Scott Leatham

I'm interested in how the fundamental drivers of social/ecological crises are reproduced and legitimised in society, and the social/environmental justice struggles that emerge to challenge these power structures. As a result, I often focus on the reproduction of market fundamentalist, anthropocentric, and (neo)colonial value systems within environmental movements. This means I'm often concerned with greenwash, false solutions, and the co-option of radical imaginaries in ways that prevent new worlds becoming. My current research engages with queer theory and (Western) degrowth imaginaries to critique the neoliberalisation, anti-radicalism, and (more recently) growth-dependency of queer acceptance discourse, arguing for a radical engagement between post-growth economics and queer theory.    

My PhD (at De Montfort University, UK and partly hosted by Liaoning University, China) was on contrasting neoliberal sustainable development discourse with the emergent discourse of 'ecological civilization' in China - focusing on its deployment in international spaces. This was mainly understood around the contrasting constructions of commodification, consumerism, and the environmental-consumer subject, winning an Award for Contributions to Research. 

I'm primarily a discourse analyst, using both archival and "field" approaches to analyse non-solicited (i.e. naturally occuring) discourse - though I will often triangualte this with other methods, including open interviews.

My current research focuses on three broad areas: 

• Queer theory and degrowth (together with Jo Becker, Universidade de Vigo). This explores two arguments relating to the need for radical engagement between degrowth imaginaries and queer theory, and what lessons can be learned from queer organising in marginal spaces. 
• Critiquing the dominance of narrowly defined, anthropocentric modes of valueing and 'knowing' nature, and how queer, pluriversal modes of thinking requires, to some extent, the acceptance of 'not knowing' to contend with the epistemic violence of an ever-expanding capitalistic and anthropocentric agency over nature. 
• The articulation and pursuit of a 'just transition' in Scotland. I contrast this discourse with both the radical requirements of present socio-economic crises as well as both codified and emergent principles of environmental justice.