Katinka Wijsman | New School for Social Research

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Papers by Katinka Wijsman

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O trabalho de planejamento da resiliência urbana reconhece a importância da diversidade de conhec... more O trabalho de planejamento da resiliência urbana reconhece a importância da diversidade de conhecimentos para entender e agir sobre a mudança climática, mas fica aquém de se situar adequadamente dentro de processos históricos contínuos que dão forma a campos urbanos irregulares nos quais o planejamento acontece. Este trabalho usa insights das políticas feministas e decoloniais de conhecimento ambiental a fim de desafiar a análise dos sistemas de conhecimento para questionar e alterar explicitamente as estruturas de poder na elaboração do conhecimento ambiental nas cidades norte-americanas. Se a análise dos sistemas de conhecimento pode investigar e intervir nas estruturas de governança através das quais as decisões ambientais e a elaboração de políticas ambientais acontecem, isso exige uma reflexão sobre os compromissos ontológicos, epistemológicos e éticos (ou "pontos de partida"), pois estes carregam um peso material e discursivo: eles abrem e fecham as portas para a prá...

Environmental Science & Policy, 2019

Ecology and Society, 2021

There is growing interest in the application of nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change... more There is growing interest in the application of nature-based solutions to adapt to climate change and promote resilience, yet barriers exist to their implementation. These include a perceived lack of evidence of their functioning in comparison to conventional solutions and an inability for existing design, policy, and assessment processes to capture the multiple benefits of these solutions. Positing this as a challenge of operationalizing and measuring resilience, we argue that the concept of resilience needs to be given concrete meaning in applied management contexts. Starting with shoreline vulnerability as a policy problem and natural and naturebased shoreline features as a promising solution, we present a case study of a co-creative process to produce an interdisciplinary and locally relevant approach to understanding and capturing the benefits of natural and nature-based solutions. We develop the notion of resilience service to enable a concreteness to resilience that simultaneously takes into account ecological, technical, and social dimensions. Through the co-creative process, our researcher-practitioner network developed a monitoring framework for shoreline features in New York State to facilitate the comparison of natural and nature-based features with conventional shoreline approaches. We describe the process and assess the advantages and drawbacks of integrating scientific input and local knowledge. We present the monitoring framework, showing how the co-creative character of the process is consequential in the formulation of the final framework through the selection of parameters, indicators, and protocols. We argue that interdisciplinarity, co-creation, pragmatism, multi-scalar applicability, and policy relevance are critical principles to understand the functioning and facilitate the implementation of naturebased solutions, while recognizing that this work necessitates compromise and as such will lead to continued deliberation. We posit this is a strength of the process for it acknowledges the creation of resilience as a social process in which values are central and subject to change.

Urban Sustainability Transitions

Environmental Science and Policy, 2019

Work in urban resilience planning recognizes the importance of knowledge diversity to understandi... more Work in urban resilience planning recognizes the importance of knowledge diversity to understanding and acting on climate change, but falls short in adequately situating itself within ongoing historical processes that shape uneven urban playing fields in which planning happens. This paper uses insights from environmental feminist and decolonial knowledge politics to challenge knowledge systems analysis to explicitly question and alter structures of power in environmental knowledge making in North American cities. If knowledge systems analysis can investigate and intervene in governance structures through which environmental decision-and policy-making happen, this necessitates reflection on ontological, epistemological and ethical commitments (or 'starting points') as these carry material and discursive weight: they open up and foreclose ways in which resilience is practiced. Given increasing recognition that urban resilience needs to consider issues of justice and equity, in this paper we take cues from feminist and decolonial scholarship that has centered these themes for decades and which offer 'starting points' to rethink knowledge systems for resilience. Understanding urbanization as key process in the expansion of relations fundamental to the production of anthropocentric climate change, we argue that changing these relations is crucial if urban resilience planning is to contribute to alternative and socially just urban futures. Against tendencies of depoliticization that solutions-oriented work can sometimes exhibit, feminist and decolonial perspectives locate knowledge-making practices squarely within struggles for social justice in the city. We propose three strategies for those working on knowledge systems for resilience to advance their practice: centering justice and transgression, reflexive research practice, and thinking historically. Ultimately, this paper shows that taking seriously critical social sciences furthers fundamentally new ideas for what transitions to urban resilience could mean.

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2013

ABSTRACT This paper explores the co-evolution between societal sustainability transitions and fun... more ABSTRACT This paper explores the co-evolution between societal sustainability transitions and fundamental shifts within individuals businesses. We argue that there is an emergent trend of businesses and industries that move beyond optimizing the organization's individual performance by mitigating negative environmental and social impacts, to fundamentally restructuring and rethinking existing businesses in light of broader societal changes. Arguably, the frontrunner businesses that orient themselves towards sustainable market transitions develop a competitive advantage by co-creating these sustainable markets and on the short term develop renewed ambition and enthusiasm. By means of the transition framework, we argue that the fundamental societal changes emerging lead to a new phase in corporate responsibility, implying fundamental transitions within businesses. Based on this perspective and the transition management approach we explore how businesses might proactively engage with sustainability transitions in their direct context and link these to internal business transitions. We illustrate this framework of business transition management in a number of interlinked activities based on an experimental participatory case study of the transition in the Dutch roof sector.

In this essay I ask the question: does state sovereignty change in the wake of the emergence of g... more In this essay I ask the question: does state sovereignty change in the wake of the emergence of global environmental problems? In this paper I engage with a range of thinking about sovereignty and environment in IR/Global Politics, and argue we should approach sovereignty as a materially-discursive practice.

In this essay I explore how social change can be conceptualized from a feminist posthumanist pers... more In this essay I explore how social change can be conceptualized from a feminist posthumanist perspective. Taking feminist new materialism as a starting point, with its focus on embodied relations and casting of the feminist subject as locatable, complex, intersectional and subject to change, I ask: how can we conceptualize feminist transformative change, taking seriously both local situatedness and larger structures of oppression?

I propose to understand the social change conceptualized through the feminist new materialism as needing simultaneous intervention in different domains, which is a divergence from more straightforwardly posited accounts of feminist change that, despite challenges of initiating change and eliminating opposition against it, assumes a straightforward effect after implementation. I subsequently ask: what are the modes of thinking and doing feminist political work that we can imagine this new framework of transformative change?

Drafts by Katinka Wijsman

Justice and fairness have become key considerations in nature-based solutions (NBS), following ac... more Justice and fairness have become key considerations in nature-based solutions (NBS), following activists and critical scholars who have long argued that the urban environment is an inherently political space that requires an analysis of benefits and burdens associated with its existence, use, and access. However, what justice means and how it is expressed, recognized, or achieved is often implicit in the literature on NBS, even though underlying notions of justice shape the analysis done and actions proposed. This paper starts from the premise that justice knows many different interpretations, therefore warranting scholars and practitioners working on NBS to carefully consider the differences and frictions between competing meanings of justice. Drawing from the history of social and environmental justice theory, we give an account of some key justice dilemmas and discuss their tenets as it relates to the end, means, and participants in the making of justice. From this, we draw out questions and commitments academics and practitioners in the NBS space should grapple with more explicitly. We argue that the emergent tension between pragmatic policy approaches and critical theoretical engagement is hindering a version of NBS that goes beyond a reflection of the justice implications of NBS to ensuring that NBS contributes to the furthering of justice. We advocate for the inclusion of critical social sciences and humanities perspectives and approaches beyond tokenism to instead encourage ontological, epistemological, and political reflection of the work academics and practitioners do in the NBS space.