Bernhard Forchtner – författare

In Climate Obstruction: How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet, Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman and Kirsti Jylhä bring together crucial insights from environmental history, sociology, media and communication studies and psychology to help us understand why we are failing to take necessary measures to avert the unfolding climate crisis.They do so by examining the variety of ways in which meaningful climate action has been obstructed. This ranges from denial of the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change and its policy consequences, to (seemingly sincere) acknowledgement of scientific evidence while nevertheless delaying meaningful climate action. The authors also consider all those actions by which often well-meaning individuals and collectives (unintendedly) hamper climate action. In doing so, this book maps out arguments and strategies that have been used to counter environmental protection and regulation since the 1960s by, first and foremost, corporations supported by conservative actors, but also far-right ones as well as ordinary citizens.This timely and accessible book provides tools and lessons to understand, identify and call out such arguments and strategies, and points to actions and systemic and cultural changes needed to avert or at least mitigate the climate crisis.

In Climate Obstruction: How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet, Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman and Kirsti Jylhä bring together crucial insights from environmental history, sociology, media and communication studies and psychology to help us understand why we are failing to take necessary measures to avert the unfolding climate crisis.They do so by examining the variety of ways in which meaningful climate action has been obstructed. This ranges from denial of the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change and its policy consequences, to (seemingly sincere) acknowledgement of scientific evidence while nevertheless delaying meaningful climate action. The authors also consider all those actions by which often well-meaning individuals and collectives (unintendedly) hamper climate action. In doing so, this book maps out arguments and strategies that have been used to counter environmental protection and regulation since the 1960s by, first and foremost, corporations supported by conservative actors, but also far-right ones as well as ordinary citizens.This timely and accessible book provides tools and lessons to understand, identify and call out such arguments and strategies, and points to actions and systemic and cultural changes needed to avert or at least mitigate the climate crisis.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics provides a comprehensive overview of this important and dynamic area of study and research. Language is indispensable to initiating, justifying, legitimatising and coordinating action as well as negotiating conflict and, as such, is intrinsically linked to the area of politics. With 45 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers the following key areas: Overviews of the most influential theoretical approaches, including Bourdieu, Foucault, Habermas and Marx;Methodological approaches to language and politics, covering – among others – content analysis, conversation analysis, multimodal analysis and narrative analysis; Genres of political action from speech-making and policy to national anthems and billboards;Cutting-edge case studies about hot-topic socio-political phenomena, such as ageing, social class, gendered politics and populism. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics is a vibrant survey of this key field and is essential reading for advanced students and researchers studying language and politics.

Imagining Alternative Worlds explores how the far right employs fictionality as a powerful political tool in the 21st century.It does so by examining the far right’s own cultural production and commentary through a large collection of its novels, novellas, short stories, and film reviews, illustrating how the ‘alternative worlds’ articulated in such cultural products convey its ideology. More specifically, the book identifies and analyses four distinct far-right cultural imaginaries – a ‘primordial’, a ‘nostalgic’, a ‘promethean’, and a ‘nihilist’ one – that each subtly conveys different yet linked ideas about space, time, ‘race’, gender, and heroic identity. By drawing attention to the cultural heterogeneity of the contemporary far right, Imagining Alternative Worlds offers key insights into the dreams, identities, and norms such actors hope will define our future.The book will be of interest to researchers of the far right, of literary, media and communication studies, and of social and cultural history.

Imagining Alternative Worlds explores how the far right employs fictionality as a powerful political tool in the 21st century.It does so by examining the far right’s own cultural production and commentary through a large collection of its novels, novellas, short stories, and film reviews, illustrating how the ‘alternative worlds’ articulated in such cultural products convey its ideology. More specifically, the book identifies and analyses four distinct far-right cultural imaginaries – a ‘primordial’, a ‘nostalgic’, a ‘promethean’, and a ‘nihilist’ one – that each subtly conveys different yet linked ideas about space, time, ‘race’, gender, and heroic identity. By drawing attention to the cultural heterogeneity of the contemporary far right, Imagining Alternative Worlds offers key insights into the dreams, identities, and norms such actors hope will define our future.The book will be of interest to researchers of the far right, of literary, media and communication studies, and of social and cultural history.

Featuring a series of engaging conversations with key figures in the field, this accessible Handbook outlines the crucial concepts of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). Mapping the existing literature, contributors use qualitative and quantitative research to invite new engagements with CDS and to provide insight into primary debates. Chapters showcase the contributions of CDS scholars and their predictions for the future through conversations with key figures in the field. They explore the complexities of integrating empirical and theoretical approaches, as well as discussing fundamental methodological debates including those around decolonisation, argumentation, cognition, and affect. Expert authors survey the area through a series of specific case studies covering topics such as the environment, gender and sexuality, immigration, and discourse and governance. They assess the relationship between ethnography and CDS, the impact of the rise of social media, and the connections between CDS and health, wellbeing, and communication.The Handbook on Critical Discourse Studies is a vital resource for scholars and students interested in discourse, identity and power, especially but not limited to those studying communication, linguistics, politics and sociology.

