Transformations of the narrative on global climate change in Uruguay

Abstract

Between 2005 and 2009 global climate change increased its media presence in Uruguay and became institutionalized at state level, motivated by the collective experience of extreme weather events and a discursive strategy in the presence of the international agenda that included Uruguayan society in a humanity planetarized and at risk in the face of dangerous climate change of anthropic origin. This article seeks, on the one hand, to show how the climate change narrative has been transformed according to the hegemonic vision of national development from the 1990's to the present. The climate has become an arena of struggle over meanings when it was reintroduced in discussions about the forms of production and consumption. On the other hand, it describes and analyzes the circulation and cognitive accommodation of this narrative already nationalized in particular contexts of social and political use. Compared cases include climate scientists, energy industry workers and artisanal fishermen. The conclusions address the gap between the institutionalized use of the global narrative of climate change and the perceptions of time and climate in people's daily lives and how, at the time of the study, it did not mean an obstacle to the reproduction of ways of life and production.