The acceleration of climate change has revealed a presumably surprising link between environmental discourse and nationalist
movements that immediately caught researchers' attention. Since the early 2000s,
so-called eco-nationalism has been studied from different angles and in different contexts. However, outside of a European and
predominantly democratic context, the impact of eco-nationalism remains understudied. This project addresses this gap in the
literature by comparing the convergence of environmental rhetoric and nationalism in the legitimation strategies and national identity
construction of three different political regimes in predominantly Chinese-dominated societies: China, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Through a comparative perspective and a qualitative research design, this project intends to shed new light on the emergence of green
nationalism - a form of nationalism that supports national sustainability - under authoritarian, hybrid, and democratic regimes,
respectively China, Singapore, and Taiwan. The aim, then, is to understand the extent to which nations of different political
systems in the Sinophone world cultivate and possibly co-opt environmental discourses in order to achieve broader goals of national
identity and international legitimacy. From a theoretical point of view, the project will focus on the concept of green nationalism
and a constructivist perspective of "imagined communities" – a term coined by Benedict Anderson (2006). Foregrounding on
the relationship between environmental discourses and claims to legitimacy, the project aims to fill a gap in the literature on
the impact of green nationalism outside of the European context and in different political regimes, a topic that has not previously
been explored in the literature.
Web site: https://repi.phisoc.ulb.be/fr/membres/corps-scientifique/postdoctorant-e-s/virginie-arantes