explores the politics of refusal in the context of field trials with genetically modified organisms in Flanders (Belgium). Based on a decade of activist research, and focusing on the genetically modified organism field trials of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology, we show that the business model of this strategic research center - with its triple mis…
Covid-19 Roundtable
DiGeSt 8(1) General Issue - COVID-19 Roundtable
Rethinking environmental justice
For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air pollution ever in Belgium. A distributive justice discourse which portrayed Antwerp residents as bei…
The role of the media in staging air pollution
Mapping the media frames that have both triggered and articulated the mobilisation around air pollution in London in the period 1997–2017, this paper shows how especially those events that have been framed in agonistic terms have led to a rise of media engagement with the topic. From the controversy around Sahara dust as a so-called ‘natural’ explanation for smog episodes, to the staging of Oxford Street as the most polluted street of the world, …
Clashing Tactics, Clashing Generations
Much has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing wo…
Science, citizens, and air pollution
In their efforts to put air pollution on the public agenda, citizens cannot avoid engaging with science. Being a largely invisible socio-natural artifact, air has to be discursively translated to become politically salient. Through a comparative analysis of the air pollution mobilizations in two cities, Antwerp (Belgium) and London (UK), the chapter illuminates the political effects of the choices citizen movements make in this process of transla…
Toxic truths
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
My best geographer’s dress
In this paper, we draw on our personal experiences with the perpetuating gender bias in (early-career) academia, more specifically within geography. We develop two main arguments. First, we argue that everyday academic practices stand in sharp contrast with the critical content geography, as a discipline, aims to study and teach - including its feminist, anti-colonial, and queer understandings. Strikingly, geography as a field does not seem able …
Post-politics contested
Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as suc…
Imagining the carbon neutral city
Putting climate neutrality on the urban agenda inevitably requires a re-imagination and delineation of the boundaries of the city, both at the geographical level, with regard to its inscription in history and concerning the social groups it is composed of. Such an exercise of (re-)imagination or representation is a profoundly political act. It is on the level of this symbolic representation that the (de)politicised nature of sustainability projec…
Air quality from a social perspective in four European metropolitan areas
Ecological citizenship and democracy
Grassroots environmental movements have recently started to question the focus on sustainable consumption as a main strategy to tackle climate change. They prefer to address individuals as citizens rather than as consumers, and focus on collective rather than individual change. Two prominent movements in this regard are Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action. While both movements criticise conventional approaches, they put forward entirely d…
The Limits of the Green Economy
Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the proble…
(De)politicising the local
Climate change and post-politics
Searching for 'the political' in environmental politics
Situating the ‘post-ecologist turn’ within the framework of post-politics, we not only investigate why environmental issues are so easily represented in consensual and technocratic terms, but also seek avenues for repoliticisation. We thereby try to avoid the pitfall of a voluntaristic or substantively normative approach to what repoliticisation can mean. By pointing to the subtle polemic on a meta-level which lurks beneath even the most consensu…
Beyond individual behaviour change
Individual behaviour change is fast becoming a kind of ‘holy grail’ to tackle climate change, in environmental policy, the environmental movement and academic literature. This is contested by those who claim that social structures are the main problem and who advocate collective social action. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to better understand why environmentally concerned citizens choose one of these two types of engag…
Climate change and post-politics
Searching for 'the political' in environmental politics
Situating the ‘post-ecologist turn’ within the framework of post-politics, we not only investigate why environmental issues are so easily represented in consensual and technocratic terms, but also seek avenues for repoliticisation. We thereby try to avoid the pitfall of a voluntaristic or substantively normative approach to what repoliticisation can mean. By pointing to the subtle polemic on a meta-level which lurks beneath even the most consensu…
(De)politicising the local
Beyond individual behaviour change
Individual behaviour change is fast becoming a kind of ‘holy grail’ to tackle climate change, in environmental policy, the environmental movement and academic literature. This is contested by those who claim that social structures are the main problem and who advocate collective social action. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to better understand why environmentally concerned citizens choose one of these two types of engag…
