Green Citizenship and the Social Economy

Contemporary green political theory has paid little attention to the role that economic organisations can play in the cultivation and expression of green citizenship. This paper argues that the ethos and structure of organisations within the social economy – for example, cooperatives, mutuals and voluntary associations – appear particularly well suited for the development of relevant dispositions, skills and capacities. The associative reform of both the welfare state and the for-private-profit economy therefore offers a challenging and creative strategy for enhancing green citizenship. Citizenship has only recently become the subject of systematic attention within green political theory (Smith, 1998; Barry, 1999; Dobson, 2003). This is surprising given the significance placed on themes such as individual responsibility, empowerment, participation and communal politics within green academic and activist literature. One of the key questions facing theorists is the extent to which our political, social and economic institutions need to be restructured in order to support the cultivation and expression of green citizenship – understood here as the recognition of duties in relation to the environment and taking responsibility to act in line with those duties. Green citizenship does not emerge fully formed – rather it needs to be cultivated and developed in different institutional settings. This article focuses on the potential contribution of one group of institutions engaged in economic and productive activities – the social economy. The question of economic organisation and its relationship with practices of citizenship remains an underdeveloped area of research, but one that is necessary given the pressing need to think through alternative forms of green political economy. Arguably, one of the reasons why systematic attention to forms of economic organisation has been absent is because contemporary green political thought has recently been dominated by theories of deliberative democracy and ecological modernisation. The deliberative turn in green politics has predominantly analysed the relationship between forms of political participaCorrespondence Address: Politics and International Relations, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Email: [email protected] Environmental Politics, Vol. 14, No. 2, 273 – 289, April 2005 ISSN 0964-4016 Print/1744-8934 Online/05/020273–17 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/09644010500055175 tion and the achievement of environmental sustainability. For green citizenship, the attraction of deliberative democracy is clear – deliberation offers an effective mechanism through which citizens might be induced to internalise environmental duties. Theories of deliberative democracy promote a form of civic engagement that encourages the public articulation, defence and revision of judgements – conditions under which citizens will encounter and reflect upon ecological knowledge and values and are more likely to internalise these in their judgements (Goodin, 1996). As Robyn Eckersley argues: Public spirited deliberation is the process by which we learn of our dependence on others (and the environment) and the process by which we learn to recognize and respect differently situated others (including nonhuman others and future generations) (Eckersley, 2000: 120). Although the green deliberative literature rests on and promotes an attractive account of citizenship, a significant question remains about the extent to which the deliberative turn can lead to the promotion of green citizenship throughout society. In practice, how many citizens are going to be actively engaged in deliberative processes? Current work on the practical instantiation of deliberation tends to focus on participation in either deliberative institutions of the state (Smith, 2003) or networks of oppositional civil society (Dryzek, 2000). Such political activity will be limited for the majority of citizens. The cultivation and expression of green citizenship needs to be a broader project than simply institutionalising deliberation within the political process. As John Barry rightly suggests: Although green citizenship is politically based, the activities, values and principles it embodies are not confined to the political sphere as conventionally understood. The virtues one would expect to be embodied in this green form of responsible citizenship, as a form of moral character, would be operative in other spheres of human action and roles (Barry, 1999: 228). Current work on deliberative democracy provides a challenge to the existing structure of political institutions, but it has generally remained silent on other areas of activity – in particular alternative forms of economic organisation. Given that citizens tend to spend much more time in and engaged with economic organisations, perhaps the deliberative literature has averted our gaze from highly significant locations of activity. Discussions of the economy within green political thought tend to be dominated by theories of ecological modernisation (Hajer, 1995; Christoff, 1996; Gouldson & Murphy, 1997). Unfortunately, the dominant accounts of ecological modernisation have little or nothing to say about green citizenship and certainly nothing to say about the structure of economic organisations – the for-private-profit corporation is taken as given. There is certainly little 274 G. Smith