ArticleSocial studies of science2023
When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics.
Article in Social studies of science, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Metabolo-politics: Bovine Metabolism and Environmental Biopower.Theory, culture & society · 2026Article
- Environmental performativity: How natures are made.Progress in environmental geography · 2025Article
- Ruminant livestock and climate change: critical discourse moments in mainstream and farming sector news media.Agriculture and human values · 2025Article
- Digital twins and the digital logics of biodiversity.Social studies of science · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
The metrics used in environmental management are performative. That is, the tools deployed to classify and measure the natural world interact with the things they were designed to observe. The idea of performativity also captures the way these interactions shape or distort the governance activities that metrics are used to inform. The performativity of metrics reveals how mundane practices of measurement and auditing are inscribed with substantial power. This has proven particularly true for the global warming metrics, like GWP100, that are central to the management of anthropogenic climate change. Greenhouse gases are materially heterogenous, and the metrics used to commensurate their various warming impacts influence the distribution of both culpability and capital in climate policy and markets. The publication of a new warming metric, GWP* (or GWP Star), has generated a modest scientific controversy, as a diverse cast of stakeholders recognize this performativity seek to influence the metrological regime under which they live. We analyse this controversy, particularly as it unfolded in the fractious discourse around sustainable food and farming, to develop the concept of
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