Green citizenship: a review and critique

A closer look inside collaborative action: civic engagement and participation in community energy initiatives

“…Building on this line of inquiry is the idea of green citizenship and its impact on civic participation and engagement (Dean, 2001;Smith, 2005;Dobson and Bell, 2006;Gabrielson, 2008;Gabrielson and Parady, 2010;Martinsson and Lundgvist, 2010;Trachtenberg, 2010;Merritt and Stubbs, 2012;Scerri and Magee, 2012;Bell, 2013;MacGregor, 2014). A special concept in this context is that of energy citizenship in the sense of a "Climate Citoyen" who is actively engaged both on the individual level, where the citizen focuses on energy efficiency in the household or workplace, and on the political level, where he or she engages in local, national or international activities related to climate policies, and further makes commitments to action groups, organisations or energy co-operatives that strive for environmentally friendly energy usage (Devine-Wright, 2007;Seyfang, 2007).…”

Democratic Ideals and the Politicization of Nature

“…As difficult as it may be, the current attempt to close these conversations down or limit their ability to learn from each other must be resisted by green citizens and for green citizenship if its political promise is to begin to be realized. Teena Gabrielson (2008) has also critiqued the instrumental focus of green citizenship claiming it narrows the promise of citizenship, but unlike my attempt to limit the realm of citizenship in order to resist the loss of citizenship's promise her intent is to expand the realm of citizenship to include noninstrumental aspects of political ecology. Early on in her article Gabrielson refers to van Steenbergen who was one of the first to speak about ecological citizenship.…”

“…So we must never forget to ask the question why citizenship? Gabrielson (2008) asks why citizenship and convincingly argues that citizenship must be given a greater emphasis in the partnership between green thought and political agency and she is without a doubt correct in suggesting such an emphasis will challenge the apparent (ab)use of citizenship as a way to legitimize predetermined green intention, but I do not see a widening of the discourse as the best response, at least not from a politics-first perspective. If anything, the best response may well be a more realistic expectation of the role ecological citizenship might play within the broad and diverse green public sphere.…”

“…Noninstrumental issues should not only be included in ecological citizenship's focus but also they should replace the instrumentalism that does and always will obscure its political promise. Assuming, as Gabrielson (2008) does, noninstrumental issues can exist alongside instrumental ones within a school of thought littered with crisis talk and apocalyptic scenario is an assumption that I am unwilling to make. It is simply too difficult to gain an audience and create meaningful political moments with those who speak in the language of crisis and apocalypse.…”

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

“…Corporeal citizenship builds on, and is in conversation with, scholarship on ecological, environmental, or green citizenship, which aims to bring together civic or public engagement with environmental theory and activism (MacGregor 2006, Gabrielson 2008, Hobson 2013. While the concept of ecological citizenship is contested and evolving, it tends to go in either of two directions: towards the promotion of civic virtue through collective challenge of neoliberal, individualizing governance structures, or towards empowering the 'responsible consumer' who is called upon to shop her way out environmental problems.…”