Following Michel Foucault, writing on ecogovernmentality focuses on how government agencies,
in combination with producers of expert knowledge, construct “The
Environment.” This construction is viewed both in terms of the creation
of an object of knowledge and a sphere within which certain types of
intervention and management are created and deployed to further the
government's larger aim of managing the lives of its constituents. This
governmental management is dependent on the dissemination and internalization
of knowledge/power among individual actors. This creates a decentered
network of self-regulating elements whose interests become integrated
with those of the State.
Ecogovernmentality is part of the broader area of political ecology. It can be situated within the ongoing debates over how to balance concern with socio-natural relationships with attention to the actual environmental impact of specific interactions. The term is most useful to authors like Bryant, Watts and Peet who argue for the importance of a phenomenology of nature that builds from post-structuralist concerns with knowledge, power and discourse. In addition, it is of particular use to geographers because of its ability to link place based socio-environmental phenomena with the non-place based influences of both national and international systems of governance. Particularly, for studies of environmental changes that extend beyond the borders one particular region, ecogovernmentality can prove a useful analytical tool for tracing the manifestations of specific policy across scales ranging from the individual, the community, the state and on to larger structures of international environmental governance.
Ecogovernmentality is part of the broader area of political ecology. It can be situated within the ongoing debates over how to balance concern with socio-natural relationships with attention to the actual environmental impact of specific interactions. The term is most useful to authors like Bryant, Watts and Peet who argue for the importance of a phenomenology of nature that builds from post-structuralist concerns with knowledge, power and discourse. In addition, it is of particular use to geographers because of its ability to link place based socio-environmental phenomena with the non-place based influences of both national and international systems of governance. Particularly, for studies of environmental changes that extend beyond the borders one particular region, ecogovernmentality can prove a useful analytical tool for tracing the manifestations of specific policy across scales ranging from the individual, the community, the state and on to larger structures of international environmental governance.
Resource management and the state
Work done by Rutherford, on US Environmental Impact Assessments,
and by Agrawal on local forest governance in India, are examples of
this method of analysis. Both illustrate how the production of specific
types of expert knowledge (statistical models of pollution,
or the economic productivity of forests) coupled with specific
technologies of government (the EIA assessment regime or local Forest
Stewardship Councils) can bring individual interest in line with those
of the state. This, not through the imposition of specific outcomes,
but by creating frameworks that rationalizes behavior in particular ways and involve individuals in the process of problem definition and intervention.
Within a geographical context, this type of analysis provides
insight into how territory is brought under state control, and how the regulation of human interaction with this territory is achieved. Focusing on the evolution of techniques of cartography, systems of natural classification, and early attempts at scientific resource management
in the 18th and 19th centuries, Braun (2000, 2003) and Scott (1998)
show how new systems of knowledge extend systems of governmentality into
the natural world. Fundamental to this analysis is a connection between the abstract utilitarian
logic employed by states and the shape of the territory under their
control. In Scott, for example, measuring nature in terms of concepts of
production and natural resources “allowed the state to impose that
logic on the very reality that was observed” (Scott, 14). The complex
natural systems of a given place are first depicted as simplified sites
of managed resource extraction. As part of this management their ecological composition is changed (through types of planting, harvesting
and extraction) in an attempt to make them resemble more closely the
simplified statistical systems with which they are measured.
In this manifestation, which focuses primarily on the administration of particular resources at a national level, ecogovernmentality is linked to the larger governmental aims identified by Foucault of securing the wellbeing of its inhabitants by managing “a complex composed of men and things” (93). Scott's work on scientific forestry in early modern Europe
shows how the rational models constructed by state foresters were part
of the larger body of statistical knowledge created to manage population and facilitate “taxation, political control, and conscription”
(23). Likewise, Braun's analysis of the Geological Survey of Canada
creates a clear link between methods of measuring and representing the mineral composition
of a territory, and the structures of government put in place both to
create the concept of a unified nation and “to manage individuals, goods
and wealth so as to improve the condition of the state’s population”
(27).
Here, ecogovernmentality is seen as a subset of concerns within
of the larger Foucauldian concept. But implicit in this is an important
claim: that the types of knowledge produced in the process of making
nature intelligible to the state have an important influence on the
evolution of state rationality itself, an influence not adequately
covered in Foucault's original formulation.
They seek to add to Foucault's discussion of population and the
operation of systems of knowledge/power that normalized certain ways of
acting and being and marginalized others. Building on Foucault's brief
references to “resources, means of subsistence [and] the territory with
its specific qualities”(93), their contribution is the investigation of
the parallel systems of measuring and assigning value to the natural
world (the “crop” and the “weed” (Scott, 13) acting as homologies to categories like “sanity” and “insanity”
in Foucault's work) and to give these their due in discussions of the
formation of state rationality and structures of governmentality.
Eco-power and discipline
The
work of Timothy Luke pushes the reach of this concept further, by
envisaging a radically different relationship between governmentality
and ecogovernmentality. He argues that the ecological domain has become
the “ultimate domain of being”(150) the key location for the production
of knowledge and power. Following Foucault, Luke traces this
transformation back to a specific historical moment, the period of the
early 70s encompassing the oil crisis and the détente between the USSR and the US. From these beginnings, environmental considerations grow, fertilized during the 1980s by the formation of international bodies, like the UN World Commission on Environment and Development, and increased concern and awareness over ecological limits to human development.
The end result is the “environmentalization” of the production and
exercise of knowledge and power. Reversing the earlier focus on the
integration of environmental knowledge into broader state projects of socio-economic management,
here it is these projects themselves which are reshaped by new forms of
environmental knowledge (specifically the concepts of “ecology” and “sustainability”). It is this new structure that becomes known as Ecogovernmentality.
Luke argues that heightened awareness of social vulnerability to environmental factors coupled with the increased importance of macro-economic competition (rather than Cold-War military confrontation) in geo-political power struggles led to the rise of sustainable development as the synthesis of these two interrelated concerns. The disciplinary power
of governmentality is refigured as “enviro-discipline”, a broader
concept that “expresses the authority of eco-knowledgeable, geo-powered
forces to police the fitness of all biological organisms
and the health of their natural environments” (146). This constitutes
an important expansion of the object of governmental rule and the area
to be managed. Foucault's focus on “population” now includes “all of
life’s biodiversity”
(Luke, 122) and, given the interconnected nature of environmental
systems, states must now seek to extend their control far outside of
their territorial boundaries to ensure the security and productivity of their population (Luke 134).
Uniting both broad and narrow definitions of Ecogovernmentality
is the attention paid to environmental subject formation, or the
creation of environmental subject positions. Definitions of these
subject positions vary from Darrier's (1999) construction of the
environmental subject as a site for resistance to consumerism and the commodification
of the relationship between the individual and the environment, through
Agrawal's broadly neutral concept of “environmentality” which denotes
an acceptance on the part of the individual that nature is an object to
be managed and their accompanying involvement in this process, to Luke's
(1999) assertion that “the environment emerges as a ground for normalizing
individual behavior” that supersedes the previous influences of “the
ethical concerns of family, community and nation” (149). Underlying
these divergent
definitions, is the common claim that the relationship between
individual and environment is key to current analysis of systems of
state management and governmentality.
Ecogovernmentality and climate change
Since about 2002, scholars have analyzed the discourses surrounding global climate change and related policies using ideas from Foucault and from ecogovernmentality.
This subfield or application of ecogovernmentality developed
first by applying Foucauldean thought to analysis of national and
international climate regimes, identifying categories and methodologies
that work particularly well for climate change issues. As the
application of ecogovernmentality to climate change has evolved, the
principles of the theory have also been applied — in appropriately
modified ways — to studies of state and local government as well as
private and nonprofit organizations.
Ecogovernmentality grounded theories and methods of analysis have
also begun to emerge as tools for examining climate change in fields
outside political economy, such as communications and international relations.
