Social and Environmental Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0969-160X (Print) 2156-2245 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reaj20

‘What if Technology Worked in Harmony with

Nature?’ Imagining Climate Change Through Prius
Advertisements

Juergen H. Seufert

To cite this article: Juergen H. Seufert (2016) ‘What if Technology Worked in Harmony with
Nature?’ Imagining Climate Change Through Prius Advertisements, Social and Environmental
Accountability Journal, 36:3, 203-204, DOI: 10.1080/0969160X.2016.1235400

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969160X.2016.1235400

Published online: 26 Sep 2016.

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 SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY JOURNAL, 2016
VOL. 36, NO. 3, 203–208

ARTICLE REVIEWS

‘What if Technology Worked in Harmony with Nature?’ Imagining Climate

Change Through Prius Advertisements
Garland, J., Huising, R., and Struben, J.
Organization, 2013, 20 (5), pp. 679–704.

Our understanding of climate change, caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas emissions in the
atmosphere, is potentially influenced by advertisements. This is where Garland et al. (2013) pos-
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ition their study of Prius and comparative Canadian advertisements. Content, compositional
and interpretive analyses helped to extract a visual rhetoric, drawing on cultural resources
while inhabiting major themes of culture as part of the potential knowledge creation.
The authors elaborate on examples of text and graphical design in the Prius advertisements
to illustrate ‘how the advertisements elicit co-creation by explicitly and implicitly inviting the
viewer to imagine’ (684). While the advertisements, in general, make viewers believe that
hybrid cars are not without emissions, hybrids offer at least a less polluting option. To
channel imaginative processes, three themes of nature, harmony and agency are added in
each advertisement: nature is depicted as controlled with hyper-realities expressing a future
in which nature is improved and free of climate change. Therefore, Prius advertising suggests
a harmony between technology and nature as option to ‘avert’ climate change. Moreover, the
advertisements purposefully lack an agent to commit the polluting act of driving to avoid a
reflection and potential guilt.
The authors argue that the textual and graphical features of the advertisements invite the
viewer to ‘co-create its meaning’ (694) and viewers’ understanding of climate change. On the
one hand, related ambiguities allow for connections to ‘social, scientific and technical aspects
of reality’ (694) in the knowledge process. On the other hand, they disconnect the viewer from
the actual challenges of climate change and ‘neutralise potentially critical viewers’ (698).
Language, images and practices might have the persuasion to influence our understanding
of climate change. Especially, the aesthetic behind hyper-realities can make consumers
reflect on their actions. The authors identify the limitations of their study as follows: the
sample size is small and does not include other countries; there is a focus on print media
while other advertising channels are neglected; the effects of the analysed symbolic systems
on viewers have not been tested and different viewers could perceive the advertising differ-
ently; and, lastly, there is a narrow focus on the symbolic realm which excludes other social
and material factors involved in creating our understanding of climate change.
Accounting research could explore the opportunities of hyper-realities and ambiguities to
impact our understanding of climate change and to trigger reflection on our behaviour.
Annual reports, SEA disclosure and other stakeholder communication convey messages
which could be viewed through the lenses suggested by the authors.
However, from my point of view, this article misses a critical edge: primarily, ‘greenness’ is a
selling point for Toyota and not a selfless endeavour. The link to a potential cost–benefit analy-
sis of customers (‘does it pay to be/drive green’) in their purchase decision is neglected. I see
the danger that business as usual is perpetuated by this advertisement while we actually need
a change in behaviour to curb climate change. The suggested hyper-realities underpin the
status quo of injustice of climate change that the rich countries can get away with their
 204 ARTICLE REVIEWS

emission intensive (dirty) behaviour while poor countries have to pay the price (see Beck 2010).
A deconstructivist approach à la Derrida may reveal the underlying, inherent meanings of this
article and Toyota’s advertisement.

Reference
Beck, U. 2010. “Remapping Social Inequalities in an Age of Climate Change: For a Cosmopolitan Renewal of
Sociology.” Global Networks 10 (2): 165–181.

Juergen H. Seufert
University of Nottingham Ningbo China
juergen.seufert@nottingham.edu.cn
© 2016 Juergen H. Seufert
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969160X.2016.1235400
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Enhancing Stakeholder Interaction Through Environmental Risk Accounts

K. Saravanamuthu and C. Lehman.
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2013, 24 (6), pp. 410–437

The purpose of this article is to describe a case study of using catchment-oriented accounting
to generate social learning. The authors propose a unique risk assessment tool inspired by the
Sanskrit word satyagraha and coupled with an unusual graphic to promote learning and the
construction of new meanings. Following Ulrich Beck’s risk society thesis, that increased aware-
ness of risks and uncertainties can lead to a more reflexive and sustainable society, the authors’
purpose is to generate discourse about elements of sustainability between stakeholders within
the same water-catchment area.
Highlighting the global-local tensions innate to globalisation as they arise in the production
and reading of accounts, the paper takes an activist stance on accounting. The authors equate
accounts with action, and present a vision that accounting can and should mobilise infor-
mation connectivity from the tissues of small, specific ecosystems through to a global meta-
level. They present their local, catchment-oriented example as a humble beginning towards
such connectivity, proffering it as an embodied example of overcoming a situation in which
individuals feel alienated by the illusory sheen of objective science. The idea is that local knowl-
edge could be collaboratively constructed by stakeholders in order to generate indicators and
metrics that are more accessible and relevant than those provided by the default authority of
science, the traditional gatekeeper of environmental discourse.
Social learning in the paper is defined along lines of becoming aware of competing perspec-
tives, sharing problem identification, appreciating complex causality of hazards, becoming
motivated to work collaboratively, and also containing elements of trust and informal connec-
tion. I think that a tool to measure and invigorate learning in this way is a thoughtful response
to the alienation posed by the risk society, and a genuine step towards more adaptive manage-
ment. The authors modestly conclude that their tool was at least partially effective at achieving
some social learning in this direction.
All of this makes sense to me and deep reading of the theory moves fluidly with the authors’
review of the relevant accounting literature. The inspiration of risk discourse as action is suit-
ably positioned, and eloquently heralds Gray’s vision of emancipatory accounts (Gray 2002).