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).

Distributive cosmopolitanism has the first virtue of more justice in response to harm (in addition to the commitment to open and uncoerced dialogue). Drawing on Simon Caney (2001), Dobson highlights how a theory of distribution can be defended by reference to a theory of moral personality, whereby entitlements to an equal share can be established prior to inhabiting culture, national identity or ethnicity. Such entitlements are viewed as being grounded in human autonomy or the possession of rights; the selection of which lends plausibility to his contention that this is "a specifically political type of obligation as opposed to a more broadly moral type" (Dobson 2003: 29). This is portrayed as a more convincing basis for thinking through citizenship beyond the state, dealing in the currency of justice rather than compassion, but distributive cosmopolitanism still lacks a clear idea of the reasons why we should act. This treatment of the virtue of justice is comparable to the unification of virtues developed in Christian accounts privileging compassion or charity (along with faith and hope) over the classical virtues of courage, practical wisdom (prudence), justice and temperance. This kind of unification process is questionable. Instead, we need a more flexible framework recognising the co-dependence and overlaps between virtues. Being compassionate depends on having courage while being just depends on temperance--restraining materialistic appetites--implied in Dobson's endorsement of ecological footprint analysis. In place of these thin and non-material cosmopolitan accounts of 'the ties that bind', he proposes post-cosmopolitanism whereby the ties are materially (re-)produced in daily life within an unequal and asymmetrically globalizing context. As a consequence of globalization, relations once considered a matter of compassion are increasingly citizen relations. The provision of 'aid' in response to natural hazards should be seen not as benevolent acts of charity but compensatory justice, for the harm inflicted by industrial societies on others is a result of human-induced climate change, altering the nature and the source of obligation.

Dobson makes a distinction between moral obligations as a non-reciprocal commitment to others and political obligations grounded in binding relationships based on some degree of parity (although the degree can vary) as well as between specifically political obligations and general moral obligations, with politics and morality distinct in terms of scope. By grounding entitlements in autonomy and the possession of rights, this already assumes some understanding of rationality or species-membership. The line drawn between politics and morality is asserted but not substantiated, suggesting politics as ethics-free. Analytic distinctions clarify the precise kinds of ethical and political judgements but assuming that they can be separated in substantive terms within everyday life is misleading. This also leads us back to the importance of the cultivation of characteristics that are virtuous. When we live in a 'community' we are simultaneously human and a citizen--what matters then is how these are defined and their articulation in the concrete situations of 'ineradicable antagonism' (Mouffe 2000, 2005; Smith 2006). Citizenly 'subject positions' are temporary respites in ongoing confrontations over the meaning of citizenship and the virtues each subject position mobilises are provisional. In agonistic democracy, struggles are staged around diverse conceptions of citizenship with each proposing its interpretation of the common good, right courses of action and virtues that should be cultivated. Ecological citizenship is just one way of engaging in 'the political'. The key task is to identify the potential and limits of subject positions that feature in environmental discourses. Following the postulate of adequacy (Schutz 1932/1967, 1953), the second order constructs of the academic should draw from and be intelligible to the first order constructs of everyday life. Artificially separating morals and politics smacks of the attachment to detachment, a key feature of disciplinary knowledge (Smith 2000a, 2001).

Citizen types

When specifying citizenship, Dobson builds on Peter Reisenberg's (1992) characterisation of the declining influence of republican conceptions of citizenship in the face of a triumphant liberal conception (that rights claims replaced civic virtue while passive subjects replaced active citizens). He constructs a model where liberal citizenship stresses rights and entitlements and the absence of foundational virtues as a basis for action while republican citizenship emphasised duties, responsibilities and virtues. Both are grounded in contractual relations between state and citizen, and both operate in the public sphere within a given territorial space. Cosmopolitanism acknowledges the unbounded diaspora of the political community but retains the insistence on the importance of an incipient discursive democracy, a cosmopolitan political sphere, alongside the commitment to treating the vulnerable with compassion. His proposed post-cosmopolitan citizenship is non-contractual (dropping the vocabulary of reciprocity), non-territorial and operates in both public and private spheres, with affinities to the republican emphasis on duties, responsibilities and virtues--although it rejects the masculine virtues of republicanism in favour of feminine virtues (an ethics of care). Citizenship is often understood as based on a contractual relationship between state and citizen--as a bargain or settlement whereby the citizen loses a little bit of liberty to enhance personal security, or as Ignatieff (1995) puts it 'a bad bargain'. In proposing postcosmopolitan citizenship, Dobson asks why contracts should be definitive of citizenship (as opposed, say, to conceptions of friendship).

