Journal Article: Margaret Haderer (2021, forthcoming). Does emancipation devour its children? Beyond a stalled dialectic of emancipation.

Emancipation serves not only as a midwife for emancipatory agendas, such as greater equality and sustainability, but also as their gravedigger. This diagnosis underpins Ingolfur Blühdorn’s ‘dialectic of emancipation’, which depicts a dilemma but no perspective on how to deal with it. By drawing on Foucault, this paper suggests to conceive of emancipation as a task moderns are confronted with even if a given emancipatory project has come to devour its children. Claiming autonomy from given social constellations is key to this task; key is also the judgement between legitimate and illegitimate claims to autonomy. In late modernity, the criteria for such judgement are no longer universally given. Instead of regarding the latter as entry into mere subjectivism (Blühdorn), this paper presents judgment as a key political, ‘world building’-activity (Arendt), a critical social theory may join in, by not only observing the world, but by also taking sides within it.

Chapter: Margaret Haderer (2021, forthcoming). Urban Environmental Politics meets Urban Theory: Insights from Lefebvre’s Right to the City. In: Raphaela Kogler / Alexander Hamedinger (Hg.) Interdisziplinäre Stadtforschung: Themen und Perspektiven. Transcript.

Two claims are common in current discourses in environmental politics: that cities are key sites of intervention for a shift towards greater sustainability; and that grassroots initiatives in more sustainable everyday practices (food co-ops, urban gardens, sharing initiatives, eco-housing projects) are promising signs of such a shift. Urban theory, especially theory that draws on Lefebvre’s Right to the City, challenges both claims. For one, it delivers an ‘episteme of the urban’ that focuses less – as is commonly the case – on ‘sites’ (cities) than on the planetary processes that underpin the making and re-making of given sites. Second, it challenges the common ‘doxa’ that ‘truly’ transformative grassroots interventions have to operate at a distance from dominant political languages, such as the language of rights. By brining urban theory into conversation with urban environmental politics, this contribution suggests a) that the scope and limits of urban environmental politics heavily hinges on how one conceives of the urban; and b) that the fact that grassroots initiatives in sustainability often remain ‘stuck in the niche’ may have to do with political strategy.

Journal Article: Margaret Haderer (2020). Revisiting the Right to the City, Rethinking Urban Environmentalism. From Lifeworld Environmentalism to Planetary Environmentalism. Social Sciences 9 (2), 15.

In the environmental politics literature, cities are commonly framed as key sites for a shift towards greater sustainability and urban grassroots initiatives, such as food co-ops, urban gardening initiatives, repair cafés, and libraries of things, are commonly portrayed as such a shift’s key drivers. This paper develops a critical perspective on both common portrayals. It does so by drawing on critical urban theory, especially Lefebvre’s Right to the City. First, inspired by Lefebvre’s critique of city-centrism, the paper argues that the scope and limits of urban environmentalism hinge not only on the goals pursued but also on how the urban is framed. Urban environmentalism may mean mere lifeworld environmentalism: the greening of cities as if there were (relatively) bounded sites. Yet urban environmentalism may also mean planetary environmentalism: the mapping, problematization, and transformation of unsustainable urbanization processes that underpin given sites and lifeworlds, but also operate at beyond the latter—at a societal and planetary scale. Second, inspired by Lefebvre’s reformulation of right claims as a transformative political tool, this paper takes issue with environmental practices and discourses that present society’s niches, cracks, and margins as a key fermenting ground for radical environmental change. Since not only institutional but also bottom-up pursuits of more sustainable nature-society relations often remain stuck in mere lifeworld reform, this paper foregrounds heterodox right claims as an underexplored modus operandi in active pursuits of and discourses on radical environmental change. Heterodox right claims mean the active appropriation of dominant political languages, such as the language of right, while seeking to change the latter’s grammar. What this may mean in the realm of environmental politics, will be spelled out at hand of the example of claims to a right to public transport.

Journal Article: Margaret Haderer (2020). Das westdeutsche Wohnungswunder. Ordoliberaler Sonderweg und sozialräumliche Differenz. INDES. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft (2).

