Cover not available
Article published In:
Environmental Argumentation
Edited by Marcin Lewiński and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün
[Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1] 2019
► pp. 12–39

Environmental manifestoes

Argumentative strategies in the Ecomodernist Manifesto

| ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
| ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
| ArgLab, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

In this paper, we analyze the argumentative strategies deployed in the Ecomodernist Manifesto, published in 2015 by a group of leading environmental thinkers. We draw on pragma-dialectics and Perelman’s rhetoric to characterize manifesto as a genre of practical argumentation. Our goal is to explore the relation of manifesto as a discursive genre to the argumentative structures and techniques used in the Ecomodernist Manifesto. We therefore take into scrutiny the elements of practical argumentation employed in the manifesto and describe the polylogical strategies of dissociation in negotiating the ecological value of nature and the modernist value of progress.

Keywords: argumentative genre, argument schemes, arguments from values, dissociation, ecomodernism, environmental values, environmental rhetoric, hierarchies of values, polylogue
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Manifesto as an argumentative genre
  • 3.The context of environmental debates: From a false dichotomy to a polylogue
  • 4.Case study: An Ecomodernist Manifesto
    • 4.1The Ecomodernist Manifesto
    • 4.2The decoupling argument
    • 4.3Practical argumentation
      • 4.3.1Circumstances
      • 4.3.2Goals and means
      • 4.3.3Values
      • 4.3.4The complex practical argument
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.18036.rod
References
Aakhus, Mark and Marcin Lewiński
2017 “Advancing polylogical analysis of large-scale argumentation: Disagreement management in the fracking controversy.” Argumentation, 31(1): 179–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aristotle
2007 On Rhetoric: A theory of Civic Discourse (2nd ed., transl. by George A. Kennedy). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich
1994 “The reinvention of politics: Towards a theory of reflexive modernization.” In Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, ed. by U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash, 1–55. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Beckert, Cristina and Maria José Varandas
2004 Éticas e Políticas Ambientais. Lisboa: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa.Google Scholar
Bitzer, Lloyd F.
1968 “The rhetorical situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1(1): 1–14.Google Scholar
Blühdorn, Ingolfur
2001 “Reflexivity and self-referentiality: On the normative foundations of ecological communication.” In Language Meaning Social Construction: Interdisciplinary Studies ed. by Grant, C. and D. McLaughlin, 181–201. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carson, Rachel
1994 Silent Spring. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc. (Original work published 1962).Google Scholar
Crist, Eileen
2015 “The Reaches of Freedom: A Response to An Ecomodernist Manifesto .” Environmental Humanities, 7(1): 245–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Trine and Kjersti Fløttum
2014 “A linguistic framework for studying voices and positions in the climate debate.” Text & Talk, 34(4): 401–420. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dryzek, John S.
2013 The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Erhard, Nancie
2007 Moral Habitat: Ethos and Agency for the Sake of Earth. NY: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Van Eemeren, Frans H.
2010 Strategic Manoeuvring in Argumentative Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Isabela and Norman Fairclough
2012 Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fløttum, Kjersti
(ed.) 2017 The Role of Language in the Climate Change Debate. New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony
1994 “Living in a Post-traditional Society.” In Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, ed. by U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash, 56–109. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jean
2019 “Sophistical refutations in the climate change debates.” Journal of Argumentation in Context, 8(1): 40–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gorke, Martin
2003 The Death of Our Planet’s Species: A Challenge to Ecology and Ethics, transl. by Patricia Nevers. Washington, Covelo, London: Island Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen
1989 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (transl. by T. Burger). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1962).Google Scholar
Hajer, Maarten A.
1995 The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Clive
2015 “The theodicy of the ‘Good Anthropocene’.” Environmental Humanities, 7(1): 233–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Julian
2012 “Manifesto form: The medium and the message.” Cine Qua Non, Bilingual Arts Magazine, 51: 51–71. [URL]. Last accessed 27 April 2018.
Harré, Rom, Jens Brockmeier and Peter Mühlhäusler
1999 Greenspeak: A Study of Environmental Discourse. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Harrison, Sarah
2013 “Decoding Manifestos and Other Political Texts: The Case of Extreme-Right Ideology.” In Political Science Research Methods in Action, ed. by Bruter, M. and M. Lodge, 47–63. London: Research Methods Series, Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heise, Ursula K.
2008 Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hjartarson, Benedikt
2007 “Myths of Rupture: The Manifesto and the Concept of Avant-Garde.” In Modernism, ed. by Eysteinsson, Astradur and Vivian Liska, vol. I1: 173–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jamison, Andrew
2002 “Science Technology and the Quest for Sustainable Development.” In Technology Studies and Sustainable Development, ed. by A. Jamison and H. Rohracher, 17–40. Munich: Profil Verlag.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno
2015 “Fifty Shades of Green”. Environmental Humanities, 7(1): 219–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewiński, Marcin
2014 “Argumentative polylogues: Beyond dialectical understanding of fallacies.” Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, 36(1): 193–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Shale gas debate in Europe: Pro-and-con dialectics and argumentative polylogues.” Discourse & Communication, 10(6): 553–575. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Practical argumentation as reasoned advocacy.” Informal Logic, 37(2): 85–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 “Practical argumentation in the making: Discursive construction of reasons for action.” In Argumentation and Language. Linguistic, cognitive and discursive explorations, ed. by Oswald, Steve, Thierry Herman and Jérôme Jacquin, 219–241. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewiński, Marcin and Mark Aakhus
