Name and Surname
Balša Lubarda
Affiliation
University of Berkeley/Institute for Social Research “DAMAR”
Contact email
balsalubarda@gmail.com lubarda@berkeley.edu
Short Biography
Balša Lubarda is a visiting researcher and lecturer (Fulbright) at the University of Berkeley (USA), as well as the director of the DAMAR Research Institute (Montenegro), and the director of the Research Unit for Ideology at the British Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). He received his doctorate at the Central European University (Hungary/Austria), doing an ethnography of far-right environmental activists. The doctorate was published as a book by Routledge, and his works were also published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as Environmental Values, Environmental Politics, Sociologia Ruralis, etc.
Research abstract
Environmental protests in Serbia marked the growth of interest in the energy transition and the normative assumptions of a sustainable life in harmony with nature. This growth in interest also marked the exit of environmental protection or, as it is popularly called, “ecology” from the sphere of sectoral public policies into the field of interest of the wider public. These processes lead to the inevitable politicization of apparently technical or scientific concepts, such as “environmental protection”, “ecology”, “sustainability”, “green transition”, etc. In their activism, actors give new meanings to these and other concepts, tying them to their own worldviews and political ideologies. This research will aim at mapping the various currents of ecological thought present in activism in Serbia, with a special focus on the issues of energy and energy transition. Research methods for data collection are qualitative interviews and a questionnaire with environmental activists. For data analysis, frame analysis (interviews) and quantitative methods (questionnaires) will be combined. Although descriptive in principle, the research assumes the identification of key factors that can explain the so-called “bridging frames”, i.e. identification of “schemes of frames”, which in the end can open space for new cooperation or antagonism. Although it is primarily focused on Serbia and on the possibility of developing public policies and communication strategies that will adequately address the social, economic and socio-political aspects of the ecological transition in this country, the goals of this research may also be relevant for the wider region of the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. given the shared contextual particulars.