- Alison E. Vogelaar is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Franklin University Switzerland. Vogelaar received a Ph.D. in Communication from the Universit... moreAlison E. Vogelaar is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Franklin University Switzerland. Vogelaar received a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Colorado-Boulder where she also completed a certification program in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. She teaches courses that alternately explore the relationship between media/communication and power. She also teaches a course cross-listed in the Environmental Studies program called Environmental Discourses as well as an Academic Travel course, Symbolizing Scottish Folk that takes students to Scotland to explore representations of nation and cultural identity in the context of tourism, nation branding and cultural revivalism. Her research interests include environmental discourses, advocacy and activism, maker movements/spaces, and sustainability in higher education. Her recent publications include two pieces that alternately explore the functions of place in the OWS movement as well as an article that examines the ecological 'controversy' and discourses surrounding 'invasive species'. She recently published two edited volumes: one that surveys the diverse genres and approaches to ‘environmental collapse’ in popular, political and academic texts (The Discourses of Environmental Collapse) and another that explores the changing representations of nature and the city in the context of contemporary global transformations (Changing Representations of Nature and the City).edit
The uniquely global phenomenon of climate change requires a radical rethinking of dominant categories of social belonging and responsibility. One barrier facing policy-makers, activists, and scientists alike in their attempts to combat... more
The uniquely global phenomenon of climate change requires a radical rethinking of dominant categories of social belonging and responsibility. One barrier facing policy-makers, activists, and scientists alike in their attempts to combat climate change is the lack of a coherent and persuasive discourse of global identification that connects geographically, culturally, and economically diverse communities. This essay explores one successful attempt at creating climate change awareness, Al Gore's 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, in terms of its rhetorical appeals to global forms of identification, noting specifically how the film articulates common places wherein the audience might locate more global forms of identity and community. RESUMEN: el fenómeno global el cambio climático requiere una reconceptualización radical de las categorías dominantes de adscripción social y responsabilidad. Uno de los obstáculos con los que se encuentran los legisladores, activistas y científicos en su empeño por combatir el cambio climático consiste en la ausencia de un dis-curso persuasivo y coherente de identificación global, capaz e apelar a comunidades geográfica, cultural y económicamente diversas. Este artículo explora el documental Una verdad incómoda (2006), una de las manifestaciones exitosas en promover la concienciación sobre el cambio climático, en especial las figuras retóricas encami-nadas a conseguir modelos globales de identificación, así como la articulación de tropos que permitan al público conectar con construcciones globales e identidad y comunidad. Palabras clave: identificación y adscripción, globalización, retórica visual, cambio climático.
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Place is fundamental to protest movements who in turn manipulate and are manipulated by the sites in which they protest. Given its socio-political importance, place increasingly functions as a both a site for, and source of, meaning... more
Place is fundamental to protest movements who in turn manipulate and are manipulated by the sites in which they protest. Given its socio-political importance, place increasingly functions as a both a site for, and source of, meaning making for protest movements. This essay explores the symbolic and material significance of "the encampment" in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement as it "staged" (and made manifest) the problem of the corporate colonization of the public sphere and its solution-the re-appropriation of public spaces, discourses, and subjectivities.
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While recent decades have seen the construction and circulation of several new approaches in ecology and the environmental sciences-including sustainability, resilience, novel ecosystems, and the Anthropocene-the shape and boundaries of a... more
While recent decades have seen the construction and circulation of several new approaches in ecology and the environmental sciences-including sustainability, resilience, novel ecosystems, and the Anthropocene-the shape and boundaries of a this new environmental imaginary are as yet obscure. At once a celebration of the ideas central to spaceship ecology and a sobering acknowledgment of its inherent limitations for grappling with, and responding to, the gravity of our current environmental epoch, Gravity is a befitting 1 It is difficult to locate this discourse in any meaningful way, except to say that it is both firmly rooted in Western/Enlightenment science, economics, industry and culture and also, given the global nature of much of this planet, embedded in geographies and cultures around the world.
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This essay explores the changing representations of ‘nature’ and ‘the native’ in the specific context of New Zealand by examining the evolution of two notable and markedly different representations of urban nature in Christchurch: the... more
This essay explores the changing representations of ‘nature’ and ‘the native’ in the specific context of New Zealand by examining the evolution of two notable and markedly different representations of urban nature in Christchurch: the Christchurch Botanical Gardens and Riccarton Bush. In the context of this volume, and as you will read below, both sites are interstitial spaces--literal and symbolic grounds on which the urban and wild, natural and synthetic have come into constant contact and articulation. Our analysis, situated in the literatures of postcolonial conservation/nature studies, explores colonial and postcolonial mindsets, practices, institutions and discourses as they have transformed the ways in which nature is represented in two important public landscapes in Christchurch.
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Heritage is at once a hobby, a call to arms, an industry, and an impetus for policy organizations and initiatives the world over. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in Switzerland where issues of cultural and natural heritage are... more
Heritage is at once a hobby, a call to arms, an industry, and an impetus for policy organizations and initiatives the world over. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in Switzerland where issues of cultural and natural heritage are part of the political and cultural landscape. Heritage discourses are founded upon binaries, used pervasively in both identification (e.g. native/non-native) and management actions (protection/eradication). This article uses a discursive approach to examine two recent controversies in Switzerland—the “invasive” Windmill palm and the recently banned Muslim minaret—in terms of the binaries used to contain and police each perceived “outsider.” Recent scholarship acknowledges the impossibility of these binaries in a world as dynamic and complex as our own. Building upon this literature, this study demonstrates that binary -thinking may have encouraged ineffective and inappropriate policy actions toward so-called non-natives in our Swiss case studies. We advocate the re-conceptualization of belonging as “interstitial” and assert that its use will facilitate more nuanced definitions of belonging and, hopefully, result in policy actions better suited to our times.
In the past decade, sustainability and global citizenship have emerged as two of the most prominent themes in contemporary higher education. Literature that specifically merges the two themes has, however, lagged behind. This paper... more
In the past decade, sustainability and global citizenship have emerged as two of the most prominent themes in contemporary higher education. Literature that specifically merges the two themes has, however, lagged behind. This paper integrates the literature from the fields of sustainable tourism and educational travel in order to articulate relevant concepts and to summarize theoretical and empirical approaches for improving the sustainability of educational travel programs. While most of the literature focuses upon carbon-related issues, a more comprehensive assessment and implementation would focus on the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and socio-cultural. This paper advocates several practical measures, such as the incorporation of sustainability into program mission statements, the training of travel leaders in all three dimensions of sustainability, and the implementation of sustainability-related assessment measures for educational travel programs. Further, we argue that maintaining critical scholarly engagement with broader theoretical frameworks is necessary to contextualize these practical and empirical approaches, and to reassess the potential benefits and negative impacts associated with educational travel.
