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Globalising the Arctic Climate: Geoengineering and the Emerging Global Polity

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Governing Arctic Change

Abstract

International Relations has traditionally been subject-centric, ignoring how the targets or objects of governance emerge or transform with different structuring effects. This chapter uses an object-oriented approach to explore how the Arctic is being constituted as a global governance-object within an emerging ‘global polity’, partly through geoengineering imaginaries. It suggests that governance-objects—the socially constructed targets of political operations and contestations—are not simple ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ exogenously given to actors to deal with. Governance-objects emerge and are constructed and rather than slot neatly into existing structures, but with their own structuring effects on world politics. The emergence of the Arctic climate as a potential target of governance with the help of geoengineering techniques provides a case in point.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Olaf Corry

Authors
  1. Olaf Corry
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. f. Advanced Sustainability Studies , Potsdam, Germany

    Kathrin Keil

  2. Berlin Graduate School for Transnational , Berlin, Germany

    Sebastian Knecht

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Corry, O. (2017). Globalising the Arctic Climate: Geoengineering and the Emerging Global Polity. In: Keil, K., Knecht, S. (eds) Governing Arctic Change. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50884-3_4

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