From water source protection to future village: environmental prefigurative politics and technologies of the self in China’s Qingshan village

Abstract

ABSTRACT A growing body of research focuses on individual environmental consciousness as an alternative and complement to regulatory and economic policy strategies for sustainable development. However, existing studies failed to explain the complex associations between individual environmental consciousness and conservation practices. This study constructs a framework of environmental prefigurative politics - technologies of the self (EPP-TS) to investigate how the mobilization of technologies of the self can lead to the subjectivization of individual environmental consciousness, thus enabling environmental prefigurative politics to shape specific conservation practices. First, this study argues that a range of technologies of the self, including discursive, incentive, and disciplinary technologies, are mobilized to subjectivize individual environmental consciousness. Second, the subjectivization of individual environmental consciousness prompts and institutionalizes the improvisation of environmental prefigurations, embodying the political imaginaries and power structures that environmental prefigurative politics aspire to realize in society. Third, environmental prefigurative politics also influence the development pathways and situated agency of nature conservation, thereby shaping specific conservation practices. Finally, this study also critiques the environmental prefigurative politics under authoritarian environmentalism, as it also reinforces authoritarian power in subjectivizing individual environmental consciousness.