Chris Riedy, Discourse coalitions for sustainability transformations: common ground and conflict beyond neoliberalism, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Vol. 45, 2020, p. 100-112.

A neoliberal capitalist discourse dominates global affairs, with devastating effects for ecological integrity and social justice. Diverse alternative discourses challenge its dominance. This paper reviews alternative discourses to surface discursive common ground and conflicts, arguing that this is an important step towards the formation of discourse coalitions that could rival the political power of neoliberal capitalism. There is common ground in how alternative discourses see the world (systems and networks), their normative relationship with nature (sustainable, regenerative or planetcentric) and with each other (cooperative and entangled), their goals (wellbeing, justice and plurality) and some of the strategies for transformation (participatory governance, a new economic system, prioritizing different human values and participatory knowledge practices). There are also important conflicts that could offer productive sites for agonistic dialogue between plural discourses. These common and conflicting memes may be seeds of the discursive transformation that is essential to support flourishing, sustainable futures.

This is the latest paper in the virtual special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST) on the state of knowledge on social transformations to sustainability.

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.09.014