This book explores far-right authoritarian and exclusionary interpretations of environmental crises that are gaining traction globally. While research on the political ecology of the far right has grown substantially over the last decade, it has largely focused on ‘Western’, especially European, actors and contexts. As far-right ideas increasingly circulate worldwide, there is an urgent need to ‘provincialize Europe’ and approach current developments from a global perspective. This volume shows how environmental governance and conservation are being mobilised by right-wing, nationalist and authoritarian forces worldwide as tools for exclusion, territorial control and the reproduction of colonial hierarchies. Drawing on case studies spanning Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe, this volume identifies salient issues and trends shaping reactionary environmental politics. The book also spotlights activists and grassroots organisations responding to these challenges, bringing diverse voices into this vital conversation. This volume will appeal to researchers of the far right, political ecology and environmental politics, as well as activists and organisers involved in environmental justice.

This book reconstructs how claims to know ‘the lessons’ from past wrongdoings are made useful in the present. It does so by conceptualising four rhetorics of learning and how each of them links memories of past wrongdoings to opposition to present and future wrongdoings.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, both the crisis of liberal democracy, as visible in, for example, the rise of far-right actors in Europe and the United States, and environmental crises, from declining biodiversity to climate change, are increasingly in the public spotlight. Whilst both areas have been analysed extensively on their own, The Far Right and the Environment: Politics, Discourse and Communication provides much needed insights into their intersection by illuminating the environmental communication of far-right party and non-party actors in Europe and the United States. Although commonly perceived as a ‘left-wing’ issue today, concerns over the natural environment by the far right have a long, ideology-driven history. Thus, it is not surprising that some members of the far right offer distinctive ecological visions of communal life, though, for example, climate-change scepticism is voiced too. Investigating this range of stances within their discourse about the natural environment provides a window into the wider politics of the far right and points to a close connection between the politics of identity and the imagination of nature. Connecting the fields of environmental communication and study of the far right, contributions to this edited volume therefore offer timely assessments of this often-overlooked dimension of far-right politics.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, both the crisis of liberal democracy, as visible in, for example, the rise of far-right actors in Europe and the United States, and environmental crises, from declining biodiversity to climate change, are increasingly in the public spotlight. Whilst both areas have been analysed extensively on their own, The Far Right and the Environment: Politics, Discourse and Communication provides much needed insights into their intersection by illuminating the environmental communication of far-right party and non-party actors in Europe and the United States. Although commonly perceived as a ‘left-wing’ issue today, concerns over the natural environment by the far right have a long, ideology-driven history. Thus, it is not surprising that some members of the far right offer distinctive ecological visions of communal life, though, for example, climate-change scepticism is voiced too. Investigating this range of stances within their discourse about the natural environment provides a window into the wider politics of the far right and points to a close connection between the politics of identity and the imagination of nature. Connecting the fields of environmental communication and study of the far right, contributions to this edited volume therefore offer timely assessments of this often-overlooked dimension of far-right politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics provides a comprehensive overview of this important and dynamic area of study and research. Language is indispensable to initiating, justifying, legitimatising and coordinating action as well as negotiating conflict and, as such, is intrinsically linked to the area of politics. With 45 chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers the following key areas: Overviews of the most influential theoretical approaches, including Bourdieu, Foucault, Habermas and Marx;Methodological approaches to language and politics, covering – among others – content analysis, conversation analysis, multimodal analysis and narrative analysis; Genres of political action from speech-making and policy to national anthems and billboards;Cutting-edge case studies about hot-topic socio-political phenomena, such as ageing, social class, gendered politics and populism.The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics is a vibrant survey of this key field and is essential reading for advanced students and researchers studying language and politics.

This volume presents ground-breaking analyses of how the far right represents natural environments and environmentalism around the globe. Images are not simply pervasive in our increasingly visual culture – they are a means of proposing worlds to viewers. Accordingly, the book approaches the visual not as something ‘extra’ or ‘illustrative’ but as a key means of producing identities and ‘doing politics’. Putting visuality centre stage and covering political parties and non-party actors in Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe and the United States, contributors demonstrate the various ways in which the far right articulates natural environments and the rampant environmental crises of the twenty-first century, providing essential insights into such multifaceted politics.