Toxic truths
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
Post-politics contested
Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as suc…
Clashing Tactics, Clashing Generations
Much has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing wo…
Ecological citizenship and democracy
Grassroots environmental movements have recently started to question the focus on sustainable consumption as a main strategy to tackle climate change. They prefer to address individuals as citizens rather than as consumers, and focus on collective rather than individual change. Two prominent movements in this regard are Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action. While both movements criticise conventional approaches, they put forward entirely d…
Imagining the carbon neutral city
Putting climate neutrality on the urban agenda inevitably requires a re-imagination and delineation of the boundaries of the city, both at the geographical level, with regard to its inscription in history and concerning the social groups it is composed of. Such an exercise of (re-)imagination or representation is a profoundly political act. It is on the level of this symbolic representation that the (de)politicised nature of sustainability projec…
The role of the media in staging air pollution
Mapping the media frames that have both triggered and articulated the mobilisation around air pollution in London in the period 1997–2017, this paper shows how especially those events that have been framed in agonistic terms have led to a rise of media engagement with the topic. From the controversy around Sahara dust as a so-called ‘natural’ explanation for smog episodes, to the staging of Oxford Street as the most polluted street of the world, …
My best geographer’s dress
In this paper, we draw on our personal experiences with the perpetuating gender bias in (early-career) academia, more specifically within geography. We develop two main arguments. First, we argue that everyday academic practices stand in sharp contrast with the critical content geography, as a discipline, aims to study and teach - including its feminist, anti-colonial, and queer understandings. Strikingly, geography as a field does not seem able …
Just air? Spatial injustice and the politicisation of air pollution
Properly equipped racing pigeons can gather continuous real-time air pollution data while moving through the air at key heights not accessible to the official instruments, as well as from the ground where they are released for their homing flights" (Haraway, 2016). Grasping the airExposure to air pollution and its health risks varies greatly according to the place where one lives (Kelly & Fussell, 2015; WHO, 2013).Not only differences between cou…
Rethinking environmental justice
For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air pollution ever in Belgium. A distributive justice discourse which portrayed Antwerp residents as bei…
A Race Against the Clock? On the Paradoxes of Acting "Now" in the Climate Struggle
Taking inspiration from Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," this article discusses how new climate movements try to break with the empty time of conventional climate discourses in order to politicize the "now." Pointing at the catastrophe looming on the horizon, new climate movements question understandings of history as progress. These are underpinned by linear, gradual, and homogeneous conceptions of time, as present in a w…
The genetically modified organism shall not be refused? Talking back to the technosciences
Starting from Marcel Mauss' observation that "one has no right to refuse a gift", this paper explores the politics of refusal in the context of field trials with genetically modified organisms in Flanders (Belgium). Based on a decade of activist research, and focusing on the genetically modified organism field trials of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology, we show that the business model of this strategic research center - with its triple mis…
Beyond individual behaviour change
Individual behaviour change is fast becoming a kind of ‘holy grail’ to tackle climate change, in environmental policy, the environmental movement and academic literature. This is contested by those who claim that social structures are the main problem and who advocate collective social action. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to better understand why environmentally concerned citizens choose one of these two types of engag…
(De)politicising the local
Climate change and post-politics
Searching for 'the political' in environmental politics
Situating the ‘post-ecologist turn’ within the framework of post-politics, we not only investigate why environmental issues are so easily represented in consensual and technocratic terms, but also seek avenues for repoliticisation. We thereby try to avoid the pitfall of a voluntaristic or substantively normative approach to what repoliticisation can mean. By pointing to the subtle polemic on a meta-level which lurks beneath even the most consensu…
The Limits of the Green Economy
Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the proble…
Air quality from a social perspective in four European metropolitan areas
Ecological citizenship and democracy
