Politics of nature is a research view all the more relevant due to the Anthropocenic disruption. Nonhuman nature is inevitably entangled in all human activities, including individual and collective agencies, practices, policy making and institutional structures. We study how nonhuman nature carries and influences both material and discursive power and can become an asset in the creation and implementation of sustainable policies. We focus on collaborative processes and practices of policy making and the emergence of human-ecological sustainability paths in urban areas and urban-rural environments. We analyze both the stabilization of policy fields and the emergence of new possibilities for action arising from various human-nonhuman constellations.
Our research interests are as follows:
- How do biodiversity, models of nature conservation and other circulating policy concepts of nature work, change and build capacity for sustainability in local policy making, civic activities, and land-use planning?
- How do ethical, epistemological and ontological justifications of human-nonhuman relationships affect policy making, planning and knowledge generation?
- How does organization of nonhuman nature in collaborative policy processes take shape in discursive and material practices to support sustainability transitions?
- What is the role of nonhuman nature in experimental governance? How to instigate learning and policy alternatives in dynamic conservation? How to steer institutional change and policy process?
- What are the affective, material and discursive mechanisms in nature-conserving place-making?