Reframing Individual Responsibility for Sustainable Consumption: Lessons from Environmental Justice and Ecological Citizenship

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] While scholars and popular writers often stress individual responsibility as a way of saving nature, there is a growing understanding that “doing one’s bit” may not be enough to address local and global environmental issues. Focusing on the concept of ecological citizenship as a starting point, our paper seeks to explore the concept of ecological citizenship and show how individualized experiences and socially and culturally embedded practices of care for the environment relate to civic engagement. We connect ecological citizenship with the ethics of care and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which links individual experience of embodied care for environment with broader political and social issues. We argue that the perspective of the ethics of care informed by the concept of habitus broadens the concept of ecological citizenship by, on the one hand, highlighting the rational responsibility to care, and, on the other hand, by revealing how affect-based ties to the environment and established habits of caring are cultivated in local communities. Ecological citizenship based on the habitus of care can be seen as exercised in participation in the public sphere and also through caring practices where public and private fields overlap.

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Ecolabeled seafood and sustainable consumption in the Canadian context: issues and insights from a survey of seafood consumers

Maritime Studies ◽

10.1007/s40152-021-00245-y ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anthony Winson ◽

Jin Young Choi ◽

Devan Hunter ◽

Chantelle Ramsundar

Keyword(s):

Marine Environment ◽

Environmental Concern ◽

Sustainable Consumption ◽

Limited Information ◽

Ecological Citizenship ◽

Greater Toronto Area ◽

Positive Attitudes ◽

Sustainable Seafood ◽

Seafood Products ◽

The Public Sphere

AbstractThe concept of sustainable consumption is a much debated practice that has been seen as an outcome of the emergence of ecological citizenship—a concept that brings together the citizen and the environment in a framework that is underlined by social justice considerations and incorporates a vision of citizenship that involves both the private sphere and the public sphere of human activity. This study examines Canadian consumer awareness and uptake of certified sustainable seafood. We introduce the concepts ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption as a way of framing our research. Seafood ecolabels may be a valuable tool in translating general environmental concern about the marine environment into more sustainable fisheries practices. We conducted an on-site consumer survey in the Greater Toronto Area and a nearby city. Our findings showed that in contrast to high levels of awareness of the importance of the marine environment and the sustainability of seafood, consumers had a limited understanding about the meaning of sustainability in the case of seafood, and little knowledge about actual ecolabels found in the Canadian marketplace. Attitudes towards the marine environment and sustainable seafood, understanding of the meaning of seafood sustainability, and purchasing behaviors of sustainable seafood were significantly different by some socio-demographic characteristics. Positive attitudes towards the marine environment and sustainable seafood and better understanding of seafood sustainability were significantly associated with the increased purchasing of ecolabeled seafood. Lack of understanding of ecolabels, limited information about product sustainability, and lack of in-store guidance were identified as key barriers to purchasing ecolabeled seafood products.

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Information Infrastructures and the Future of Ecological Citizenship in the Anthropocene

Social Sciences ◽

10.3390/socsci9010003 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 3

Author(s):

Cagdas Dedeoglu ◽

Cansu E. Dedeoglu

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Conceptual Framework ◽

Information Infrastructure ◽

Political Agency ◽

Civic Responsibility ◽

Ecological Citizenship ◽

Information Infrastructures ◽

Nuanced Understanding ◽

Infrastructure Studies ◽

Recurrent Theme

In the last two decades, the concept of ecological citizenship has become a recurrent theme in both popular and academic discussions. Discussions around the prospects of, and limitations to, ecological citizenship have mostly focused on the idea of political agency and the civic responsibility of individuals in relation to their environments, with an emphasis on environmental justice and sustainability. However, the current scholarship has yet to adequately characterize its conceptual bases and empirical applications from an information perspective. Therefore, this paper provides an overview of citizenship studies and infrastructure studies for developing more nuanced understanding(s) of epistemological models for ecological citizenship in our networked world. Drawing on the literature on information infrastructure, this paper then proposes a conceptual framework to understand ecological citizenship as constituted both discursively and techno-materially through neoliberal, anthropocentric informational infrastructures.

