Citizens, Consumers and Spaces of Environmental Knowledge
Call for Papers:
RGS-IBG Conference, Manchester 26-28 August 2009
Organisers: Justin Spinney and David Evans, University of Surrey (UK)
Sponsored by the Climate Change Research Group (CCRG)
In contemporary debates concerning potential solutions to environmental
problems, in particular climate change, the twin pillars of citizenship and
consumption are becoming ever more entwined (Slocum, 2004; Soper and
Trentmann, 2008). Accordingly governments, businesses and NGOs are
positioning the ‘citizen-consumer’ at the centre of their strategies to align the
public good of pro-environmental behaviour with the maintenance of a
consumer society. Whilst these actors and networks work to unite
environmental solutions with practices and processes of consumption; there
are those for whom the citizen consumer is a problematic figure. For instance,
there are many who argue that consumerism is not a long term solution to
environmental problems (Redclift, 1996) just as there are those who argue
that a narrow focus on the individual and notions of ‘rational choice’ overlooks
the ways in which environmentally damaging patterns of consumption are
embedded in everyday social practices (Shove, 2003; Southerton et al, 2004).
Similarly, there are grounds for stating that the citizen-consumer should not
have to assume responsibility for tackling climate change and other global
environmental problems. In either case, environmental understandings are
continually constructed, translated and contested through the intersection of
multiple knowledges, practices and spaces (Burgess et al, 1998; Bickerstaff
and Walker, 2003). Of course, through these processes different actors and
networks have uneven capabilities to influence, inform and contest the
ongoing formation of the citizen-consumer (Couldry, 2004; Fischer, 2000;
Murdoch, 2001).
However, particularly in sustainability and climate change literatures, a
somewhat homogenous and simplistic notion of citizenship and public goods
persists which fails to recognise the multiple ways in which being a ‘good’
citizen can be constructed, interpreted and justified in and through specific
social and cultural contexts (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991; Miller, 1998 2001).
As a result this session seeks to present more nuanced accounts of the
construction and contestation of what it is to be a citizen-consumer, and the
environmental knowledges upon which these identities and justifications are
based. Papers are welcomed that address the following:
• The formation of environmental knowledges as situated
understandings arising through specific social, cultural and institutional
contexts, e.g. domestic, work and policy spaces.
• How environmental citizenship - in particular, assuming responsibility
for the mitigation of climate change - can come into conflict with contrasting
(or for that matter, similar) ideas of being a good citizen and the ways in
which these tensions are negotiated, balanced and justified in practice.
• The ways in which different everyday social and embodied practices
articulate multiple meanings of citizenship.
• Accounts of the citizen–consumer which problematise the concept
through a focus on differences arising from gender, age, class, location etc.
• The role of producers (Warde, 1997) government, NGOs and the
media (Keum et al, 2004) in constructing, validating and contesting
environmental knowledges and how these are understood, translated and even
resisted through the everyday practices of (citizen) consumers.
• The formation of environmental knowledges within different sectors
of business such as product design, marketing, management and industry
analysts (Shove et al 2007).
We welcome theoretical and empirical papers from a range of academic
disciplines, including geography, anthropology, sociology, history and business
studies.
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by Friday the 6th of
February 2009 to Justin Spinney ([log in to unmask]) and David Evans
([log in to unmask])
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