Holding space for climate justice? Urgency and ‘Regenerative Cultures’ in Extinction Rebellion Netherlands

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8946255
AutoresTom Rowe (0009-0001-9765-3723, Wageningen University & Research, autor correspondente), Meghann Ormond (0000-0002-4056-9619, Wageningen University & Research)
Ano2023
Volume146
Páginas103868-103868
Data de publicação2023-09-24
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoGeoforum (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398
EditoraElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103868
OpenAlexW4386992492
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas56

This article explores tensions between urgency and climate justice in a climate activist movement context through the case study of Regenerative Cultures in Extinction Rebellion Netherlands. We argue that urgency obstructs climate justice through encouraging ‘whatever-it-takes’ mentalities that sideline justice concerns in the pursuit of action, and through propelling activist burnout, which causes climate justice movements to falter over time. We situate Regenerative Cultures as a tool used by Extinction Rebellion Netherlands to negotiate these obstructions to climate justice posed by urgency. Regenerative Cultures comprises an attempt by Extinction Rebellion Netherlands to ‘hold space’, away from the urgency which pervades the movement, in order to afford activists the time to experiment with modes of inner transformation. The techniques used by activists to ‘hold space’ for these transformations constitute a form of utopia building. In these utopian spaces, activists learn to acknowledge and manage feelings of urgency, thereby constituting a form of emotional and affective inner transformation. However, the utopian spaces of Regenerative Cultures are isolated from the rest of the movement. As a disconnected utopian enclave, the political potential of ‘Regenerative Cultures’ as a prefigurative vehicle for social change is blunted. This case study is testament to the difficulties involved in carving out spaces to practice prefigurative forms of politics in a context of planetary emergency, while simultaneously outlining the necessity of such spaces for cultivating the inner changes required to enable and sustain projects of climate justice

Aesthetics · Climate change · Climate justice · Context (archaeology · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance