Is There Room for Student Activism at SUM?
By Lars Henning Wøhncke
Abstract
The discussion around limiting air travel at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) has exposed the need for a general conversation about student activism at the Centre. This commentary argues that such a conversation should be based on the recognition of students’ structural position at SUM and in contemporary society as a whole. Failure to do so risks contributing to a looming generational conflict in society at large, the beginnings of which are already becoming faintly visible.
None of us can talk to our parents. By ‘us’ I mean my generation, people born after the Change. You know that thing where you break up with someone and say, It’s not you, it’s me? This is the opposite. It’s not us, it’s them. Everyone knows what the problem is. The diagnosis isn’t hard — the diagnosis isn’t even controversial. It’s guilt: mass guilt, generational guilt. The olds feel they irretrievably fucked up the world, then allowed us to be born into it. You know what? It’s true. That’s exactly what they did. They know it, we know it. Everybody knows it.
– Kavanagh, main character in John Lanchester’s novel The Wall (Lanchester 2019, 55)
The Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) is rightly proud of its environmentalist heritage. Arne Næss’ characteristic profile adorns the main lecture room, and a generous stipend that carries his name is awarded to its foremost students. All new students are tasked with ensuring that Næss’ environmentalist spirit continues to grace the halls of SUM. The Brundtland report’s legacy is the next thing new students are emboldened to personify. Indeed, the expectations with which a new student at SUM is laden can feel a little overwhelming at first. Change the world, challenge the status quo — SUM students learn early that anything less means underselling one’s aspirations.
Motivated by the encouraging speeches and the inspirational curriculum, and not least by UiO’s 2018 climate accounting report,[1] a loose group of SUM students started The Grounded Project. Intending to address the perceived discrepancy between SUM’s advertised ambitions and the extent to which they are being lived up to at the Centre, the project aimed specifically at the biggest piece of the emission pie: academic air travel. The project directed three core demands at SUM’s leadership: 1) collect and publish all travel data from academic travel at SUM on the centre’s website, 2) use ground transportation for all destinations within a radius of 36 hours travel time from Oslo and 3) provide systematic and institutionalized e-conferencing training and support for researchers and staff.[2] The demands were further detailed and explained by flyers, posters and emails.
The project describes itself as a horizontal, non-hierarchical movement where students can spontaneously participate as they want and see fit, an organizational form increasingly popularized in current environmental activism.[3] This mode of organizing soon led to an animated disagreement between SUM’s leadership and its students which appears to remain unreconciled, centering on the issue of personal accountability. This is a pity, considering that all parties seem to agree on the goals, but disagree — and this is the focus of this commentary — on the form the activism has taken.
It would be inappropriate and beside the point to force a partisan narrative of how events regarding The Grounded Project’s demands supposedly unfolded.[4] Instead, this commentary seeks to open a discussion on the underlying conflict over which form student activism at SUM should take in general, who decides this and why. It is unavoidable to reference the discussion around the project’s activism at SUM, but this will be limited to the presumably uncontroversial main fault lines[5] to illustrate a deeper point. The commentary argues that disregarding existing structural power imbalances by unilaterally determining which forms of activist expression are accepted as valid and which are not lays the ground for certain kinds of activism while precluding others. This is then situated in the wider context of a looming, all-defining generational conflict within greater society and what it would take to avert it.
What is Environmental Activism?
Since sustainability and the environment constitute principal research areas for SUM and its students, it seems reasonable to presume that most student activism at SUM would fall into the environmental category. But what does environmental activism mean, exactly? According to the Oxford Dictionary of Human Geography, activism in general terms signifies
The actions of a group of citizens, usually volunteers, who work together to try and redress what they consider to be an unfair or unjust situation. Their activities include campaigning (such as letter writing, marching, and picketing), peaceful marching, civil disobedience, sabotage, or other militant forms of protest. (Rogers, Castree, and Kitchin 2013)
Note that this definition requires a group of people as opposed to individuals. From the reference to unfairness or injustice, it follows that activism seeks to achieve a fairer or more just distribution of a resource or privilege. An important implication of this is that activism tends to come from those in a weaker structural position than the addressee (if this were not the case, there would not be any need for activism). Structural power is an important concept here, and it is in this commentary understood as ‘the power agents have by virtue of their positions within structures’ (Joseph 2011, 639).
