Manjana Milkoreit | Purdue University (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Manjana Milkoreit

WIREs Climate Change

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping point... more The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping points (STPs), understood as nonlinear processes of transformative change in social systems. A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has been focusing in particular on social tipping related to climate change. In contrast with tipping point studies in the natural sciences–for example climate tipping points and ecological regime shifts–STPs are often conceptualized as desirable, offering potential solutions to pressing problems. Drawing on a well‐established definition for tipping points, and a qualitative review of articles that explicitly treat social tipping points as potential solutions to climate change, this article identifies four deleterious patterns in the application of the STP concept in this recent wave of research on nonlinear social change: (i) premature labeling, (ii) not defining system boundaries and scales of analysis, (iii) not providing evidence for all characterist...

Humans have barely begun to understand what living in the Anthropocene means. Scientists are at t... more Humans have barely begun to understand what living in the Anthropocene means. Scientists are at the forefront of creating the knowledge needed to make sense of and thrive in this new planetary reality, but the academy is still far from ‘the full picture.’ A key feature of this human-dominated epoch is the multiplication of governance challenges with extremely long problem time scales that create links between human action in the present and their effects in the distant future. Understanding the power of the present generations to influence the well being of many generations to come is an unprecedented challenge for humanity; yet, it is a fundamental requirement for making ‘good’ decisions, especially in global governance. Rising to the challenge of decision-making in the Anthropocene requires cognitive skills that is currently woefully underdeveloped even in the brains of the brightest scientists and the most passionate global policy-makers: the ability to imagine the distant future...

Ecology and Society, 2014

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to... more The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals.

Quantum International Relations

Successfully meeting the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change calls for bot... more Successfully meeting the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change calls for both social change and systems change. How can political will and timely action be activated to meet these targets? This chapter explores the potential for linking both cognitive and quantum approaches to climate politics and social change. Approaching climate change as a multiscale process of meaning making, the chapter discusses quantum social change as well as cognition in climate change governance. It presents three brief case studies to describe the importance of language in climate politics, highlighting the nonlocal effects and pointing to the importance of being able to imagine and enact alternatives meanings, as well as the power of individuals to influence the social wave function. The chapter concludes with reflections on the complementarity of quantum and cognitive approaches to climate politics.

Climatic Change, 2022

A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel appr... more A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel approaches, especially in policy domains with long time horizons like climate change. Serious games offer promising opportunities in this regard, but empirical research on game effects and games’ effectiveness in supporting science-policy engagement remains limited. We investigated the effects of a role-playing simulation game on risk perceptions associated with climate tipping points among a knowledgeable and engaged audience of non-governmental observers of the international climate negotiations and scientists. We analysed its effects on concern, perceived seriousness, perceived likelihood and psychological distance of tipping points, using pre- and post-game surveys, debriefing questions and game observations. Our findings suggest that the game reduced the psychological distance of tipping points, rendering them more ‘real’, proximate and tangible for participants. More generally, our fin...

Agency in Earth System Governance, 2020

Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity, 2019

Companion to Environmental Studies, 2018

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, inc... more I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2017

Over the last two decades, scholars have developed an increasingly sophisticated range of approac... more Over the last two decades, scholars have developed an increasingly sophisticated range of approaches to studying the complex relationship between popular culture and politics. This article addresses three major weakness in this expanding body of research: (1) the analytic focus on the pop-cultural artifact itself rather than political actors and scholars doing the causal-political or pedagogical work, (2) a lack of attention to the question whether different culture consumers' interpretations and experiences of a pop-cultural artifact match those of scholars, and (3) the dearth of empirical studies verifying theoretical claims. I address these weaknesses by introducing the concept of pop-cultural mobilization to capture the active and deliberate appropriation of pop-cultural resources for a specific political purpose by political actors. I support my conceptual argument with empirical data for a case study on the TV show Game of Thrones (GOT): a qualitative content analysis of 55 political commentaries published between 2013 and 2016. The authors of these political commentaries purposefully contributed to a process of meaning-making among the American public by publishing their own interpretations of the TV show, especially what they perceived as strong parallels between the GOT narratives and climate change politics in the real world. The analysis demonstrates the interpretive openness of the pop-cultural artifact GOT, challenging the often-assumed interpretive authority of scholars' readings of a cultural narrative. There is even the potential for political opponents to make use of the same pop-cultural material to advance different policy agendas.