Development of ecogovernmentality and climate change studies
As
researchers began to explore the application of ecogovernmentality to
climate change problems and discourses, most studies focused on national
and global scales. For example, an early study by Paul Henman applied
governmentality to Australian national policy and climate change modeling,
concluding that modeling was a technology for rendering climate
governable though it would limit the capacity of government to respond. Sverker Jagers and Johannes Stripple's work published in 2003 identified the importance of non-nation-state actors (NNSAs) in climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and suggested that “private regimes” like the insurance industry may be more successful than national and global power structures in addressing the problem.
Studies applying governmentality to climate change picked up in
frequency in the mid-2000s. Angela Oels’ 2005 paper summarized the
initial forays into governmentality-based analyses for climate change
discourses and suggested that the functioning governmentality of the
issue had shifted since the 1980s, from a biopower-based discourse to one rooted in advanced liberal government.
She demonstrated a method of discourse analysis particularly suited
for addressing climate change, examining objectives, fields of
visibility, technical aspects, forms of knowledge and formation of
identities. Oels also provided some categories into which discourses can
be sorted. These categories were also used by Karin Bäckstrand and Eva
Lövbrand, beginning in 2006 with analysis of tree-planting initiatives
stemming from the Kyoto Protocol.
Their analysis of competing discourses in categories of ecological
modernization, green governmentality, and civic environmentalism
revealed areas of overlap and potential cooperation.
Also in 2006, Maria Carmen Lemos collaborated with Agrawal on a
comprehensive summary of environmental governance studies to that date.
They divided the applications of these studies into two categories:
resource management and climate change. Among other useful insights,
their work provided a clear schematic for classifying new, hybrid forms
of environmental governance and identifying where these forms derive
their power — that is, from combinations of the state, the community,
and the market.
Ecogovernmentality studies beyond global and national regimes
More
recent studies have applied ecogovernmentality precepts to discourses
at state and local levels. Chukwumerije Okereke, Harriet Bulkeley and
Heike Schroeder published a study in 2009 that examined possible
problems of power, relationships, structures, and agency in climate governance at scales other than national or global.
They suggested that examining these issues may help to overcome what
they identify as an “impasse” in governmentality studies of global
environmental problems.
As another example of an ecogovernmentality study of climate
change at a non-global, non-national scale, Bulkeley's 2010 paper
examined network governance, vertical and horizontal power structures,
political economics, the restructuring of the state, and institutional
capacity, all at the urban scale.
Bulkeley argued for the importance of nuanced analyses of government
at non-national, non-global scales as an important field in climate
change governmentality studies.
A survey study from Dallas Elgin, Andrew Pattison and Christopher
M. Weible in 2011 examines analytical capacity regarding climate change
at the (U.S.) state level, concluding that the neoliberal government there is not as “hollowed out” as they expected but still lacks needed analytical capacity.
Emerging influence in other fields
Ecogovernmentality-grounded
studies in climate change are also emerging in fields outside political
economy. For example, Max Boykoff's work analyzing media coverage of climate change in his 2011 book was grounded in discourses analysis along with his perhaps-better-known content analysis methods. Peter Weingart, Anita Engels and Petra Pansegrau published a study using a similar combination of methods in 2000, but Boykoff's work was cited in An Inconvenient Truth
and has received far more scholarly and public attention. Other media
studies scholars have followed Boykoff's lead incorporating discourses
analysis in their work.
In another communications-related study, David Ockwell, Lorraine
Whitmarsh and Saffron O’Neill applied governmentality concepts to a U.K.
government marketing campaign aimed at increasing “green” behaviors in citizens.
In their analysis of why the campaign was ineffective, they identify
regime-based barriers to behavior change, including infrastructure,
financial, and structural barriers.
Chris Methmann has published work on global warming as a form of global governmentality in the field of international relations, citing the carbon market as a means of conducting individual conduct from a global scale.
He concluded that the Clean Development Mechanism of carbon credit
trading has become easily established because it protects “business as
usual” – the established order of power.
Robyn Dowling argued for inclusion of ecogovernmentality perspectives regarding identity formation in the field of human geography in her 2008 paper, which addressed a variety of issues, including climate change.
