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Virginia Tech

India's Temporal Imaginaries of Climate Change, 1988-2018

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The advent of climate change promises extreme disruptions to existing concepts of political time, namely the distinction between the modes of time adopted by modern nation-states, natural time, and the everyday life of human beings. Yet the nation-state remains the primary actor through which climate politics is shaped. India is one the most prominent actors in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and also likely to be one of the most climate-affected societies moving forward. Over the 30-year history of India's engagement at the UNFCCC, there has been a shift from constructing a secular, past-oriented imaginary to a sacred, future-oriented one. The state has fostered these temporal imaginaries through three discursive registers: international politics, climate science, and conservative Hindu ideology. These imaginaries act as a heuristic tool with which to analyze the changing dynamics of political temporality in an era of rapid and extreme climate change.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought
Department dc:contributor.department
Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Szczurek, Anthony
Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Kalyan, Rohan
  • Zanotti, Laura
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Luke, Timothy W.
  • Schmitthenner, Peter L.

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:19105
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/88984

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Szczurek, Anthony. India's Temporal Imaginaries of Climate Change, 1988-2018. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/88984