Invitation

Prof. Jeffrey Broadbent

from the Department of Sociology/Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota - held at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam

will give a talk on “Global Field of Climate Change Discourse: Dimensions of Difference”.

Prof. Broadbent states that “only unstinting international cooperation will be able to level off and reduce global atmospheric concentrations of GHG.  Since 1988, UN activities have promulgated three types of incentives to help countries attain such cooperation: scientific knowledge (IPCC), normative principles (UNFCCC) and reduction targets for industrialized countries (Kyoto Protocol).  Nonetheless, these incentives have proven unable to stop the rapid rise of global emissions.  Clearly, effective agreements will require a much deeper understanding of the diverse factors that drive interpretation (discourse framing) and policy formation in each national case.“
In his lecture, Jeffrey Broadbent will be discussing the findings of the COMPON (COMparing climate change POlicy Networks) project, in which media framing of climate change just before the game-changing 2009 Copenhagen COP 15 was coded and analyzed.
Jeff Broadbent is professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota with a specialization in environmental politics. He received the PhD (Harvard University, 1982) for his thesis on contentious environmental politics between movements and the state in Japan, based on three years of field research.  This work was published as Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest (Cambridge, 1998) and received two academic awards.  He then led the Japan case in a cross-national comparative project on labor politics using the policy network survey instrument, published as Comparing Policy Networks: Labor Politics in the US, Germany and Japan (Cambridge U Press, 1996).  Using the policy network survey approach, Broadbent founded the international Compon (COMparing climate change POlicy Networks) project to explain variation in GHG/CO2 emissions trajectories across countries, now with teams in 25 societies.  Project information is available at: www.compon.org.  He has also continued work on social movements, most recently publishing an edited collection, East Asian Social Movements: Power, Conflict and Change in a Dynamic Region (Springer, 2011). 

Please let us know if you would like to attend via Jana.Fasheh@iass-potsdam.de.