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From Climate Issue to Oil Issue: Offices of Public Administration, Versions of Economics, and the Ordinary Technologies of Politics

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  • Kristin Asdal

    (Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, PO Box 1108 Blindern, NO-0317 Oslo, Norway)

Abstract

Economics does not come in only one version. In order to understand the emergence of carbon markets, this paper turns to the offices of politics and administration and argues that carbon markets ought to be seen as an effect of different versions of economics. Hence, the paper suggests that, in analysing and exploring the emergence of carbon markets, it is not sufficient to focus on market devices. We must study a wider set of devices, such as modelling practices, planning documents, and paper trails. The basis for this analysis is a study of a particular office, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. The paper traces how, within this office, the climate issue was transformed into an oil issue and how accounting and planning technologies took part in enacting the macroeconomy, rather than the environment, as an endangered object. Hence, when studying the performativity of economics, the macroeconomy must be included, the paper argues, and so must the study of the issue that is being enacted. In pursuing the analysis in this way, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the emergence of carbon markets pertained to not only an emergent climate issue but also to an emergent oil issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristin Asdal, 2014. "From Climate Issue to Oil Issue: Offices of Public Administration, Versions of Economics, and the Ordinary Technologies of Politics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(9), pages 2110-2124, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:9:p:2110-2124
    DOI: 10.1068/a140048p
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Cook, Allan, 2009. "Emission rights: From costless activity to market operations," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 456-468, April.
    2. Asdal, Kristin, 2011. "The office: The weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-9, January.
    3. Fabian Muniesa & Yuval Millo & Michel Callon, 2007. "An introduction to market devices," Post-Print halshs-00177928, HAL.
    4. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    5. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801, October.
    6. Maxwell T Boykoff & Adam Bumpus & Diana Liverman & Samual Randalls, 2009. "Theorizing the Carbon Economy: Introduction to the Special Issue," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 41(10), pages 2299-2304, October.
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    8. MacKenzie, Donald, 2009. "Making things the same: Gases, emission rights and the politics of carbon markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 440-455, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Erlend A. T. Hermansen & Göran Sundqvist, 2022. "Top-down or bottom-up? Norwegian climate mitigation policy as a contested hybrid of policy approaches," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 171(3), pages 1-22, April.
    2. Niskanen, Johan & Rohracher, Harald, 2022. "A politics of calculation: Negotiating pathways to zero-energy buildings in Sweden," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    3. Kristin Asdal & Noortje Marres, 2014. "Performing Environmental Change: The Politics of Social Science Methods," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(9), pages 2055-2064, September.

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