»Man kann der schlichten Meinung sein, dass die Dinge sich eben entwickeln, wie sie sich halt entwickeln müssen, und dass, wenn das Schicksal es eben will, [sich das Land] mit einem Pelz von Kleinhaus-Siedlungen gänzlich überziehen muss.« Dieser Meinung bin ich nicht, genauso wie die Autoren dieses Zitats, darunter Lucius Burckhardt und Max Frisch.[1] Wohnen und damit verbundene Bebauungs- und Siedlungsformen, so der Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrages, sind nicht naturwüchsig, sondern immer Ausdruck von bestimmten gesellschaftlichen Normen, Wertvorstellungen und Formen des Regierens. Diese sichtbar zu machen und gegebenenfalls zu politisieren, ist eine zentrale Aufgabe der kritischen Stadtforschung und ein zentrales Anliegen politischer Akteure, wie zum Beispiel der »Recht auf Stadt«-Bewegungen.

In den letzten Jahren war viel von der Neoliberalisierung des Wohnens die Rede. Leistbarer Wohnraum wird vor allem in deutschen Metropolen zusehends zur Mangelware. Lockerungen des Mieterschutzes, die Öffnung des Wohnungsmarktes für ausländische Investoren, die Privatisierung großer Teile des sozialen Wohnungsbaus, die Schwächung des gemeinnützigen Bausektors und die Airbnb-isierung ganzer Stadtviertel haben vielerorts zu einer drastischen Verknappung von leistbarem Wohnraum sowie zu sozial-räumlichen Verdrängungs- und Polarisierungsprozessen – Stichwort: Gentrifizierung – geführt.[2] In Städten wie Berlin, Hamburg oder München ist die Wohnungsfrage längst als eine der dringlichsten sozialen Fragen zurückgekehrt.

Chapter: Ingolfur Blühdorn & Dannemann, Hauke (2019). Der Post-ökologische Verteidigungskonsens. Nachhaltigkeitsforschung im Verdacht der Komplizenschaft. In: Gegenwart und Zukunft sozial-ökologischer Transformation. In: Bohn, Carolin, Fuchs, Doris, Kerkhoff, Antonius & Müller, Christian (Hg.) Gegenwart und Zukunft sozial-ökologischer Transformation. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 113-134.

Im Licht des Werte-, Kultur- und Gesellschaftswandels, der sich in der Verfestigung der Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit, der auffälligen Erschöpfung sozialdemokratischer Parteien und in der rechtspopulistischen Revolte artikuliert, kommt einer reflexiv-kritischen Sozialwissenschaft die Aufgabe zu, für ein eingehendes Verständnis der Verschiebungen bzw. Parameter zu sorgen, nach deren Maßgabe sich die Umwelt-, Klima- und Nachhaltigkeitsdebatte derzeit neu konfiguriert. In diesem Sinne wird hier zunächst ausgeführt, inwiefern von einer möglichen "Komplizenschaft" zwischen sozialwissenschaftlicher Nachhaltigkeitsforschung und der Politik der Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit gesprochen werden kann und was mit dem Begriff "post-ökologischer Verteidigungskonsens" gemeint ist. Anschließend wird anhand von drei gängigen Argumentationsfiguren ausgeführt, wie wesentliche Teile der Transformationsliteratur nicht nur zur Produktion und Verfestigung von Narrativen beitragen, die mit Blick auf einen tiefgreifenden sozial-ökologischen Strukturwandel vermutlich nicht zielführend sind, sondern sich auch selbst Denkverbote auferlegen, die ein differenziertes Verständnis der Transformationshindernisse blockieren und der Analyse der Transformationen, die in modernen Demokratien tatsächlich zu beobachten sind, im Wege stehen.

Journal Article (Open Access) Ingolfur Blühdorn & Michael Deflorian (2019). The Collaborative Management of Sustained Unsustainability: On the Performance of Participatory Forms of Environmental Governance, Sustainability 11 (4), 1189.

In modern democratic consumer societies, decentralized, participative, and consensus-oriented forms of multi-stakeholder governance are supplementing, and often replacing, conventional forms of state-centered environmental government. The engagement in all phases of the policy process of diverse social actors has become a hallmark of environmental good governance. This does not mean to say, however, that these modes of policy-making have proved particularly successful in resolving the widely debated multiple sustainability crisis. In fact, they have been found wanting in terms of their ability to respond to democratic needs and their capacity to resolve environmental problems. So why have these participatory forms of environmental governance become so prominent? What exactly is their appeal? What do they deliver? Exploring these questions from the perspective of eco-political and sociological theory, this article suggests that these forms of environmental governance represent a performative kind of eco-politics that helps liberal consumer societies to manage their inability and unwillingness to achieve the socio-ecological transformation that scientists and environmental activists say is urgently required. This reading of the prevailing policy approaches as the collaborative management of sustained unsustainability adds an important dimension to the understanding of environmental governance and contemporary eco-politics more generally.