Its environmental sub-category, which the Oxford Dictionary of Environment and Conservation lists as eco-activism, is defined as follows:
Direct action designed to raise awareness of, lobby against, or stop particular activities that damage the environment, often at a particular site (such as a planned new road site). (Park and Allaby 2017)
Eco-activism, in seeking to achieve the termination of certain activities to prevent damage to the environment, then, is distinct from ‘conventional’ activism in that it is not primarily redistributive, but of a more subtractive nature.
A working definition of environmental activism thus ought to comprise at least four key elements: 1) the condition of a group of people; 2) the uneven structural power relationship between activists and the addressee(s) which necessitates activism; 3) the specified object which the activism is intended to spare from harm, i.e., the environment; and as a consequence thereof, 4) its subtractive character. Merging the above definitions accordingly, I suggest the following provisional definition of environmental activism: actions designed by a group of citizens, usually volunteers, to raise awareness of or stop particular activities that damage the environment, which are typically carried out by actors with greater structural power.
How Today’s Students Experience Structural Power
Applying the above definition to the example of student activism at SUM — given that the activism is local and enclosed within a defined system of hierarchy — one can easily identify the structural power imbalance: students direct their activism at actors who are also the gatekeepers to their careers through their formal control over the evaluation of academic results and their informal connections in professional networks. These actors thereby have significant influence on students’ professional fates. It is secondary whether or not this dependency is actualized; the mere organizational configuration of the relationship creates this situation — hence, structural power.
Today’s students are well-acquainted with the phenomenon of structural power. The present-day situation of continually narrowing opportunity constantly reminds them of their position on the receiving end of it. Keep in mind that a typical master’s student today was born in the mid-to-late-90s and was thus thrust into the world of studying and work well after the 2008 financial crisis. The sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has labelled the period that has progressed since then the ‘fourth stage of the post-1970s crisis sequence’ (Streeck 2016, 18), a time defined by an increased insecurity and social entropy that its protagonists have no choice to endure but through ‘coping, hoping, doping and shopping’ (Streeck 2016, 41). This career world varies significantly from what those who now control it experienced when they entered the labor market. Herein lies a fundamental problem that I will return to below.
In practice, this means that today’s students face increasingly fierce and unforgiving competition for a rapidly declining number of slots in the secure state of being that affords the extravagances of permanent work contracts, affordable housing and social security, not to speak of increasingly out-of-reach luxuries like pensions or homeownership. Where previous student generations like that of my own could make mistakes and learn from them, for candidates void of ‘relevant experience’ in current job markets, the one-strike-out rule largely seems to apply.[6] Like a fellow student belonging to that generation related to me recently, ‘it’s like living in a job interview that never ends’.
The current generation of students has also learned that it is futile to address this situation. Even the faintest demands for remedying measures are met with either an irritable reminder of their relative privilege or an outright scolding as entitled snowflakes, depending on whether it comes from the progressive or conservative camp of elders. As the brilliant, late David Graeber put it,
In most wealthy countries, the current crop of people in their twenties represents the first generation in more than a century that can, on the whole, expect opportunities and living standards substantially worse than those enjoyed by their parents. Yet at the same time, they are lectured relentlessly from both left and right on their sense of entitlement for feeling they might deserve anything else. (Graeber 2019, 128)
Student Activism in Closed Systems of Uneven Structural Power
Student activists who want to effect change thus have to navigate this structural power imbalance which permeates their entire lives. This affects which form of activism is chosen. In a situation where students are increasingly dependent on the goodwill of their higher-ups, any activism that aims at the privileges of the upper strata within the same organization exposes itself to the described structural power imbalance. This poses a risk that is perceived by many students as too great to take.
