Anke Fischer: "Discourses of freedom and justice: The communicative (un)making of the Swedish low carbon transition"

Abstract

In this talk, I trace the Swedish discourse on decarbonisation and its developments between 2019 and 2025, and show how the ‘transition’ – over time narrowing its focus from broader sustainability concerns to climate and energy – emerges from the interplay between discursive structure and agency. In particular, I examine the role of two value-based principles, justice and freedom, in the discursive struggles over this transition and its reflection in Swedish policy making. Paradoxically, these values are employed as part of strategic discursive practices that work to stop, rather than to promote and shape, societal change. This raises questions about the role of such value-based arguments and their discursive uses in political debate, including also on the role of researchers in reproducing and strengthening such values.

Anke Fischer is Professor of Environmental Communication at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. Her work approaches communication as the joint construction of meaning through conceptual lenses such as discourse, social representations and values, and explores their intersections with legitimacy, resistance and participation and implications for the governance of conflict and societal transformation. Her most recent research critically examines the dynamics of energy and climate political debates in Sweden, notably on the ‘green transition’. From 2019-2023, she co-led the research programme Mistra Environmental Communication.