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Caveats in Environmental Justice, Consumption and Ecological Footprints: The Relationship and Policy Implications of Socioeconomic Rank and Sustainable Consumption Patterns

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12010231 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 231

Author(s):

Meital Peleg-Mizrachi ◽

Alon Tal

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Sustainable Consumption ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Consumption Patterns ◽

Residential Energy ◽

Residential Patterns ◽

Animal Products ◽

Government Interventions ◽

Ecological Footprints

The study evaluates the sustainability of consumption patterns among different socioeconomic deciles based on individual ecological footprints generated by four of the world’s most polluting industries: animal products/meat, textiles, transport, and residential energy. Online shopping is also considered due to its mounting popularity. A national survey, which ensured equal representation of socioeconomic deciles, involving 600 respondents in Israel was conducted, supplemented by follow-up semi-structured personal interviews with 25 participants. Conventional wisdom supports the notion that wealthier segments of society produce greater ecological footprints in all aspects of their consumption. In fact, our findings reveal that patterns are more nuanced and that there are areas in which poorer populations reveal less sustainable consumption patterns: poorer populations in the lower deciles report a greater per capita ecological footprint in their purchases of textiles and food consumption. By contrast, wealthier deciles have relatively larger ecological footprints in the areas of transport and residential patterns (which drive their energy consumption). Results suggest that some of the fundamental assumptions among environmental justice advocates regarding contrasting consumption patterns in affluent and poorer segments of society are not always supported by empirical evidence. Findings also indicate that there is room for greater government interventions to facilitate more sustainable consumption patterns among poorer populations.

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Constructing and mobilizing ‘the consumer’: Responsibility, consumption and the politics of sustainability

Environment and Planning A Economy and Space ◽

10.1177/0308518x17694030 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 49 (6) ◽

pp. 1396-1412 ◽

Cited By ~ 56

Author(s):

David Evans ◽

Daniel Welch ◽

Joanne Swaffield

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Consumption ◽

Ethical Consumption ◽

Waste Reduction ◽

Individual Responsibility ◽

Documentary Sources ◽

Sustainability Research ◽

Consumer Responsibility ◽

The Uk ◽

Changes Over Time ◽

Research And Policy

This paper advances critical perspectives on the governance of sustainable consumption by exploring the ways in which ‘the consumer’ is constructed and mobilized by strategic actors and organizations. Existing approaches draw on theories of practice to emphasize the limitations of governing through behaviour change. Whilst this provides a welcome corrective to the overemphasis on individual responsibility in sustainability research and policy, fundamental questions concerning changes over time, variation across substantive domains, and the mechanisms through which authorities and intermediaries responsibilize ‘the consumer’ are neglected. By way of rejoinder, we suggest that attention should be paid to the project of sustainable consumption and – following Clive Barnett, Nick Clarke and colleagues’ analysis of ethical consumption campaigning – the ways in which it engages consuming subjects and mobilizes the rhetorical figure of ‘the consumer’. To illustrate, we present the findings from an empirical study – drawing on documentary sources as well as 38 key informant interviews – of how the challenge of food waste reduction has been framed, interpreted and responded to in the UK. Our analysis suggests that initial responses to the issue made claims on the responsibilities of individuals as consumers, but that this quickly gave way to an emergent sense of shared and distributed responsibility. To conclude we argue for the importance of exploring specific instances of sustainable consumption governance and their underlying political rationalities, as well as periodizing these accounts.

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Corporate communication to promote consumers’ social responsibility?

Ökologisches Wirtschaften - Fachzeitschrift ◽

10.14512/oew.v25i4.1165 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 25 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Vera Fricke ◽

Ulf Schrader

Keyword(s):

Social Responsibility ◽

Behavioural Change ◽

Sustainable Consumption ◽

Corporate Communication ◽

Individual Responsibility

Companies have discovered Consumers’ Social Responsibility (CnSR). Within CnSR communication consumers are addressed upon their individual responsibility for a behavioural change towards sustainability. Can CnSR communication strengthen sustainable consumption in the mainstream or is it mere greenwashing?

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