Amanda Margaret Machin

• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2023). Performances of Death; Hunger Strikes, Discipline, and Democracy. Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal. ISSN 2332-8894. 10(2), p. 31–43. doi: 10.3167/DT.2023.100204. Full text in Research Archive
• Schojan, Fabio; Machin, Amanda Margaret & Silberberger, Magdalene (2023). Sustainable development discourse and development aid in Germany: tracking the changes from environmental protectionism towards private sector opportunities. Critical Policy Studies. ISSN 1946-0171. doi: 10.1080/19460171.2023.2265988. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  ‘Sustainable Development’ can be understood as a widely used discourse that has become even more prominent since the publication of the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development in 2015. In this paper we analyze the way sustainable development discourse unfolds within the context of development aid in Germany by undertaking a discourse analysis of reports on development policy published 1973–2017 by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Our analysis reveals that the sustainable development discourse is characterized by distinct components and storylines that change over time. We detect, in general, a shift away from a focus on environmental protection toward an emphasis on the role of the private sector in leading sustainable development. We argue, therefore, that although development is now only legitimate if it is ‘sustainable’, the discourse apparently facilitates the uneven allocation of development aid. The concern that arises here is that although Agenda 2030 pledges to take “bold and transformative steps’ to secure the planet and to leave ‘no one behind” the least developed states who cannot provide ‘private sector opportunities’ or fulfil ‘national self-responsibilities’ for sustainable development are indeed being ‘left behind’.

• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2023). Climate Change and Imaginaries of Democracy. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.859.
• Asenbaum, Hans; Machin, Amanda Margaret; Gagnon, Jean-Paul; Leong, Diana; Orlie, Melissa & Smith, James Louis (2023). The nonhuman condition: Radical democracy through new materialist lenses. Contemporary Political Theory. ISSN 1470-8914. 22, p. 584–615. doi: 10.1057/s41296-023-00635-3. Full text in Research Archive
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Ruser, Alexander (2023). Introduction: Sustainability, Democracy and the Dark Sides of Civil Society. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. ISSN 0891-4486. doi: 10.1007/s10767-023-09445-2. Show summary

  Despite widespread acknowledgement of the value of sustainability, the transition towards more sustainable economies and societies remains a challenge around the world. Civil societies play an important role not only in supporting government efforts on sustainability by ‘filling gaps’ and raising social awareness, but also in pioneering new practices and disrupting particular governmental or corporate strategies, as well as engaging and empowering previously marginalised individuals and groups. Yet civil society is not always a champion of sustainability nor of democracy; these actors may of course also destabilise innovations, depoliticise sustainability issues by reifying certain concepts or approaches and reinforce social hierarchies and patterns of exclusion that can undermine any transformative potential and bolster the unsustainable status quo. This Special Issue is therefore dedicated to interrogating what we see as the ambiguous, yet critical, role played by civil societies in sustainability politics. This introductory paper intends not only to draw attention to some of the arguments, theories and challenges found in each of the individual papers collected here, but also to pull on the common threads that run through them, as well as to unpick some of the different uses of the key terminology that they employ. We aim, moreover, to highlight the inevitable tension between the ‘democratic side’ and the ‘dark side’ of civil society and its politics of sustainability.

• Schiller-Merkens, Simone & Machin, Amanda Margaret (2023). Knowing Food: Sustainability Politics, Food Policy Councils and the Co-Production of Knowledge. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. ISSN 0891-4486. doi: 10.1007/s10767-023-09446-1. Show summary

  As one of the major causes of climate change, there is an urgent need for a fundamental transformation of the food system. Calls for greater sustainability underscore the importance of integrating civil society and the local knowledge of citizens in this transformation process. One increasingly relevant organisation that can actively engage a plurality of actors from across civil society is the Food Policy Council (FPC). In this paper, we explore the potential role of FPCs in sustainability politics to create an alternative food system, with a focus on the co-production of knowledge for policy-making. We propose that the co-production of knowledge requires knowledge inclusion, exchange and transmission, and we focus on the challenges that can arise for FPCs. Our paper shows that bottom-up emerging FPCs constitute a new form of alternative food organisation that can integrate and support the critical capacity of civil society in food system transformation, but also face potential struggles in the co-production of knowledge for sustainable food policy-making. The paper further highlights that co-producing knowledge in and for sustainability transformation is fundamentally a political process, with politics broadly conceived. It not only has relevance for the institutions of formal politics, but emerges in and is intrinsically linked to the grassroots collective action of contentious and prefigurative politics in civil society. FPCs (re)politicise food by combining these various kinds of sustainability politics, which constitutes their transformative potential.

• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2023). Democracy, Agony, and Rupture: A Critique of Climate Citizens’ Assemblies. Politische Vierteljahresschrift. ISSN 0032-3470. doi: 10.1007/s11615-023-00455-5. Show summary

  Stymied by preoccupation with short-term interests of individualist consumers, democratic institutions seem unable to generate sustained political commitment for tackling climate change. The citizens’ assembly (CA) is promoted as an important tool in combatting this “democratic myopia.” The aim of a CA is to bring together a representative group of citizens and experts from diverse backgrounds to exchange their different insights and perspectives on a complex issue. By providing the opportunity for inclusive democratic deliberation, the CA is expected to educate citizens, stimulate awareness of complex issues, and produce enlightened and legitimate policy recommendations. However, critical voices warn about the simplified and celebratory commentary surrounding the CA. Informed by agonistic and radical democratic theory, this paper elaborates on a particular concern, which is the orientation toward consensus in the CA. The paper points to the importance of disagreement in the form of both agony (from inside) and rupture (from outside) that, it is argued, is crucial for a democratic, engaging, passionate, creative, and representative sustainability politics.

• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2022). Climate Democracy: Sceptical, Rational and Radical Imaginaries. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (WIRESs). ISSN 1757-7780. 13(4). doi: 10.1002/wcc.774.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Tan, Evrim (2022). Green European citizenship? Rights, duties, virtues, practices and the European Green Deal. European Politics and Society. ISSN 2374-5118. doi: 10.1080/23745118.2022.2118984. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Published in December 2019 by the European Commission, the European Green Deal (EGD) sets out the aim to transform the EU into a sustainable society in which economic growth is decoupled from resource use, so that there are no greenhouse gas net emissions by 2050. As the ‘driving force of the transition’ citizens are expected a play a key role in achieving this shift, by adopting sustainable consumption habits and changing their life styles and behaviour as well as actively participating in policymaking [EC, 2019, 22]. This expectation raises questions about European citizenship: Can European citizenship be ‘greened’? Conversely, might the EGD strengthen European citizenship? Drawing together theoretical insights into ‘green citizenship’ with research on European citizenship this paper considers what a ‘green European citizenship’ (GEC) might look like. It examines the rights, duties, virtues and practices of a GEC, and underlines in particular the important role of ‘critical acts’ of European citizens. It concludes that while the initiatives of the EGD might provoke citizenship engagement, participation and identification, these initiatives might also further expose the fault lines between citizens in Europe. This possibility makes the critical acts undertaken by citizens all the more important.

• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2020). Democracy, disagreement, disruption: agonism and the environmental state. Environmental Politics. ISSN 0964-4016. 29(1), p. 155–172. doi: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1684739.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2020). The Agony of Nuclear: Sustaining Democratic Disagreement. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. ISSN 1548-7733. 16(1), p. 286–297. doi: 10.1080/15487733.2020.1829847.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2019). Changing the Story? The trajectory of the ecological modernisation discourse in the European Union. Environmental Politics. ISSN 0964-4016. 28(2), p. 208–227. doi: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1549780.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2019). Agony and the Anthropos: Democracy and Boundaries in the Anthropocene. Nature and Culture. ISSN 1558-6073. 14(1), p. 1–16. doi: 10.3167/nc.2019.140101.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2019). Democracy in the Anthropocene: The Challenges of Knowledge, Time and Identity. Environmental Values. ISSN 0963-2719. 28(3), p. 347–365. doi: 10.3197/096327119X15519764179836.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2018). Science, Knowledge and Bodies: “We can know more than we can tell”. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science. ISSN 1811-833X. 55(4), p. 84–97. doi: 10.5840/eps201855470.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2016). Hunger Power: The embodied protest of the political hunger strike. Interface: a journal for and about social movements. ISSN 2009-2431. 8(1), p. 157–180.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2015). Deliberating Bodies: Democracy, Identification and Embodiment. Democratic Theory: An Interdisciplinary Journal. ISSN 2332-8894. 2(1), p. 42–62. doi: 10.3167/dt.2015.020104.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Smith, Graham (2014). Means, Ends, Beginnings: Environmental Technocracy, Ecological Deliberation or Embodied Democracy? Ethical Perspectives. ISSN 1370-0049. 21(1), p. 47–72. doi: 10.2143/EP.21.1.3017286.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2014). Mouffe, Merleau-Ponty and Others: The View from Somewhere? Parallax. ISSN 1353-4645. 20(2), p. 73–87. doi: 10.1080/13534645.2014.896553.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2012). Decisions, disagreement and responsibility: towards an agonistic green citizenship. Environmental Politics. ISSN 0964-4016. 21(6), p. 847–863. doi: 10.1080/09644016.2012.712791.

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• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2022). Bodies of Democracy: Modes and Moments of Embodied Politics. Transcript Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8376-4923-9. 183 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Meidert, Nadine (2021). Political Identification in Europe: Community in Crisis. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. ISBN 9781839821257. 216 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Stehr, Nico (2019). Society and Climate: Transformations and Challenges. World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-3272-43-9. 198 p.
• Ruser, Alexander & Machin, Amanda Margaret (2019). Against Political Compromise- Sustaining Democratic Debate (paperback). Routledge Focus. ISBN 0367901315. 78 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Ruser, Alexander (2019). What Counts in the Politics of Climate Change? Science, Scepticism and Emblematic Numbers. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030112080. 22 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Stehr, Nico (2016). Understanding Inequality: Social Costs and Benefits. Springer. ISBN 978-3-658-11662-0. 427 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2015). Nations and Democracy: New Theoretical Perspectives. Routledge. ISBN 9781138066540. 172 p.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2013). Negotiating Climate Change: Radical Democracy and the Illusion of Consensus. Zed Books. ISBN 9781780323978. 176 p.

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• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2023). Environmentalism. In Grasso, Maria & Giugni, Marco (Ed.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Sociology. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781803921228.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2022). Green Democracy: Political Imaginaries of Environmental Movements. In grasso, maria & Giugni, Marco (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements. Routledge. ISSN 9780367428785.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret (2022). Climate Change and Green Democratic Transformations. In Bornemann, Basil; Knappe, Henrike & Nanz, Patrizia (Ed.), The Handbook of Democracy and Sustainability. Routledge. ISSN 9780367109585.
• Abrams, Benjamin; Büttner, Sebastian & Machin, Amanda Margaret (2021). Identity and Brexit: Five Readings of the Referendum. In Machin, Amanda Margaret & Meidert, Nadine (Ed.), Political Identification in Europe: Community in Crisis. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. ISSN 9781839821257. p. 147–160.
• Ruser, Alexander & Machin, Amanda Margaret (2020). Rally around the Flag? The Far-Right Response to Covid-19. Green European Journal.
• Machin, Amanda Margaret & Wagener, Oliver (2019). The Nature of Green Populism. Green European Journal.
• Ruser, Alexander & Machin, Amanda Margaret (2019). Nationalising the Climate: Is the European Far Right turning Green? Green European Journal. Show summary

  With the issue of climate now on the political centre stage, parties across the spectrum can no longer afford to ignore it and must position themselves, the far right included. Looking to Germany, Austria and Italy, researchers Amanda Machin and Alexander Ruser bust the myth that far-right parties across Europe share a stance of climate denialism and examine the rise of ‘climate nationalism’, asking what the far right’s surge in the 2019 European elections might mean for climate politics. Studying the positions of far-right parties on climate, they argue, helps us to move beyond a technocratic framing to put the politics back into the discussion.

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