- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
This week, I have worked to set up my interviews and hope to complete them within the next week. I have two potential respondents who have expressed interest in interviewing, and we are working on setting up times. I have also reached out to three other potential respondents to see if they would be interested and offered to set up a time to meet. I have also worked on finalizing my interview protocol so that I am prepared for interviews at the start of next week. Hopefully that means that the interviews will be completed early next week so that I can start my analysis, then move to writing my script and recording the podcast.
The sources that I was working with this week provide very different but overarching frameworks that will help to structure my own analysis. The first helps to supplement the claim that neoliberalism and free market capitalism are detrimental to the environment and that they make sustainability and climate protection nearly impossible. This is a more specific approach that also utilizes the concept of social welfare capitalism as an alternative. The other broad framework from the other article approaches an entirely different part of the project, but critiques the actual environmental work that activists do. Both of these can be incorporated with the rest of the sources I have been working with in the structure of my analytical framework.
Cooley, Dennis R. 2009. “Understanding Social Welfare Capitalism, Private Property, and the Government’s Duty to Create a Sustainable Environment.” Journal of Business Ethics: JBE; Dordrecht 89(3):351–69.
This article argues that governments have an obligation to create sustainable cities, even if that goes against property rights as an absolute. It argues that sustainability cannot be achieved with the use of a completely free market system, and that sacrifices must be made in order to sustain the environment. The author ultimately argues for a balance of democracy, individual rights, and individual and community flourishing. This article is helpful in supporting the argument that free market capitalism and climate justice are in conflict with one another, and it provides an alternative vision for a social and economic structure that could support environment sustainability. It also uses the framework of social welfare capitalism, which is discussed by some of the authors we have read for this course, meaning that I could connect it to their arguments in providing suggestions for what kinds of systems could align with sustainability and climate justice.
Brockington, Dan. 2008. “Powerful Environmentalisms: Conservation, Celebrity and Capitalism.” Media, Culture & Society 30(4):551–68.
This author argues that there are multiple kinds of environmentalisms which are more or less attached to current social and economic structures. He also argues that in our current society, individuals become involved in protecting environments that they actually come into very little contact with, which is a result of the alienations of capitalism. This perspective is useful in a few ways. First, it directly connects the evolutions of various forms of environmentalism to capitalism, to show capitalism’s impact on environmental activism. Second, it provides a framework from which to analyze or critique my respondents’ perspectives on their own activism. Rather than analyzing corporations or capitalism as a whole, this article seeks to analyze those involved in environmentalism, which I could use to develop another dimension of my analysis.
Comments:
I can see how these two sources speak to the two aspects of your research: one aspect is to understand how neoliberal policies have affected environment and the second aspect is to understand how neoliberalism as a discourse/ideology shapes mainstream environmentalism ( if I understood your project correctly, of course).
I liked your sources and your research plan. You are very much on the right track with your research.