Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change: Devices, Desires, and Dissent by Harriet Bulkeley, Matthew Paterson, and Johannes Stripple (review)

If climate change is one of the burning issues of our times, the debate on climate change is turning out to be one of the most polarizing. Deep skepticism of climate change has come to characterize the political discourse in several countries, and has increasingly come to mark the presidency in one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, the United States of America. Against the backdrop of this stark and inflamed political climate, Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change comes as a breath of fresh air. It provides a framework for understanding what aids or impedes the transition from a high-carbon-society to a low-carbon-society.

The book presents case studies from the United States, Europe, and Australia that ask critical questions about who makes or does not make the transition, why they do so, and what pitfalls mark these transitions. The book explores how devices, desires, and dissent interact to reproduce climate change subjectivities.

"Device" refers to the "objects, technologies, and techniques through which everyday life in high-carbon, decarbonizing, and low-carbon societies is organized" (p. 9), including techniques and technologies for reducing carbon footprints, technologies of government, and other assemblages of objects and techniques. "Desire" denotes "the affective and visceral dimensions of social life" (p. 9), encompassing hopes, fears, joys, sorrows, and anxieties, as well as their myriad expressions. "Dissent" explores "the contestation around these devices and desires," connecting "questions of culture explicitly to the clash of visions and power central to the understanding of politics" (p. 9). Dissent, as articulated in this book, includes not only active forms of resistance but also the everyday, mundane, and incremental ways in which individuals, households, and communities express their dissatisfaction with devices and desires.

This book is not as much about the spectacular and dazzling as it is about the commonplace and routine. It is about how devices like laws, technologies, and institutional frameworks collide with the desires of individuals, households, and communities, and how these entities then use everyday tools of protest and resistance—the broken law, the un-complied-with rule, the rejected proposal—to push back and dissent.

The chapters contain examples of the interplay at different levels of political structure. For example, a proposal to design houses without under-floor heaters in Denmark encountered political opposition from those who wanted those heaters; the government relented even though it resulted in houses that were heated both less efficiently and less well. A 2006 program to make new houses in the UK "zero-carbon" ran into difficulties as private organizations conflicted with less stringent government definitions and caused friction with builders and planners who had originally supported the concept.

Other themes in this book are the importance of grief, the unfolding of epistemic struggles in every day work, and the devices and desires of the firm in governing urban carbon economics. Each chapter in the book adheres to the larger framework of exploring the intricate connections between devices, dissent, and desires. In doing so, the book places culture at the center of climate change politics, on the same pedestal as economics and social science, and demonstrates that climate change is much more than loss of habitat or livelihood. Climate change is also about a threat to one's identity and a challenge to one's notion of comfort. In addition, it is about "leaving behind linear time" and exploring the dynamic interactions between decisions and consequences (p. 92, 93). The book makes a conscious effort to move beyond individual subjectivities and explore households, the firm, and the community. In doing so, it posits that any technology of government has to take into account multiple subjectivities that interact constantly and dynamically. This point is of special importance from a policymaking perspective, for it offers insight into how policies that aim to achieve low-carbon societies must look beyond...