This raises the possibility of unreciprocated and unilateral citizenship obligations. He substantiates this by claiming that we are trapped between extreme opposites with discrete contractual exchanges between equivalent actors on the one hand and unilateral and unreciprocated acts of charity on the other. Contracts, in the sense described by Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon (1994) as civil citizenship relations voluntarily entered into, are presented by Dobson as ideological rather than just a definitional feature of current conceptions of citizenship. Reciprocity provides a motive for action because of the possibility of a penalty should one break a contract. Dobson makes a significant step towards challenging the cast iron certainty of reciprocity by highlighting the contingencies between entitlements and obligations. He insists that there should be a mechanism for distinguishing the obligations of citizens from humanitarian obligations. Drawing on Judith Lichtenberg (1981), he claims that a moral view involves A helping B because they are willing and able to come to someone's aid and alleviate their plight when A has no causal role in their plight. In the historical view A owes B as a result of a prior action, undertaking, agreement or relationship binding on the actors involved. Dobson argues that the recognition of such 'bindings' in the context of increased awareness of environmental issues and globalization calls forth the virtues and practices of citizenship. However, this takes little account of the difficulties of persuading citizens, companies and government authorities within industrial societies that their activities are responsible for environmental impacts elsewhere. Just as it took the UK government and energy companies a decade to accept responsibility for the effects of sulphur dioxide emissions (causing acid rain) in Western Europe the refusal of the US government to accept the Kyoto protocol demonstrates how states continue to deny their responsibility for transboundary effects (in this case on climate change) in order to protect interests within territorial boundaries. Nevertheless, there is movement on the acceptance of climate change as a human effect in the US, such as the 'mission statement' (1/8/06) between the UK and California to work towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

On the feminist ethics of care, rather than treating the public sphere as the site of freedom and the private sphere as the site of necessity, Dobson draws on feminist accounts of power relations. He directs us to consider how feminists see progressive potential in the concept of citizenship by problematising the discriminative assumptions that privilege the public and subordinate the private, suggesting that the 'citizenly ties that bind' are present in both private and public spheres (Prokhovnik 1998). In the private sphere, parental obligations should be acknowledged as ethically grounded civic obligations and attempts to encourage 'responsible personal lifestyle decisions' have citizenly characteristics. Appeals to take regular physical exercise, diet, stop smoking, reduce alcohol intake, and ensure one's teenage daughter does not become pregnant are couched in terms of the duty to not waste the time and resources of a medical or welfare system. On the environment, the decisions that matter most are those we face in our private lives: responsibility with waste and litter, choosing less resource consumptive means of transportation, energy conservation measures, voluntary conservation activities or local biodiversity monitoring--effectively reducing the impacts of our ecological footprints. Post-cosmopolitan citizenship renegotiates the meaning of 'the political' (Mouffe 2000) yet the disciplinary framework of political theory inhibits Dobson's accounts of the relationship between ethics and politics. Before we consider how to move beyond these limits, we need to deal with the liberal response to Dobson's case, in particular, his use of the ecological footprint approach and his claim that justice will involve a 'fair share to ecological space', both in terms of the resources we use and the extent the environment can operate as a sink.

Liberal environmental citizenship

Dobson's distinction between environmental citizenship (the extension of liberal rights such as civil, political and social rights to include access to environmental goods or prevention of bads) and ecological citizenship points the way to the development of a new political imaginary or space. For cosmopolitans, rights are established by virtue of being located in an imagined territory constituted by membership of a common humanity. Post-cosmopolitans create ecological space by acknowledging their causal and material relationship with other citizens in terms of resource use and pollution (the primary example being how the globalizers impact on the globalized--a relation of victimisation). The key obligation of ecological citizenship is to ensure our ecological footprints do not "compromise or foreclose the ability of others in present and future generations to pursue options important to them" (Dobson 2003). For Dobson, the first virtue of ecological citizenship is justice or that all virtues should contribute to the eradication of environmental injustice.

