Annotated Resources
Chapter in Brief
Clark Miller examines the implications of the case studies for global environmental governance. While taking into account the culturally grounded ways in which people come to hold environmental values, he proposes three conceptual lenses through which to view environmental values related to governance: framing, styles of reasoning, and trust. Framing is the process "by which communities arrive at shared conceptual frameworks"(Page 380). Styles of reasoning are the ways in which people connect their observations about the world and framing of events to analytic methods and approaches. And trust in institutions is the crucial element in establishing standards, or “shared styles of reasoning,” that can achieve public legitimacy. After examining contrasting examples of framing and styles of reasoning in our case studies, Miller concludes with a lesson for global governance: we need to build institutions of global environmental governance that are able to acknowledge and legitimize the expression of plurality in the world system, especially with regard to how individuals and communities understand their place in nature and society.
Ian Hacking, "'Style' for Historians and Philosophers," in I. Hacking, Historical Ontology. Cambridge: Harvard, 2002.
In this essay, Hacking introduces the concept of styles of reasoning in discussing variations of methods of inquiry, forms of evidence, objects of study, etc., that shape how distinct social groups analyze and make sense of the world around them.
Sheila Jasanoff, "Harmonization—The Politics of Reasoning Together," in The Politics of Chemical Risk. ed. Roland Bal and Willem Halfmann. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998.
In this article, Jasanoff argues for a new vision and approach to international harmonization of environmental standards, focused on the need to understand in detail variations in the styles of reasoning cultures use to assess and manage risk.
Steve Rayner and Elizabeth Malone, eds., Human Choice and Climate Change. Columbus, OH: Battelle, 1998.
This volume is an outstanding synthesis of the social science literature pertaining to environmental science and policy.
Clark A. Miller, "The Dynamics of Framing Environmental Values and Policy: Four Models of Societal Processes," Environmental Values Vol. 9 (2000): 211-233.
This article analyzes the social processes by which communities develop, test, and winnow divergent framings of environmental values and risks.
Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth Long Martello, Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.
This volume of essays explores the intersections of local and global in environmental governance, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which environmental localization and especially the phenomenon of local knowledge has emerged as a counter-narrative to the politics of environmental globalization.