Obligation and ecological citizenship.

Abstract

The debate on environmental and ecological citizenship provides an important opportunity to explore the relations between ethical and political discourses and how ideas of moral community and political community are articulated. Two options have emerged: 1) grounding citizenship in the application of a specific approach from environmental ethics to the normative conduct of politics; 2) drawing on conventional conceptions of the political community in order to establish ecological citizenship (squeezing the gap between 'law and justice'). This paper challenges both, considering how the elements articulated through 'modes of citizenship' regulate the production of meaning on entitlements and obligations and generate 'subject positions' in which individuals can invest their identities. Citizenship is an ethico-political space where the right, the good and the virtuous are subject to deliberation. Conceptions of community, justice, rights, obligations and citizenship need reappraisal to provide an adequate vocabulary to address the difficulties created by contemporary environmental problems.

Le debat sur la citoyennete environnementale et ecologique offre une excellente occasion d'explorer les relations entre les discours ethique et politique et la maniere dont s'articulent les idees de communaute morale et de communaute politique. Deux options en sont ressorties: 1. lier la citoyennete a l'application d'une approche specifique, de l'ethique environnementale a l'exercice normatif de la politique; 2. se fonder sur des conceptions conventionnelles de la communaute politique afin d'etablir une citoyennete ecologique (retrecir l'ecart entre <>). L'auteur de cet article remet ces deux options en question, en prenant en consideration la maniere dont les elements articules par le biais de <> regissent la production de sens relativement aux droits et aux obligations et engendrent des <> dans lesquelles les individus peuvent investir leur identite. La citoyennete est un espace ethico-politique ou le bien, le bon et le vertueux peuvent faire I'objet de debats. Les concepts de collectivite, de justice, de droits, d'obligation et de citoyennete doivent etre reevalues afin de disposer d'un vocabulaire approprie permettant d'aborder les difficultes engendrees par les problemes environnementaux contemporains.

Keywords:

Ecological citizenship, political/moral community, obligations, agonistic democracy, justice, virtues, cosmopolitanism

Introduction

The debate on environmental and ecological citizenship provides an opportunity for rethinking relations between ethical and political discourses. Two options have emerged. First, privileging philosophy or environmental ethics as a guide to the normative conduct of politics, alongside expanding the moral community so that future generations (Kavka and Warren 1983), non-human animals (Regan 1984), living things (Goodpaster 1983) or ecosystems (Leopold 1949; Naess 1973; Devall and Sessions 1985) receive moral consideration. Second, using conceptions of the political community to establish realistic objectives through which ecological citizenship can be achieved, to squeeze the gap between 'law and justice' (Dobson 2003; Bell 2005). Yet, imposing rationalist conceptions of actual or ideal political communities (where all have the same chances to initiate speech acts, interrogate, open debate) relegates concern for the environment to 'content' and neglects civic engagement. This article challenges philosophy-centred and politics-centred approaches, focusing on how ethical and political elements are articulated in 'modes of citizenship', whether civil, political, social or ecological (Roche 1992; Christoff 1996; Smith 1998a, 1999). Rather than focus on attitudes and behavior, the production of meaning is presented as culturally specific, shaped by open and tolerant discussion but not ignoring the passions and commitment of environmental activism. Environmental cosmopolitanism also highlights the indeterminacy of culture, as an 'everyday laboratory of civilisation' (Beck 2000: 147) but unfortunately combines this with a determinate conception of nature--displaying an abhorrence of bioinvasion and transboundary pollution (see Clarke 2002).

Modes of citizenship regulate the production of meaning on entitlements and obligations and generate 'subject positions' in which individuals can invest their identities (Foucault 1980, 1982). This article is concerned with the strategic context of ethico-political discourses where subject positions provide the means through which politics is lived. Moreover, genuinely transdisciplinary accounts of environmental issues (Smith 1998b, 2000a, 2000b) relate ethics and politics to cultural diversity and the unruly characteristics of 'the natural'. Academic preoccupation with the specification and elaboration of entitlements and rights has neglected obligations, duties and responsibility. There is a tendency to assume that obligation takes us down the road to obedience (eco-authoritarianism). These concepts have 'internal complexity' (Freeden 1996), though it is the conceptual specificity of obligation that needs to be more adequately elaborated. The return to virtues in ethical and political discussions on the environment (Barry 1999; Dobson 2003) offers interesting ways of rethinking the meaning of obligation, where the cultivation of the character of the self acts as a route for the regard of others. However, this article argues we should not treat one kind of virtue--compassion or justice--as the basis of all other virtues.

Globalization and Citizenship

The new benchmark is Andrew Dobson's Citizenship and the Environment (2003). For Dobson, the transformationalist view of globalization developed by David Held (2002) overemphasises interdependence and the assumption of a common future. Cosmopolitanism builds on this account to stress the virtue of 'equal and open dialogue', emphasising reciprocity. Drawing on Vandana Shiva (1992), Dobson argues that the constitutional asymmetries should be factored into globalisation processes at the start (not added to a picture of a more interconnected world). The effects of social and economic changes in advanced countries are global but this does not necessarily mean that the processes work both ways. In addition, the focus on networks and flows tends to ignore the differential power of the actors in negotiations and bargaining at the international level--the experience of time-space compression is enjoyed by those who have the privilege of belonging to the gated communities of industrial societies (the globalizers) rather than those on the outside (the globalized). These asymmetries within current generations and the lack of reciprocity are analogous to those identified in debates on obligations to future generations (Barry 1978) and how we may harm our reputations in the future (O'Neill 1993).

Dobson suggests that cosmopolitanism offers the hope of resistance to asymmetrical tendencies of actual globalization and explores dialogic and distributive forms to develop his argument. Dialogic cosmopolitanism (developed by Linklater 1998) heralds the possibility of constructing political communities beyond the nation-state that can be achieved through social bonding through a commitment to open dialogue (with the creation of institutional conditions for realising this), so that all participants are recognised and voice their concerns. This focuses on the human community, assumes impartiality is the modus operandi and that greater or more intense dialogue is the democratic objective. Bonding develops the sense of belonging to the human community and the duties this entails. We are obliged to act with regard to the needs of strangers out of compassion and charity--the 'good Samaritan' principle of global citizenship. For Dobson, this not only leaves obligations hanging (charity can be withdrawn or even reproduce the vulnerability of the recipient), it also lacks a specific mechanism for addressing environmental harms, even if transnational dialogue can help crystallise the duty of protecting the vulnerable. What Dobson has in mind is a focus on specific communities of obligation (obligation spaces with their own injustices and coerced dialogues). He argues that partiality is crucial for effective strategies to achieve more justice, so the objective should be to change the reasons for acting. Being obliged to do justice, to act in a way because it is binding rather than just a matter of bonding, is for Dobson a political rather than a moral obligation. Justice is portrayed as a binding relationship between equals rather than the one-way revocable result of humanitarian obligations. In short:

if citizenship is to have any meaning at all, then the condition of

being a citizen must be distinguishable from being a human being. In

other words, there must be a difference between the community of

citizens and the community of humanity (Dobson 2003: 27).