Derek Bell (2003, 2005) offers some interesting insights on how rethinking citizenship can aid the promotion of sustainability, suggesting that Dobson's account is a merger of liberalism and ecologism. For Bell, law represents an actual state of affairs (subject to the proviso that most citizens comply with the law and transgressors are subject to prosecution within due process) whereas justice represents an ideal situation where environmental objectives are realised. Bell (2003: 10) draws on the metaphoric devices of liberalism (Rawls 1993, 1999) to specify the different causes of this gap.

1. The state or other institutions lack the power to enforce certain laws to secure for everyone the right to a fair share of ecological space and redistribute ecological space from the 'globalizers' to the 'globalized'.

2. The necessary laws will be too unpopular to be approved in democratic society, and could undermine the rule of law so that forcing through policies without consent undermines the social and political fabric.

3. Many of the necessary laws and the means of enforcing them will involve imposing restrictions that are inconsistent with liberal values, as with compulsory population control (Malinas 1980; Young 1980).

Since Dobson is preoccupied with a just distribution of ecological space, for Bell the key issue is broadly one of distributive justice. He claims that environmental rights (to clean air and water) already include the just distribution of ecological space as a subsidiary assumption. In addition, if we limit ecological citizenship to those acts that involve sacrificing part of one's own ecological footprint and redistributing space to others with less than their fair share, then many environmental activities (from local conservation volunteering to participation in local Agenda 21 consultations) are excluded. Bell finds it odd that all we achieve here is a different way of describing archetypal environmental activisms, shifting the classificatory practices without providing a more adequate explanatory framework. Bell's main concerns are as follows.

1. Eco-authoritarianism -- liberals prioritise justice over the good, that citizens have a duty not to pursue their own conception of the good in an unjust manner.

2. Overly restrictive -- why should we worry whether environmentally beneficial practices are motivated to redistribute ecological space.

3. Liberals are committed to both negative and positive duty already--limiting duty merely to not violating others right to a fair share of ecological space ignores how we also have a duty to secure a fair share for all citizens in the first place.

4. Narrow focus of complicity -- limiting duty to when an actor is personally complicit could let us off the hook if environmental injustice occurs in other societies, committed by other states, or between citizens with whom we have no contact.

Where states lack legitimate enforcement powers, Bell acknowledges that Dobson's approach may help redress some injustices and help to close the gap between law and justice. However, he suggests this must involve voluntary (non-coerced) morally and politically required self-regulation. The question becomes how to persuade many citizens to make the necessary sacrifices. For Bell voluntary self regulation will not fill the gap and Mill's combination of legal and moral regulation may provide a better answer. We should remember that for Mill, both the physical force involved in legal penalties and the moral coercion of public opinion are potentially tyrannical if used unjustly. However, they can be used to establish a climate of expectations, so non-compliance is judged harshly by other citizens. Dobson's approach prompts liberals to address the cultural expectations that underpin effective environmental strategies. But if ecological citizenship is not simply an extension of liberalism, why did it come into being? By pushing Dobson's analysis in the direction of an ecologically guided ethico-political project we can escape these limits, avoiding the fate of being reterritorialised by liberal environmental discourses and ensuring that we deter-ritorialise the assemblages constituting citizenship (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 1994). Three steps are needed to achieve this: a keener awareness of political subjectivities so that citizenly subject positions can be established that avoid the pitfalls of liberalism; conceptual clarification of 'obligation'; and an endorsement of virtue ethics to bridge the gaps between attitudes and behaviour and between law and justice.

Subjectivities and the discursive territory of ecological citizenship

Ecological citizenship focuses on understanding the motivations and reasons for responsible actions. Responsibility, duty and obligation have resurfaced in other areas of public policy such as welfare and criminal justice, but the ban on smoking in public places is a particularly useful parallel. In Norway there was a qualitative difference in approach that made substantive contributions to its effectiveness. Prior to the legal change (April 2004), concerted media campaigns were launched in conjunction with projects in schools, workplaces and cultural events to enable citizens to volunteer to change their behaviour. Besides legal penalties, to help avoid potential areas of conflict, an emphasis was placed on the subject position of 'the considerate smoker', to avoid situations where others (children and retail staff) are vulnerable to passive smoking and manage the contradictory discursive elements that being a smoker entails. This provides an analogue for strategies seeking to alter behaviour in relation to ecological space. Dobson provides the example of the problems of biodegradable waste dumping in the context of the EU Landfill directive, where local authorities have sought to use incentives to ensure pre-disposal waste sorting by households. The logic underpinning waste reduction strategies sees motivation in terms of the intentions of the 'minimaxing' actor, rationally maximising benefits and/or minimising costs or harm. Conservationist policy and environmental valuation has long been associated with such utilitarian calculations to discern the 'greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time' (Pinchot 1901). Rather than rejecting 'minimaxing' as an explanatory account, the rationalities produced can be translated into subject positions in which citizens have or could invest their identities and so identify some of the unintended consequences of environmental regulation.

