Green governmentality and responsibilization: new forms of governance and responses to ‘consumer responsibility’

Abstract

An extensive literature examines political or green consumption, attending to how people make sense of their consumption relative to norms of individual responsibility and pro-environmental behaviour. Similarly, a small but growing literature addresses green governmentality, focusing on new governance forms and responsibilization processes. These two strands seldom meet, resulting in poor understanding of the links between consumption governance and people’s sense-making and actions relative to the moral imperative of being ‘responsible consumers’. We address this weakness by juxtaposing these two strands of literature, improving our understanding of the processes of responsibilization and some of their consequences. We argue that, to understand the effects of this form of governance, we must realize that subjects are not inevitably positioned and predetermined by a hegemonic discourse. At the same time, we must acknowledge that responsibilization processes give rise to compliance and to a range of ambivalences and forms of resistance.