Science Diplomacy, 2014

ABSTRACT In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well-fu... more ABSTRACT In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well-functioning science-diplomacy interface is vital for the success of global governance. The case of climate change offers valuable lessons concerning current institutional design patterns of this interface, building on more than two decades of experience with of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In this chapter I depart from the usual approach to analysing the role of science in diplomacy. Instead of assessing the functioning and processes of the IPCC, I use a cognitive perspective to analyse how diplomats' minds receive and make use of scientific knowledge. Using interview data from 2012, I argue that: (1) most negotiation participants use a very basic and limited set of insights about climate change that has not changed significantly for a long time; (2) that recent scientific concepts — most notably the idea of climatic tipping points — are not yet part of most diplomats' belief systems; and (3) that hardly any negotiator is able to imagine qualitatively different long-term futures that have been affected by climate change, and to link present decisions to those possible futures. I discuss the implications of these findings for the negotiation process and outline possible ways to improve the design of the science-diplomacy interface to address present cognitive limitations…

Climatic Change, 2014

Philosophers, political theorists and cognitive scientists have applied the traditional distincti... more Philosophers, political theorists and cognitive scientists have applied the traditional distinction between deontology and consequentialism to determine ethical responsibilitiesusually of statesto take action in response to climate change. Most of this work is either purely conceptual or based on experiments with individuals, who are not part of the global political process. This paper makes two contributions to this debate. First, based on interview data I describe existing patterns of ethical reasoning among global political actors rather than groups selected for lab experiments. Integrating theories of risk perceptions, international relations and moral philosophy, I identify both deontological and consequentialist cognitive patterns, and examine their constitutive elements. My second contribution concerns the role of emotion in moral reasoning. Using the same qualitative data, I offer support for a controversial argument about the emotional nature of deontological reasoning. Further, I argue that many negotiators experience climate change not as an impersonal threat posed by the environment, but rather as an "up, close and personal" threat, over which other negotiation participants have significant control.

WIREs Climate Change

The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping point... more The last few years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the concept of social tipping points (STPs), understood as nonlinear processes of transformative change in social systems. A growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has been focusing in particular on social tipping related to climate change. In contrast with tipping point studies in the natural sciences–for example climate tipping points and ecological regime shifts–STPs are often conceptualized as desirable, offering potential solutions to pressing problems. Drawing on a well‐established definition for tipping points, and a qualitative review of articles that explicitly treat social tipping points as potential solutions to climate change, this article identifies four deleterious patterns in the application of the STP concept in this recent wave of research on nonlinear social change: (i) premature labeling, (ii) not defining system boundaries and scales of analysis, (iii) not providing evidence for all characterist...

Humans have barely begun to understand what living in the Anthropocene means. Scientists are at t... more Humans have barely begun to understand what living in the Anthropocene means. Scientists are at the forefront of creating the knowledge needed to make sense of and thrive in this new planetary reality, but the academy is still far from ‘the full picture.’ A key feature of this human-dominated epoch is the multiplication of governance challenges with extremely long problem time scales that create links between human action in the present and their effects in the distant future. Understanding the power of the present generations to influence the well being of many generations to come is an unprecedented challenge for humanity; yet, it is a fundamental requirement for making ‘good’ decisions, especially in global governance. Rising to the challenge of decision-making in the Anthropocene requires cognitive skills that is currently woefully underdeveloped even in the brains of the brightest scientists and the most passionate global policy-makers: the ability to imagine the distant future...

Ecology and Society, 2014

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to... more The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals.

Quantum International Relations

Successfully meeting the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change calls for bot... more Successfully meeting the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement on climate change calls for both social change and systems change. How can political will and timely action be activated to meet these targets? This chapter explores the potential for linking both cognitive and quantum approaches to climate politics and social change. Approaching climate change as a multiscale process of meaning making, the chapter discusses quantum social change as well as cognition in climate change governance. It presents three brief case studies to describe the importance of language in climate politics, highlighting the nonlocal effects and pointing to the importance of being able to imagine and enact alternatives meanings, as well as the power of individuals to influence the social wave function. The chapter concludes with reflections on the complementarity of quantum and cognitive approaches to climate politics.

Climatic Change, 2022

A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel appr... more A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel approaches, especially in policy domains with long time horizons like climate change. Serious games offer promising opportunities in this regard, but empirical research on game effects and games’ effectiveness in supporting science-policy engagement remains limited. We investigated the effects of a role-playing simulation game on risk perceptions associated with climate tipping points among a knowledgeable and engaged audience of non-governmental observers of the international climate negotiations and scientists. We analysed its effects on concern, perceived seriousness, perceived likelihood and psychological distance of tipping points, using pre- and post-game surveys, debriefing questions and game observations. Our findings suggest that the game reduced the psychological distance of tipping points, rendering them more ‘real’, proximate and tangible for participants. More generally, our fin...