1. The CABWITH [can't be bothered with the hassle] citizen -- some citizens will do the minimum necessary or avoid sorting waste diligently, using their capacity and taking additional unsorted waste direct to the tip (with transport costs), defeating the objective of curb-side collection.

2. The furtive dumper citizen -- dumping in the skips of neighbours, car parks, building sites, redundant petrol station forecourts, waste land or any location beyond surveillance as a response to the costs of recycling obsolescent consumer durables in the absence of local recycling facilities (cars and fridges are processed in designated facilities) or when financial cost means citizens are unable or unwilling to pay.

3. The passer-by citizen -- taking account of citizens who decide to ignore furtive dumping, 'cabwithing' or more visible forms of damaging behaviour based on rational calculations.

4. The entrepreneurial neighbourly citizen -- households who sort effectively can sustain unfilled capacity in their household waste bins and sell their landfill disposal space to neighbours who do not, in order to realise small financial gains (while their CABWITH neighbours perform an opportunity cost calculation on their time and the costs of waste disposal).

CABWITH and furtive dumper citizens can be understood in terms of individual intentions, but the other subject positions highlight citizen-to-citizen relations alongside. The liberal split between public and private spheres is problematic--especially where individualism is deeply embedded and the 'moral coercion of public opinion' is viewed as a dangerous intrusion into privacy. The fourth hypothetical example, assuming higher costs for waste disposal and stricter limits, is a rational response analogous to pollution permit trading (where companies discover ecological modernization prohibitively expensive and purchase unused ecological space). Small gains (5 cents a bottle) motivate 'urban street scavenging' of recyclables on waste collection day across New York State. While the total volume of landfill disposal is reduced, the examples presented mean significant recyclable materials will still be dumped. Ecological footprint analysis suffers from the same flaw--ecological space trading is a feasible market for citizens as well as private corporations, and citizens of advanced industrial societies could be deemed to have compensated citizens outside this context for a portion of their ecological space through overseas aid, charitable donations and knowledge transfers. Such results are (or would be) direct responses by citizens to environmental regulation based on rational decision making. Of course, many sort waste that otherwise would feel no compulsion but this will not ensure most citizens engage in the desired behaviour and may be counter-productive in some ways for it neglects the non-rational motivations for securing satisfaction and well being.

More effective is persuasion that recycling waste and limiting environmental damage have sound reasons they can endorse. As Dobson highlights, the Durham city road pricing scheme can have dramatic results but it is questionable whether the changes would be sustained if congestion charges are terminated. It is also questionable whether behavioural changes in one area would be translated into changes in others. If we assume citizens are simultaneously bearers of entitlements and obligations (some of which may be more formally or legally prescribed as rights and duties (Table 2) some of which may be reciprocal), specified through the relations between citizens, then we can move away from a rights-centred approach (and financial incentives) so acknowledging that entitlements provide capacities to act and obligations indicate susceptibilities to the concerns of others. Since duties and obligations are used synonymously in the literature we now draw on the morphological analysis of concept formation to explore the meaning of obligation.

Clarifying obligation

Concepts have different meanings in each theory or ideology but also have internal complexity with three kinds of elements that have different purposes.

* Ineliminable elements -- are the core definitions of the concept that cannot be eliminated or it would not be the same concept.

* Adjacent elements -- clarify the precise use and purpose of the concept.

* Peripheral elements -- make the concept relevant for political practices in a particular time and place or in specific institutions.

For Freeden, 'liberty' has the ineliminable element of 'non-constraint' while 'self-determination' is logically adjacent (summoning democracy or self-government) and 'community' culturally adjacent. These are shaped by the beliefs, values, institutional patterns and ethics that have intellectual and emotional significance. Peripheral elements for liberty besides 'natural rights' or 'order' include aphorisms including 'dog eat dog', 'charity begins at home' or 'you have no-one to blame but yourself'. The elements of a successful political assemblage are defined and arranged to ensure concepts are decontested, appearing fixed and certain in a specific location (Freeden 1996: 47-95). However, describing elements as core or peripheral connotes that the peripheral is dispensable. From a strategic orientation, 'peripheral' analogies and metaphors by which citizens think through motives and communicate meaning have a greater importance.

