TILT seminar: Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen

Time:  12:00 -13:30 CET

Cities are crucially but problematically positioned to take on the climate crisis. Although local governance seems an appropriate scale to implement adaptation and mitigation measures, numerous barriers to carrying out this task effectively have been diagnosed. Understanding the provenance of these barriers requires sociological engagement with the practices in which climate actions are taken in local governance. Drawing on interviews with climate specialists in Finnish municipalities, we study how they experience and negotiate the complexities of climate work. Using Henri Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis, we find that municipalities treat climate issues as auxiliary concerns and subsume them as separate, precarious projects. The various and conflicting rhythms that constitute the relations of organisational practices leave climate and environmental experts in a contentious state. They must not only endure constant side-lining by the core functions of their organisations but also device strategies to keep climate issues on the agenda. We suggest that barriers to adaptation and mitigation, amply identified in previous research, resist dissolving as they are not mere dysfunctions of optimal governance but intrinsic to an unperturbed functioning of municipalities.

Speaker: Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University, Finland. His present work centres on two different topic areas, one of which is insurance and the management of uncertainty, and the other the role of waste in the contemporary way of life. In addition, Lehtonen has written extensively on social theory. His recent publications include papers in the journals Political Theory, Cultural Studies, Distinktion, Theory, Culture & Society, Journal of Cultural Economy and Economy and Society.

Host:  Gert Meyers

* For more information regarding this event please contact: Heidi van Veen