TY - JOUR
T1 - Strategic Gestures in Bill McKibben's Climate Change Rhetoric
AU - Bsumek, Peter K.
AU - Schwarze, Steve
AU - Peeples, Jennifer
AU - Schneider, Jen
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Bsumek, Schwarze, Peeples and Schneider.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Although Bill McKibben is widely recognized as one of the leading strategists of the US climate change movement, several observers identify significant limitations to his approach to climate advocacy and politics. These criticisms are based on his reliance upon "symbolic gestures,"such as campaigns to promote fossil fuel divestment and stop fossil fuel infrastructure construction. In this essay we reconsider McKibben's work, drawing specifically on his speeches given in the US from 2013 to 2016 in support of the fossil fuel divestment campaign and campaigns attempting to block the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, in order to show how McKibben's strategic orientation is grounded in a politics of gesture. His speeches provide a model for how to reconceive gestures and assemble them for political ends, and expand a sometimes narrow focus on policy mechanisms. Beyond the case of McKibben our analysis contributes the concept of strategic gestures to identify and theorize social movement interventions that have significant symbolic and material consequences.
AB - Although Bill McKibben is widely recognized as one of the leading strategists of the US climate change movement, several observers identify significant limitations to his approach to climate advocacy and politics. These criticisms are based on his reliance upon "symbolic gestures,"such as campaigns to promote fossil fuel divestment and stop fossil fuel infrastructure construction. In this essay we reconsider McKibben's work, drawing specifically on his speeches given in the US from 2013 to 2016 in support of the fossil fuel divestment campaign and campaigns attempting to block the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, in order to show how McKibben's strategic orientation is grounded in a politics of gesture. His speeches provide a model for how to reconceive gestures and assemble them for political ends, and expand a sometimes narrow focus on policy mechanisms. Beyond the case of McKibben our analysis contributes the concept of strategic gestures to identify and theorize social movement interventions that have significant symbolic and material consequences.
KW - articulation
KW - climate change
KW - rhetoric of inevitability
KW - social movements
KW - strategic gestures
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85118123594&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fcomm.2019.00040
DO - 10.3389/fcomm.2019.00040
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85118123594
VL - 4
JO - Frontiers in Communication
JF - Frontiers in Communication
M1 - 00040
ER -