Agency in Earth System Governance, 2020

Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity, 2019

Companion to Environmental Studies, 2018

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, inc... more I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2017

Over the last two decades, scholars have developed an increasingly sophisticated range of approac... more Over the last two decades, scholars have developed an increasingly sophisticated range of approaches to studying the complex relationship between popular culture and politics. This article addresses three major weakness in this expanding body of research: (1) the analytic focus on the pop-cultural artifact itself rather than political actors and scholars doing the causal-political or pedagogical work, (2) a lack of attention to the question whether different culture consumers' interpretations and experiences of a pop-cultural artifact match those of scholars, and (3) the dearth of empirical studies verifying theoretical claims. I address these weaknesses by introducing the concept of pop-cultural mobilization to capture the active and deliberate appropriation of pop-cultural resources for a specific political purpose by political actors. I support my conceptual argument with empirical data for a case study on the TV show Game of Thrones (GOT): a qualitative content analysis of 55 political commentaries published between 2013 and 2016. The authors of these political commentaries purposefully contributed to a process of meaning-making among the American public by publishing their own interpretations of the TV show, especially what they perceived as strong parallels between the GOT narratives and climate change politics in the real world. The analysis demonstrates the interpretive openness of the pop-cultural artifact GOT, challenging the often-assumed interpretive authority of scholars' readings of a cultural narrative. There is even the potential for political opponents to make use of the same pop-cultural material to advance different policy agendas.

Science Diplomacy, 2014

ABSTRACT In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well-fu... more ABSTRACT In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well-functioning science-diplomacy interface is vital for the success of global governance. The case of climate change offers valuable lessons concerning current institutional design patterns of this interface, building on more than two decades of experience with of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In this chapter I depart from the usual approach to analysing the role of science in diplomacy. Instead of assessing the functioning and processes of the IPCC, I use a cognitive perspective to analyse how diplomats' minds receive and make use of scientific knowledge. Using interview data from 2012, I argue that: (1) most negotiation participants use a very basic and limited set of insights about climate change that has not changed significantly for a long time; (2) that recent scientific concepts — most notably the idea of climatic tipping points — are not yet part of most diplomats' belief systems; and (3) that hardly any negotiator is able to imagine qualitatively different long-term futures that have been affected by climate change, and to link present decisions to those possible futures. I discuss the implications of these findings for the negotiation process and outline possible ways to improve the design of the science-diplomacy interface to address present cognitive limitations…

Climatic Change, 2014

Philosophers, political theorists and cognitive scientists have applied the traditional distincti... more Philosophers, political theorists and cognitive scientists have applied the traditional distinction between deontology and consequentialism to determine ethical responsibilitiesusually of statesto take action in response to climate change. Most of this work is either purely conceptual or based on experiments with individuals, who are not part of the global political process. This paper makes two contributions to this debate. First, based on interview data I describe existing patterns of ethical reasoning among global political actors rather than groups selected for lab experiments. Integrating theories of risk perceptions, international relations and moral philosophy, I identify both deontological and consequentialist cognitive patterns, and examine their constitutive elements. My second contribution concerns the role of emotion in moral reasoning. Using the same qualitative data, I offer support for a controversial argument about the emotional nature of deontological reasoning. Further, I argue that many negotiators experience climate change not as an impersonal threat posed by the environment, but rather as an "up, close and personal" threat, over which other negotiation participants have significant control.

See flyer: As part of the 2015 Conference on Complex Systems at Arizona State University we wi... more See flyer:

As part of the 2015 Conference on Complex Systems at Arizona State University we will host a full-day workshop on
Imagination and Climate Change – Cognitive Skills for Complex Problem Solving and Transformational Change on Thursday, October 1st, 2015 (9am-6pm). We would like to invite submissions for papers, activities, and indications of interest in participation.

Science Diplomacy: New Day or false Dawn (forthcoming)

In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well functioning... more In a time of multiplying international problems that require scientific input, a well functioning science-diplomacy interface is vital for the success of global governance. The case of climate change offers valuable lessons concerning current institutional design patterns of this interface, building on more than two decades of experience with of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UNFCCC. In this chapter I depart from the usual approach to analyzing the role of science in diplomacy. Instead of assessing the functioning and processes of the IPCC, I use a cognitive perspective to analyze how diplomats’ minds receive and make use of scientific knowledge. Using interview data from 2012, I argue that (i) most negotiation participants use a very basic and limited set of insights about climate change that has not changed significantly for a long time, (ii) that recent scientific concepts – most notably the idea of climatic tipping points – are not part of most diplomats’ belief systems, , and (iii) that hardly any negotiator is able to imagine qualitatively different long-term futures that have been affected by climate change, and to link present decisions to those possible futures. I discuss the implications of these findings for the negotiation process and outline possible ways to improve the design of the science-diplomacy interface to address present cognitive limitations.

Lecture Notes in Social Networks, 2014

Reimagining Climate Change

Developing effective solutions for climate change poses major imagination challenges. These inclu... more Developing effective solutions for climate change poses major imagination challenges. These include envisioning possible and desirable futures based on available scientific data, and assessing how today’s decisions might affect different pathways of change and ultimately the future humans will experience. This chapter argues that imagination is an essential decision-making skill that can and should be fostered among political actors. Using three examples (Atwood’s MaddAdam trilogy, Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior and Turner’s The Sea and Summer), the chapter explores the potential power of the literary genre climate fiction (cli-fi) to stimulate, aid and enrich the political imagination related to climate change.