COMS 393 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Environmental Values, Natural Disaster, Avail

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: Communications Studies
• Course: COMS 393
• Professor: Rebecca Carruthers Den Hoed

Document Summary

Reading 2: fleming, vanclay, hiller, wilson: challenging dominant. Sarewitz warns that because so much variety of info on climate change, any perspective could find supporting evidence. Various discourses created in different social groups using different types of language & prevailing different concepts. Each social group/discipline advocates one way of constructing climate change over others & refuses existence of others. Post-structural theory: concerned w/ language, effects of language, & alternative possibilities for thought, advocates examination of discourse to understand behaviour. Individuals constituted within discourse(s) & opportunity for change. Language in relation to climate change has important consequences. Discourse = everything language entails (active construction of thoughts, identities, & actions), provides descriptions, rules, permissions, & prohibitions of social & individual action. Agency = how an individual is able to act (incl. awareness of options & personal capacity to implement them: equates to action, but social discourses create possibilities for individual action (shapes opportunities) Individuals contribute to social discourses, therefore, influence own futures.