“Environmental Argumentation”, special issue of the Journal of Argumentation in Context 8:1 (2019), edited by the APPLY Action members Marcin Lewiński and Mehmet Ali Üzelgün has been published.
The authors in this special issue investigate the challenging context of environmental argumentation. This context is first characterised by four key features:
1) epistemic complexity and uncertainty;
2) value-based argumentation;
3) high stakes and many levels;
4) plurality of positions, players, and places.
These features are then studied in more detail in individual contributions. The papers in the issue point to the multifarious, or: polylogical, character of environmental argumentation, where the scope of analysis needs to extend well beyond two parties orderly discussing pros and cons of a single proposal.
They focus on the value-based practical (policy) rather than value-free theoretical (epistemic) arguments as main vehicles of environmental discourse. They also reveal the constraints for argumentation in extant institutional settings where many decisions are taken (global negotiations, national parliaments, local councils), and point to the possibly fallacious aspects of such current argumentation. Finally, they reveal the role of media, old (TV, written manifestoes) and new (Internet), for the circulation of arguments over environment.
This Special Issue – in fact, prepared in parallel with the APPLY proposal – includes contributions from a number of scholars directly involved in the APPLY Action:
Marcin Lewiński – Main Proposer and Chair of the Action, Portugal
Mehmet Ali Üzelgün – Original Proposer and Management Committee Substitute for Portugal
Dima Mohammed – Original Proposer and Management Committee Member for Portugal
Jan Albert van Laar – Original Proposer, Management Committee Substitute for the Netherlands, and co-leader of the Working Group 2
Mark Aakhus – Original Proposer and the Action’s Scientific Adviser, United States
Elena Musi – Member of the Working Group 3, United Kingdom
Isabela Fairclough – Original Proposer and Management Committee Member for the United Kingdom