Climate Action Research Group
Research and action in the ‘movement of movements’
Introduction
The Climate Action Research Group is investigating the politics and methods of climate action in partnership with Friends of the Earth Australia. Our key objective is to theorise and conceptualise the practice of social and political change through climate action. We aim to build a body of research looking at a number of templates for climate action, and seek to operationalise the expressive, cognitive and instrumental dimensions, asking how they relate to one another in practice. We will thereby explore the multi-dimensionality of climate action, where modes of engagement are brought into interaction and cross-fertilisation. From this we aim to create middle-range theorisations and supporting conceptual tools, to synthesise models for climate action. To achieve this we bring into play a range of disciplinary perspectives, contributing to debates in ecological politics, political sociology and critical education.
The chief investigators on this group are as follows: James Goodman and Rick Flowers are members of the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre (CCS) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Stuart Rosewarne is from Political Economy at the University of Sydney. Rebecca Pearse is employed as the project research assistant. We can be contacted at the CCS centre at the University of Technology Sydney: ccs@uts.edu.au
Activities
In 2008-2009 we undertook a project titled Modelling paradigm-shift for an age of climate change? Learning, contestation and knowledge production at the ‘camp for climate action’. The project is supported by a development grant from the UTS Research Committee and is conducted in partnership with Friends of the Earth Australia (external link). An ARC Linkage grant application for extension to this project can be found here.
Emerging from this research we have developed an idea for a major event, Key debates in the climate movement: the world we want and how to get there, held Friday 5th March 2010. The idea behind this is to debate the politics of the movement. We would organise for speakers to take opposing positions, to stimulate debate, and help strengthen the strategies and visions of the movement. So far we have drawn up four ‘key debates’, as and are constantly revising them, so any suggestions very welcome.
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