The Environmentalization of Economics 

Abstracts

Exploring the economisation of and with nature(s) in rural living labs

Thomas Franssen, Leiden University; Mandy de Wilde, Leiden University/University of Amsterdam

Rural living labs are currently very much in vogue in an effort to restore biodiversity as well as renew agricultural business models. In these labs, new forms of cohabitation between life forms (plants, animals) and forms of life (farming, recreation, consuming) are experimented with, to serve as exemplars for the sustainable and economic development of agricultural wastelands across the Netherlands and Europe. Ethnographically, our contribution explores one such living lab, called Polderlab VrouwVenne: a peat meadow area and agricultural wasteland acquired by a citizen cooperative and now the site of a 10-year transdisciplinary collaboration among municipalities, farmers, food-related NGOs, and scientists. Experiments taking place are elevation of groundwater, re-introduction of native vegetation, and cultivation of exotic crops. While experimenting, scientific and economic valuations of ‘nature’ go hand in hand. Taking our cue from Caliskan and Callon’s understanding of economisation processes, we explore, analytically, how the materiality of experimental cohabitations in Polderlab VrouwVenne influences the modes of valuation that are possible, and vice versa. How does collaboration among the many stakeholders shape the economisation of nature(s) at play in Polderlab VrouwVenne. And how do non-human stakeholders (peat moss, bog myrtle) resist or allow for the economisation of certain natures. 

Money as synecdoche: markets, economics and the making the environmental problems

Alexander Paulsson, Lund University

In environmental economics, markets and market-based policy instruments are designed to fix the environmental problems markets have created. Incentives such as subsidies, taxes and the creation of artificial scarcity are used to intervene in the marketplace and transform it. While scholars in the social studies of markets have explored how such market-based instruments operate, which expertise they mobilize, and what kind of representations of the environment they are built upon, yet it has not engaged with the most significant artifact used in nearly all kinds of markets: money. Still, social theory has long been preoccupied with understanding what money is, how it operates and its implications for social relations. 

Consequently, in this paper, I explore how money is conceptualized in environmental economics and how this has been questioned by scholars coming from ecological economics. Drawing on the social studies of markets literature, I show how different understandings of money provide different programs for action and what implications this have for socio-ecological transitions, as outlined in the literatures. 

In conclusion, I suggest there is much to be gained from approaching money as an artifact, which is both shaping how markets operate and how markets are supposed to solve environmental problems. Depending how money is designed, it will enable different programs of action.

Industry ecologisation: a socio-political analysis of two innovations in the canadian aquaculture industry

Antoine Police, Arènes UMR 6051

The notion of "ecologization" designates a movement of transformation of practices and techniques associated with cognitive schemes and political values. Most contemporary industries are subject to this logic, which can take various forms. The sectoral analyses of industrial government in political science (Jullien and Smith) propose the concept of political work in order to analyze the government of productive activities in terms of the mobilization logics of diversified actors aiming to re-problematize issues, to equip them accordingly, as well as to have them recognized as legitimate in society. This approach, which focuses on power relations, postulates that the success of an ecological innovation depends on the political work carried out rather than on the intrinsic technical and economic viability of the process alone. 
This paper compares two innovations in Canadian aquaculture, an ecologically controversial industry that is undergoing a strong regulatory and economic renewal of interest by public authorities. We characterize the policy work behind these options to understand the conditions for success or failure of their widespread adoption.  The two innovations studied are Integrated Multitrophic Aquaculture (IMTA), claimed by its proponents as a new aquaculture model that promotes technical processes of polyculture at sea as an alternative to fish monoculture, but which is struggling to achieve economic generalization among multinational salmon companies. The second innovation is based on restorative aquaculture, whose proponents value the ecological dimension by emphasizing the "positive" interactions between the natural environment and oyster farms, but which meets with the opposition of the environmentalist fringe of the scientists of the supervisory ministry.  The comparative analysis of the political work is based on a qualitative methodology combining the analysis of specialized literature  as well as semi-structured interviews.

Organizers

Nassima Abdelghafour, Béatrice Cointe, Kewan Mertens, Alexandre Violle