A core conceptual intervention my academic and public-facing work seeks to make concerns the role of populism in environmental movements. Populism is, briefly, the performative political genre which seeks to diagnose various social and environmental ills through the hold that an "elite" has on power or democracy, rather than "the people" who seek to reclaim it. In addition to my book, Pipeline Populism, the following articles address debates concerning the possibilities and limits of the populist genre for environmental and climate politics.
2020. The People's Climate March: Environmental populism as political genre. Political Geography (83) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629820303449
Contemporary political ecological research on populism has demonstrated how authoritarian and strongarm tactics come to be hitched to reductive symbolic representations of “the people,” often with disastrous environmental impacts. Advocates of “left-populism” argue that such research can give the erroneous impression that “populism” and “authoritarianism” are essentially synonymous. Skeptical of formalist arguments, Gramscians argue that populism, as a quite variegated and fundamentally spatial phenomenon, must be viewed historically, in situ. But all three arguments share a quick assessment of populism, without always attending to its embedded multiplicity. Bringing together insights from Stuart Hall and Lauren Berlant, this article seeks to expand geographical understandings of the dynamic forms and styles of environmental politics by proposing thinking of populism as a political genre. This theoretical schema helps to cut through formalist versus historicist debates while directing attention to the affective scenes through which populism is performed. In order to demonstrate the utility of examining populism's genre and scenes, I examine political essays written surrounding the 2014 People’s Climate March. Essays debated activist expectations concerning political subjectivity, tactics, scales of action, signifiers, and aesthetics for best confronting global inequality and the climate crisis alike. Through contesting the meaning of “the people” and “populism,” divergent leftist political interpretations both repeated and tweaked generic populist forms. By examining the performative construction and contestation of “the people” through languages and spaces of climate action, I advocate a humble yet still critical political ecological approach to understanding contemporary populism.
2021. Populism and the rise of the far right: Two different problems for political ecology. Political Geography Virtual Forum https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629821001918
2021. Populism and the Environment lecture. ECPS Brussels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkqXTC5htKI
2020. Climate Populism and its Limits Progressive International https://progressive.international/blueprint/b0e56b61-d2b9-4f97-8e2e-a2e9f3edef50-kai-bosworth-climate-populism-its-limits/en
2020. The People's Climate March: Environmental populism as political genre. Political Geography (83) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629820303449
Contemporary political ecological research on populism has demonstrated how authoritarian and strongarm tactics come to be hitched to reductive symbolic representations of “the people,” often with disastrous environmental impacts. Advocates of “left-populism” argue that such research can give the erroneous impression that “populism” and “authoritarianism” are essentially synonymous. Skeptical of formalist arguments, Gramscians argue that populism, as a quite variegated and fundamentally spatial phenomenon, must be viewed historically, in situ. But all three arguments share a quick assessment of populism, without always attending to its embedded multiplicity. Bringing together insights from Stuart Hall and Lauren Berlant, this article seeks to expand geographical understandings of the dynamic forms and styles of environmental politics by proposing thinking of populism as a political genre. This theoretical schema helps to cut through formalist versus historicist debates while directing attention to the affective scenes through which populism is performed. In order to demonstrate the utility of examining populism's genre and scenes, I examine political essays written surrounding the 2014 People’s Climate March. Essays debated activist expectations concerning political subjectivity, tactics, scales of action, signifiers, and aesthetics for best confronting global inequality and the climate crisis alike. Through contesting the meaning of “the people” and “populism,” divergent leftist political interpretations both repeated and tweaked generic populist forms. By examining the performative construction and contestation of “the people” through languages and spaces of climate action, I advocate a humble yet still critical political ecological approach to understanding contemporary populism.
2021. Populism and the rise of the far right: Two different problems for political ecology. Political Geography Virtual Forum https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629821001918
2021. Populism and the Environment lecture. ECPS Brussels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkqXTC5htKI
2020. Climate Populism and its Limits Progressive International https://progressive.international/blueprint/b0e56b61-d2b9-4f97-8e2e-a2e9f3edef50-kai-bosworth-climate-populism-its-limits/en