For the record, there is no reason to cast doubt over SUM’s repeated reassurances that such risk estimations are unfounded. But SUM is not an island. As a part of a greater structure, the way SUM is organized is no different from other departments, even if its identity and research topics may well be. Though SUM can hardly be blamed for this, from a student perspective, it inescapably remains a part of ‘the system’.
The only way to moderate this perceived risk, then, is to choose an articulation of activism that does not expose individual participants but rather puts forward a collective approach (which, as noted above, can be said to be an essential feature of activism). But what to do if the organization in which the activism takes place declares such expressions of activism as illegitimate, effectively prohibiting them?
At SUM the conflict has centred around the above question. SUM’s leadership made it clear that it regards personal accountability as a sacred bedrock of academic conduct, and furthermore, as an essential value in the Norwegian style of discourse that is based on egalitarian openness. The Grounded Project’s demands could not be discussed, according to the unwavering position of SUM’s leadership, as long as their authors would not honour this fundamental principle and step into the light with their full names. Offers to discuss matters through assigned delegates from the project and a list of named supporters comprising a majority of SUM students were not able to mitigate this condition.
Subtractive and Additive Activism
This, in turn, poses questions related to which forms of activism are left on the menu in such a situation. A redistributive or subtractive activism that aims at curtailing environmentally damaging privileges through systemic reform can in practice be assumed to mainly affect those with higher seniority (and therefore, typically, power).[7] Consequently, as a result of the described structural power dynamics, such forms of activism are effectively weakened by the requirement of individual identifiability. In this situation, students have the choice between adopting more radical means of activism, thereby significantly raising the stakes for their individual careers, or folding under the pressure applied by the organization’s leadership.
At the same time, insisting on personal identifiability fosters a more deferential form of activism, one that is more ‘CV-friendly’. This kind of activism is additive in that it does not take away or redistribute but rather supplements through actions that do not address present malpractices directly. It more politely suggests better alternatives and, importantly, does not inconvenience the powerholders within the organization. Additive activism is indeed often encouraged, and it has become clear that this is what is meant when students are encouraged to ‘change the world’. ‘Challenge the status quo, but not here’ would be an appropriately modified slogan.
Equally important, additive activism allows the organization to cheer on and parade its student activists, who in turn are reduced to a supporting role in the internal and external marketing of a progressive image. What Benjamin Bowman has identified as an engagement frame in the context of youth activism also applies here:
Young people must engage, but engagement is detached from efficacy. That is to say, young people [are] allocated a voice, but the power to uphold or disregard that voice is held by privileged adults. An engagement approach [i.e., the framing of action as engagement]…constrains young people merely to having a voice, but not power. In the consideration of climate change, it identifies (and celebrates) young people as those who ‘admirably display civic engagement’. (Bowman 2020, 10)
To avert an anticipated misinterpretation, it must be emphasized that a critique of additive activism, for the reasons mentioned above, should not be directed at the students who engage in such activism. Worried that the alternatives could cost them dearly, additive activism often remains the only viable outlet for students’ activist aspirations. Rather, the structural mechanism that allows powerholders to skillfully steer the subtractive element of activism away from their own organization is in focus here. Put differently, limiting the available options for students to additive activism permits powerholders to encourage and capitalize on student activism while simultaneously deflecting aspirations for bottom-up systemic change within their organization.
On the Need to Rejoin Disparate Realities
As has been noted elsewhere, ‘the youths mobilizing in the streets of Europe are the next cohort of university students. They will not only demand action and change from governments, but also from [their universities]’ (Roalkvam 2019). This scenario is already a reality today. It seems like an odd reaction to such demands for an institution like SUM (especially considering its particular history and mandate) to delegate responsibility for systemic change to higher authorities, or an even more abstract political economy of academic labor (Gerhardsen and Hoff 2020). It is all the more surprising when, in parallel, student activism aimed at systemic change from the bottom is hampered by applying to it an antique code of conduct that is no longer compatible with its surrounding reality in that it presupposes a structural egalitarianism that has long since evaporated.
