Abstract
To advance understandings of how neoliberal ideologies are linked to peoples' everyday environmentalist practices, this article examines processes through which green neoliberal subjects are made. Bringing together critical perspectives on green neoliberalism and symbolic interactionist perspectives on identities, I develop the concept of green neoliberal identity work, a mechanism through which neoliberal environmentalist subjects are produced. I use environmentalists' promotions and uses of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) as a case study, and employ mixed qualitative methods and grounded theory analysis. Data were collected in North Carolina through interviews, participant observation, and texts. The data reveal four generic patterns of green neoliberal identity work: celebrations and renunciations of particular technologies, inclusive-talk, performing moral math, and technological progress-talk. These patterns show that framing green neoliberal subject formation through the lens of identity work illuminates how these subjects form themselves through micro-level social processes, and opens up different ways of thinking about resistance.Keywords: environmentalism, neoliberalism, identity work, subjectivities, identities
Highlights
The question of how people become different kinds of environmentalists is important to building more sustainable communities
Based on what is already known about these neoliberal environmentalist subjectivities, I argue that the consumption of things within neoliberal logics of free markets, private property, and individualized action is central to this identity construction; this assumption motivates the choice of case study
Framing environmental subject formation in terms of five generic micro-level processes of green neoliberal identity work has two main implications: 1) it adds to our understanding of how people become environmentalists, showing some of the micro-level processes through which green neoliberal ideologies are linked to everyday neoliberal environmentalist practices; 2) it can help scholars and activists to better understand resistance to neoliberal logics
Summary
The question of how people become different kinds of environmentalists is important to building more sustainable communities. The objective of the present study is to contribute to analyses of the processes through which neoliberal ideologies are linked to everyday neoliberal environmentalist practices, a topic that is not yet fully understood (Agrawal 2005: 210; Barnett et al 2008), at the micro-level of everyday social interactions To study these processes, this research is focused on environmentalists' meaning-making, promotions, and uses of the energy efficient Compact Fluorescent Light bulb (CFL). Framing environmental subject formation in terms of these five micro-level processes can help scholars to better understand the mechanisms through which neoliberal ideologies become linked to everyday environmentalist practices It can help researchers and activists to better understand resistance to neoliberal logics among environmentalists, by suggesting what 'critical green identity work' might encompass, and the ways that the same object – even if it appeared to be quintessentially neoliberal at the outset – can be used to make identities differently
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