On the making of the environmental citizen

Debates about how to foster green/environmental citizenship have been central to environmental politics research in the past few decades. While a great deal of this work draws its central tenets from liberal political theory more recently researchers have adopted broadly post-structural analytical frameworks to explore how diverse forms of (environmental) citizenship are formed and enacted. But what can and does this ‘green governmentality’ literature contribute to our understanding of environmental citizenship? In exploring such a question, some key environment and citizenship debates, including the recent post-structural turn, are examined. Research into domestic sustainable consumption and public deliberation around climate change is drawn upon to outline how both forms of intervention worked to produce incomplete and conditional expressions of intent and commitment that could be viewed as environmental citizenship. Green governmentality analysis thus highlights some conceptual and empirical blind spots in prevailing environmental citizenships frameworks whilst raising further questions about appropriate and effective public intervention mechanisms.