Meaning work: reworking institutional meanings for environmental governance

Abstract

Effective environmental governance requires institutional change. While some actors work to change institutions, others resist change by defending and maintaining institutions. Much of this institutional work is ‘meaning work’, which we define as the practice of crafting, adapting, connecting and performing meanings to purposively create, maintain or disrupt institutions. This paper constructs a concept of meaning work that highlights agency in carrying meanings across scales and between discursive layers, while noting the structuring role of prevailing discourses. It grounds the concept using two environmental governance cases at very different scales: a local democratic innovation employed by Noosa Council in Queensland, Australia; and the international campaign to divest from fossil fuels. The cases demonstrate the diversity of meaning work and the difficulty of achieving deep discursive change. They point to the need for environmental governance practitioners to rework existing meanings to construct compelling stories for change, taking advantage of narrative openings.

Keywords:

• environmental governance
• institutional work
• institutional meanings
• narrative
• discourse

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the staff and elected representatives of Noosa Shire Council and the members of the Noosa Community Jury who gave up their time to participate in interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. NSC is one of the 77 local governments in the Australian state of Queensland, governing an area of 871 km² on the Sunshine Coast, north of Brisbane. It has a population of about 56,000.

2. The newDemocracy Foundation is “an independent, non-partisan research and development organisation” focused on democratic innovation. It aims “to discover, develop, demonstrate, and popularise complementary alternatives which will restore trust in public decision making”. It conducts “real world trials using random selection and deliberation - the jury model - as a central process” (newDemocracy website, accessed 4 December 2017).

3. As of 4 December 2017, according to the Fossil Free website, https://gofossilfree.org/divestment/commitments/.

4. https://gofossilfree.org/divestment/commitments/, 4 December 2017.

Additional information

Funding

Elements of this work were supported by a research grant from the newDemocracy Foundation.