Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating the Use and Impact of Social Knowledge Claims concerning Regional Changes

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Introduction This project examines the epistemic significance of attempts to reframe climate change as a human rights concern. What is striking about the application of human rights to climate change is how it brings social knowledge into conversation with natural science. As with many environmental problems, natural scientific knowledge and experts figure prominently in the construction of climate change. By contrast, advocates of a human rights-based approach re-frame climate change as a social problem and rely on social knowledge claims to support their assertions. Intellectual Merit Through content analysis and interviews with key actors, this project analyzes this important shift in the dominant discourse and knowledge-making practices in relation to climate change. Specifically, it asks two questions. How do advocates employ social knowledge claims to demonstrate the link between human rights and climate change? What impact may the use of social knowledge claims have on the climate debate? Such research contributes to a basic framework for studying social knowledge and provides insight as to the role of social knowledge in policy debates, as well as practices that lend social knowledge credibility. This project further extends our understanding of the co-production of scientific and political orders from cases involving the natural sciences to those involving social knowledge. Potential Broader Impacts Beyond its intellectual contributions, examining how the deployment of social knowledge potentially challenges dominant natural scientific constructions of climate change may yield strategies for overcoming the political gridlock that often accompanies technocratic debate, thus facilitating more effective policy-making. Further analyzing the human rights frame's political impact, including its effect on the range of participants eligible to contribute to the climate debate, may also provide practical insights as to how to incorporate a wider range of participants, including the public, into scientific and political debates.