Corporeal citizenship: rethinking green citizenship through the body

Abstract

Building upon the work of green theorists and corporeal and material feminists, the epistemological construal of contemporary approaches to green citizenship is challenged, and the more ontological approach of 'corporeal citizenship' is advocated. With this term an understanding of citizenship is advanced that is not only embodied and attentive to the particularities of human difference but also one that recognises humans' inescapable embeddedness in differing social and natural (discursive and material) contexts that shape subjectivity and condition our collective agency. Bodies are envisioned as porous but resistant, plural and connected in an effort to unsettle the nature/culture dualism and broaden the range and scope of issues considered environmental. This approach also offers the opportunity to rethink traditional conceptions of agency and citizenship practices while providing a foundation for greater cooperation with advocates of environmental justice.

‘Wannabe Toxic-Free?’ From precautionary consumption to corporeal citizenship

“…Bringing together the work of material feminists with environmental political theory, Gabrielson and Parady (2010) offer the concept of corporeal citizenship as a way to address what they view as the limitations of 'green citizenship' approaches. These authors argue that green citizenship theories are based on notions of autonomous human subjects who have the knowledge and the ability to participate in appropriate 'green' activities.…”

“…These authors argue that green citizenship theories are based on notions of autonomous human subjects who have the knowledge and the ability to participate in appropriate 'green' activities. According to Gabrielson and Parady (2010), this approach necessarily excludes some people from being able to engage fully as citizens in environmental action as a consequence of unequal social locations. In other words, only those who are in a position to know what a 'good green life' entails can fully participate.…”

“…have shaped bodies differently. Attending to corporeality also means recognizing that the material environment shapes and influences self-understanding (Gabrielson and Parady 2010). A framework based on the notion of corporeal citizenship takes the natural world and environment as part of the political domain and recognizes its transcorporeality with human political citizens (see also Sandilands 1999).…”

“…MacKendrick (2014, p. 721), detailing the toxics-avoidance techniques undertaken by pregnant women and new mothers in Toronto, underscored this worry, demonstrating how 'precautionary consumption belongs to a classed performance of good motherhood'. Gabrielson and Parady (2010) argue that attending to the interplay between bodies and the environment foregrounds the diverse materiality of bodies and the ways in which various social modalities (e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, ability etc.)…”

“…This is not to say that flow is unconstrained: there are mediating membranes operating on biological, social and political planes (Alaimo 2010). In the end, we argue that Gabrielson and Parady's (2010) conceptualization of corporeal citizenship offers a number of strategic advantages, as a model by which to frame social and political resistance to the risks posed by the presence of toxics in everyday environments, because it promotes a positioning of the subject as interconnected to wider communities, ecologies and economies. Corporeal citizenship has the potential to allow ecological citizens to expand the sphere over which they exercise ethical and political responsibility; as such, it responds to MacGregor's call for scholars to articulate alternatives so that the concept of green citizenship might be rehabilitated (2016).…”