Wickedness Deciphered: Mediated Action and the Democratization of Agency
Sociocultural analysis and Material Engagement Theory (MET) can help us break wicked problems into more complete, but also more tightly inter-enmeshed and complex assemblages. Humans are never geographically or temporally ambiguous—there is never just a human. Humans always acquire and are acquired...
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| Published in: | International journal of sustainability policy and practice 2022, Vol.18 (2), p.1-12 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Sociocultural analysis and Material Engagement Theory (MET) can help us break wicked problems into more complete, but also more tightly inter-enmeshed and complex assemblages. Humans are never geographically or temporally ambiguous—there is never just a human. Humans always acquire and are acquired by cultural tool sets including perceptual, conceptual, emotional, as well as material tools co-constituting templates for putting a world into a particular practice while simultaneously being put into a particular kind of person by that world. This paper applies the theoretical frameworks of mediated action and MET to the wicked problem example of climate change denial with a focus on two opposing cultural tools: the world as container of resources versus the world as parent. These tools are much more than simple metaphors for understanding the world. They become an embodied ontological situatedness within dynamically fluid world making practices. Some practical speculations for more general wicked problem research are also suggested. |
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| ISSN: | 2325-1166 2325-1182 |