Grassroots environmental movements have recently started to question the focus on sustainable consumption as a main strategy to tackle climate change. They prefer to address individuals as citizens rather than as consumers, and focus on collective rather than individual change. Two prominent movements in this regard are Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action. While both movements criticise conventional approaches, they put forward entirely d…
Imagining the carbon neutral city
Putting climate neutrality on the urban agenda inevitably requires a re-imagination and delineation of the boundaries of the city, both at the geographical level, with regard to its inscription in history and concerning the social groups it is composed of. Such an exercise of (re-)imagination or representation is a profoundly political act. It is on the level of this symbolic representation that the (de)politicised nature of sustainability projec…
Post-politics contested
Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as suc…
My best geographer’s dress
In this paper, we draw on our personal experiences with the perpetuating gender bias in (early-career) academia, more specifically within geography. We develop two main arguments. First, we argue that everyday academic practices stand in sharp contrast with the critical content geography, as a discipline, aims to study and teach - including its feminist, anti-colonial, and queer understandings. Strikingly, geography as a field does not seem able …
Science, citizens, and air pollution
In their efforts to put air pollution on the public agenda, citizens cannot avoid engaging with science. Being a largely invisible socio-natural artifact, air has to be discursively translated to become politically salient. Through a comparative analysis of the air pollution mobilizations in two cities, Antwerp (Belgium) and London (UK), the chapter illuminates the political effects of the choices citizen movements make in this process of transla…
Toxic truths
Political strategies for seeking environmental justice Introduction to Part III -Alice Mah 8 Legitimating confrontational discourses by local environmental groups: The case of air quality monitoring in a Spanish industrial area -Miguel A
Covid-19 Roundtable
DiGeSt 8(1) General Issue - COVID-19 Roundtable
Rethinking environmental justice
For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air pollution ever in Belgium. A distributive justice discourse which portrayed Antwerp residents as bei…
The role of the media in staging air pollution
Mapping the media frames that have both triggered and articulated the mobilisation around air pollution in London in the period 1997–2017, this paper shows how especially those events that have been framed in agonistic terms have led to a rise of media engagement with the topic. From the controversy around Sahara dust as a so-called ‘natural’ explanation for smog episodes, to the staging of Oxford Street as the most polluted street of the world, …
Clashing Tactics, Clashing Generations
Much has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing wo…
Just air? Spatial injustice and the politicisation of air pollution
Properly equipped racing pigeons can gather continuous real-time air pollution data while moving through the air at key heights not accessible to the official instruments, as well as from the ground where they are released for their homing flights" (Haraway, 2016). Grasping the airExposure to air pollution and its health risks varies greatly according to the place where one lives (Kelly & Fussell, 2015; WHO, 2013).Not only differences between cou…
The genetically modified organism shall not be refused? Talking back to the technosciences
Starting from Marcel Mauss' observation that "one has no right to refuse a gift", this paper explores the politics of refusal in the context of field trials with genetically modified organisms in Flanders (Belgium). Based on a decade of activist research, and focusing on the genetically modified organism field trials of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology, we show that the business model of this strategic research center - with its triple mis…
A Race Against the Clock? On the Paradoxes of Acting "Now" in the Climate Struggle
Taking inspiration from Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," this article discusses how new climate movements try to break with the empty time of conventional climate discourses in order to politicize the "now." Pointing at the catastrophe looming on the horizon, new climate movements question understandings of history as progress. These are underpinned by linear, gradual, and homogeneous conceptions of time, as present in a w…
The Modern Slavery‐Climate Change Nexus
The modern slavery‐climate change nexus is emerging as a trendy topic. It combines two powerful consensus narratives, modern slavery and climate change, and has been uncritically embraced by scholars, charities, campaigners and corporations. In this article, we argue that rather than representing an exciting advancement in society–environment scholarship, the modern slavery‐climate change nexus resurrects the long‐discredited theory of environmen…
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (9 works) · Climate change (7 works) · Environmental ethics (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (6 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (5 works)