2014 “Argumentative polylogues in a dialectical framework: A methodological inquiry.” Argumentation, 28(2): 161–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewiński, Marcin and Dima Mohammed
2019 “The 2015 Paris Climate Conference: Arguing for the fragile consensus in global multilateral diplomacy.” Journal of Argumentation in Context, 8(1): 65–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lyon, Janet
1999 Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Laar, Jan Albert and Erik C. W. Krabbe
2019 Criticism and justification of negotiated compromises: The 2015 Paris agreement in Dutch parliament. Journal of Argumentation in Context, 8(1): 91–111. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, James
2015 “The Rhetoric of the Manifesto.” In The Cambridge Companion to The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Carver, Terrell and James Farr, 50–66. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels
1988 Communist Manifesto. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. (Original work published 1848).Google Scholar
Mellos, Koula
1988 Perspectives on Ecology. London: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyer, John M.
1997 “Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the boundaries of politics in American thought.” Polity 30(2): 267–284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mol, Arthur P. J. and Gert Spaargaren
2000 “Ecological modernisation theory in debate: A review.” Environmental Politics 9(1): 17–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musi, Elena and Mark Aakhus
2019 “Framing fracking: Semantic frames as meta-argumentative indicators for knowledge-driven argument mining of controversies.” Journal of Argumentation in Context, 8(1): 112–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nixon, Rob
2011 Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
OECD
2002 Indicators to Measure Decoupling of Environmental Pressure from Economic Growth, Executive Summary. [URL]. Last accessed on April 2018, 27.
Paliewicz, Nicholas S. and George F. McHendry Jr.
2017 “When good arguments do not work: post-dialectics, argument assemblages, and the networks of climate skepticism.” Argumentation and Advocacy, 53(4): 287–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pearce, Kimber Charles
1999 “The radical feminist manifesto as generic appropriation: Gender, genre, and second wave resistance.” Southern Communication Journal 64(4): 307–315. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pearce, Warren, Brian Brown, Brigitte Nerlich and Nelya Koteyko
2015 “Communicating climate change: Conduits, content, and consensus.” WIREs Climate Change 61: 613–626. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
1969 The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation, transl. by J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press (original work published 1958).Google Scholar
Puchner, Martin
2006 Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Van Rees, M. Agnes
2009 Dissociation in Argumentative Discussions. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shellenberger, Michael and Ted Nordhaus
2004 The Death of Environmentalism, Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World. [URL]. Last access 27 April 2018.
Schiappa, Edward
2003 Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning. Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
UNEP
2011 Decoupling natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic growth, A Report of the Working Group on Decoupling to the International Resource Panel. [URL]. Last access 27 April 2018.
Üzelgün, Mehmet Ali and Paula Castro
2016 “Dissociating between ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’: Recognizing and interpreting positions in Climate Change controversies.” In Argumentation and Reasoned Action: Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Argumentation, Lisbon 2015, ed. by Dima Mohammed and Marcin Lewiński, vol. II1, 985–997. London: College Publications.Google Scholar
Üzelgün, Mehmet Ali, Marcin Lewiński and Paula Castro
2016 „Favorite battlegrounds of climate action: Arguing about scientific consensus, representing science-society relations.” Science Communication, 38(6): 699–723. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Üzelgün, Mehmet Ali, Dima Mohammed, Marcin Lewiński and Paula Castro
2015 “Managing disagreement through yes, but… constructions: An argumentative analysis.” Discourse Studies, 17(4): 467–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Varandas, Maria José
2004 “Introdução.” In Éticas e Políticas Ambientais, ed. by Beckert, Cristina and Maria José Varandas, Lisboa: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa.Google Scholar
WCED
1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. [URL]. Last accessed 27 April 2018.
Weeks, Kathi
2013 “The Critical Manifesto: Marx and Engels, Haraway, and Utopian Politics.” Utopian Studies, 24(2): 216–231.Google Scholar
White, Lynn
1967 “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science New Series, 1551(3767) (Mar. 10): 1203–1207.Google Scholar
Yang, Tongjin
2006 Towards an Egalitarian Global Environmental Ethics. UNESCO.Google Scholar
Yanoshevsky, Galia
2009 “Three Decades of Writing on Manifesto: The Making of a Genre.” Poetics Today, 30(2): 267–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zarefsky, David
2006 “Strategic Maneuvering through Persuasive Definitions: Implications for Dialectic and Rhetoric.” Argumentation 20(4): 399–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Fairclough, Isabela
2019. Deontic power and institutional contexts. Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 ► pp. 136 ff. DOI logo
Goodwin, Jean
2019. Chapter 9. Radically reframing the climate debate. In Argumentation in Actual Practice [Argumentation in Context, 17], ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
Goodwin, Jean
2019. Sophistical refutations in the climate change debates. Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 ► pp. 40 ff. DOI logo
Gâță, Anca
2021. Characteristics of a detached argumentative style in public policy analysis. Journal of Argumentation in Context 10:1 ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Laar, Jan Albert van & Erik C. W. Krabbe
2019. Criticism and justification of negotiated compromises. Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Lewiński, Marcin & Mehmet Ali Üzelgün
2019. Environmental argumentation. Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Lewiński, Marcin & Dima Mohammed
2019. The 2015 Paris Climate Conference. Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 ► pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Wolrath Söderberg, Maria & Nina Wormbs
2022. Internal Deliberation Defending Climate-Harmful Behavior. Argumentation 36:2 ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
Üzelgün, Mehmet Ali & João Rui Pereira
2020. Beyond the co-production of technology and society: The discursive treatment of technology with regard to near-term and long-term environmental goals. Technology in Society 61 ► pp. 101244 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.