On Environmental Communication as a Care Discipline

ABSTRACT

This is a Special Issue opening essay. The theme of the Special Issue is Care, edited by the author in the inaugural issue of her three-year editorship of the journal. The author furthers her argument for redefining the field of environmental communication as not just a crisis discipline, but also a care discipline. She addresses limitations and possibilities of care as an ethic and discourse today. In conclusion, she turns attention to the aspirations of her editorship, this issue, and invites more research that reflects on the ethical considerations of the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Care
• crisis
• carewashing
• survival strategy
• undrowned
• pluriversal

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Catalina de Onís and Constance Gordon for reading an earlier draft of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cox’s essay was a revised version of his 2005 keynote at the International Environmental Communication Association’s (IECA’s) Conference on Communication and the Environment (COCE), published as this journal transformed from an annual yearbook to what was then called “Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture.” Former editor Allison Anderson dropped the title after the colon years later.

2 On hegemony & counterhegemony: Gramsci, 2011a, 2011b; on necropolitics: Mbembe, 2003; Fleetwood, 2006.