Paper short abstract:

My research centers the case of Music Declares Emergency, an alliance of roughly 6000 music industry professionals and artists that emerged (and distanced itself) from Extinction Rebellion in 2019. In the group, ‘problem-solving’ technocrats and 'system challenging activists' negotiate strategies.

Paper long abstract:

With my PhD, I am researching how practitioners attempt to transform business as usual within their respective industries to meet the climate goals ratified by their governments in Paris in 2015. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by citizens that major governmental and economic actors have failed to set an emission reduction course that makes a substantial difference. This issue resulted in a wave of protests in 2019. I am studying activists that have altered their methods, have left the streets and have become "embedded" in their industries.

These "embedded activists" or "passionate practitioners" speak up in their companies and advocate for infrastructural and behavioral changes. They position themselves somewhere between visionaries, pressure group and self-empowered "bottom-up" sustainability managers. Many tensions are detectable within these groups; their endeavours make hierarchies and infrastructures visible.

 The meetings of these action groups create spaces where 'System Change' meets 'Green Transformation / Business'. The case of "embedded activists" that my PHD will look at, is Music Declares Emergency, an international alliance of artists and music industry professionals that originated in the UK. It is a heterogeneous group of practitioners spread across 14 countries and four continents that agree on an objective (the rapid reduction of CO₂ or "Net Zero" by 2030) but that need to negotiate a common strategy, a process marked by trial and error. Their proposed measures shed light not only on imaginaries of 'the future', but they also reveal imaginaries of 'the problem' at hand.