Lecture by Dr. Alejandro Esguerra

Tue, November 4, 2025; 6:15 pm

SH 4.104, Seminarhaus, Westend Campus, Goethe University (directions)

No registration needed

Abstract
The Politics of Beginning studies how a novel form of governing the global forest has been negotiated into existence. Empirically, I trace the formation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), now the most authoritative private organization for forestry certification. To explore how timber merchants, indigenous communities, and social and environmental NGOs engaged in private institution-making, I work with the concept of translation developed in Actor-Network Theory—a process in which knowledge about governance is continuously recontextualized. I develop a dramaturgical methodology with metaphors of theatre such as stage, script, and performance. This methodology can be used to analyze the ways in which activists and others translate knowledge about governance and the practices of inclusion and exclusion that appear during this process. The environmental crisis requires a transformation in the ways societies value and govern human–nature relations, and The Politics of Beginning reveals the conditions under which even formerly antagonistic actors start developing a common political project.

Bio
Alejandro Esguerra is post-doc at the working group Political Sociology, University Bielefeld. He obtained his PhD in International Relations at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has researched and taught at Cornell University, UFZ Leipzig, the Centre for Global Cooperation Research Duisburg as well as the University of Potsdam. His work is concerned with global environmental politics, especially the role of environmental expertise, private authority, and objects and translation in International Relations theory. Among his recent publications are with Tobias Berger ‘World Politics in Translation: Power, Relationality and Difference in Global Cooperation’ (Routledge 2018), ‚Future Objects: Tracing the Socio-Material Politics of Anticipation‘ (Sustainability Science 2019) and with Sandra van der Hel ‚Participatory Designs and Epistemic Authority in Knowledge Platforms for Sustainability‘ (Global Environmental Politics, 2021).