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Contested Imaginaries And The Cultural Political Economy Of Climate Change, David L. Levy, Andre Spicer

David L. Levy

This article analyses the evolving cultural political economy of climate change by developing the concept of ‘climate imaginaries’. These are shared socio-semiotic systems that structure a field around a set of shared understandings of the climate. Climate imaginaries imply a particular mode of organizing production and consumption, and a prioritization of environmental and cultural values. We use this concept to examine the struggle among NGOs, business and state agencies over four core climate imaginaries. These are ‘fossil fuels forever’, ‘climate apocalypse’, ‘technomarket’ and ‘sustainable lifestyles’. These imaginaries play a key role in contentions over responses to climate change, and we …