That said, it needs to be emphasized that all parties in the conflict around academic flying at SUM essentially seem to want the same thing. The conflict does not appear to primarily result from diametrically opposed interests. Rather, it is a consequence of the increasingly disparate life-worlds of students and their superiors, as well as the worrying lack of awareness towards this on the part of the latter. By encouraging what has here been called additive activism while striking down on subtractive activism that addresses obvious, systemic excesses within their organization, SUM leaders contribute to this disparity.
The dynamics laid bare here are not unique to SUM, of course. Beyond the SUM microcosm, they make for the ingredients of a veritable generational conflict in society at large that has the potential to worsen considerably over time. As this commentary has tried to argue, the generations graduating post-2008 differ from earlier generations in the conditions they meet when discharged into the labor market in ways that are much more severe than is generally understood. If this is true, little speaks for a reversal of this development. On the contrary, not letting the opportunity of the current pandemic go to waste, ‘many companies are laying off employees and then hiring them back as temporary, part-time, hourly, contract, freelance or contractor workers. So, there is more uncertainty’ (Roubini 2020). The cumulative effects of these changes are likely to surpass the reverberations of 2008, and will — bare massive, structural government intervention into labor markets — be felt everywhere, also in Norway. A post-COVID economy might therefore further deepen the generational rift, possibly to an extent that exceeds anything seen since 1945.
Yet, a future overshadowed by a generational conflict, like the one Lanchester portrays in the excerpt which this commentary opened with, is not inescapable. What is required to avert it is the acceptance of rightful blame directed at ‘the olds’, as his character puts it (and to which I regretfully have to count myself), and to transform it into an intergenerational alliance against ‘the system’ that can be confronted, perhaps not alone, but at least in part by collective behavioural change emanating from the bottom up. If SUM’s intellectual roots can provide sufficient breeding ground for initiatives to that end to spring up, one would think that there could hardly be a better place for such an alliance to emerge.
About the author
Lars Henning Wøhncke is a master’s student at SUM. He holds a previous master’s degree in Scandinavian Studies, Political Science and History from the University of Cologne where he wrote his thesis on Sami land rights in Finnmark. Since then, he has worked in various positions in the transport sector. His current research for his master’s thesis at SUM is concerned with the tensions between Green growth and Degrowth strategies for sustainable urban mobility.
End Notes
[1] https://www.uio.no/om/strategi/miljo/klimaregnskap/uio-klimaregnskap-202018.pdf
[2] https://twitter.com/TheGroundedProj
[3] Perhaps the currently best-known incarnation of this way to organize is Extinction Rebellion: https://rebellion.global/about-us/
[4] I should note that I have previously contributed to the project, though am no longer affiliated with it. The views expressed here are therefore exclusively based on my own curious observations. I do not write on behalf of or represent opinions of the project.
[5] An assessment of these is rooted in the written communication that the SUM leadership has sent to all SUM students’ personal email accounts regarding this matter.
[6] Those with the misfortune of having a foreign-sounding name see their chances to be called in for a job interview lowered by another 25 percent on average from the outset, all else being equal. (Midtbøen and Rogstad 2012). A now well-known, tragic consequence of this is that it has become commonplace for young graduates with minority backgrounds to officially change their names to something that may sound more familiar to the native ears of recruiters and bosses. See, for example, (Norheim 2019).
[7] In the context of academic flying there are strong grounds to assume this to be the case. A recent study of academic air travel in Switzerland found that “The travel footprint increases drastically with researcher seniority, increasing 10-fold from PhD students to professors.”(Ciers et al. 2018). A brief skim of SUM’s senior researcher’s Twitter accounts does not give the immediate impression that this would be much different at SUM. On the interesting phenomenon of above-average air travel emissions from climate change researchers specifically see also (Whitmarsh et al. 2020).
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Ciers, Joachim, Aleksandra Mandic, Laszlo Toth, and Giel Op ’t Veld. 2018. “Carbon Footprint of Academic Air Travel: A Case Study in Switzerland.” Sustainability 11 (1): 80. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010080.
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