It is helpful to understand the ineliminable element of obligation as being the presence of ties that bind one agent to another or other agents, the various ways in which one agent feels they owe obligations to others. Focusing on binding excludes legitimate ways in which obligations can be justified through compassion. Environmentally beneficial practices can be rationalised in a variety of ways--what matters in environmental activism and civic engagement is whether citizens understand why such actions (or their avoidance) need to take place. When gains for donors are not evident, reciprocity may not be adequate and humanitarian efforts (even though they can be withdrawn) may provide the necessary motivation. Attributable causality on transboundary environmental impacts, despite 'some antecedent or prior action, undertaking, agreement, relationship', is not always persuasive. The reasons for having obligations are context-specific just as 'the others' to which we owe obligations may alter depending on the precise form of environmental problem. To illustrate, the effects of deforestation highlight the reconciliation of justice between and within generations (Humphreys 1999), water quality issues prompt an awareness of our immediate successors (Blunden 1999), while the disposal or storage of nuclear waste raises obligations to distant future generations (Blowers 1999). Each environmental issue raises different questions about obligations to present and future generations as well as the present and future effects on non-human animals, habitats, mountains, streams, trees and the biotic community. More research is needed on why citizens endorse specific bundles of obligations and how they are articulated with entitlements in modes of citizenship.

Agnes Heller's critique of morals as a sphere, treats the ethical component of citizenship as the 'good citizen practising the citizen's virtue', that 'the subject of the good life is the righteous person' (1987: 274), that human bonds are constituted by internalized morals (virtues, norms, values and principles). All relations and processes have a moral dimension. Similarly, this article considers every sphere of existence as moral, political and cultural simultaneously. Distinguishing politics and morality as separate spheres follows disciplinary knowledge formations rather than concrete experience (Smith 2005). Heller suggests that the presence of ideal objectivations (abstract norms or terms of virtue) does not mean that a moral sphere exists--that we should not treat the principles of justice as pre-existing essential categories or clusters to which rules should apply. Heller's analysis helps to clarify the components of obligation, distinguishing 'rules' followed in a single and definite way (without deliberation or reflection) from two types of 'norms': concrete norms on how to act in particular situations and abstract norms providing standards or virtues to cultivate or live up to (Table 3). Heller highlights the contingencies involved in moral judgement--that citizens can exist in more than one cluster simultaneously and, in each cluster, norms and rules are usually applied inconsistently. Even when norms and rules are consistent, they can still be seen as unjust, highlighting how alternative norms and rules have the potential to constitute a social cluster (Heller 1987: 275-6).

Analytic distinctions between moral and political elements have critical purposes and ethical analysis can specify how particular conceptions of the moral community are articulated with ways of thinking about the good, the right and the virtuous. However, contrasting philanthropy with justice avoids the key issue for addressing the law-justice gap--enabling citizens to feel obliged to act in environmentally responsible ways without resort to the exercise of some mechanism for compulsion. It is crucial to ask whether the binding nature of citizenship is sufficient to achieve environmental objectives and whether the contrast of binding with bonding is helpful. If the distinctive feature of citizenship is its binding nature, that failure to fulfill duties can be remedied through due process; we are limited to the formal-legal aspects of citizenly behaviour. Local authorities in the South East of England incurred [pounds sterling]1.2 million costs in addressing organised illegal fly-tipping in 2003-4, and while 30 cases were successfully prosecuted the penalties imposed do not deter. Stiffer penalties may affect the behaviour of some but it is widely accepted that they will not address the problem. This highlights the weaknesses of depending on penalties as a motivational force in reciprocal contractual relations where actors simply feel no overriding sense of duty. Much more effective is changing the obligations that inform dutiful citizenship and the cultivation of environmental virtues. Dobson's account is valuable, shifting us away from sterile preoccupations with reciprocity and compassion and opening up a terrain of multiple motivations that can come into being through the active civic engagements and citizen-citizen relations. Nevertheless, Bell's critique highlights the limits of Dobson's approach, especially in addressing the transformative implications of ecological citizenship. Contrary to Dobson, demarcating politically binding relationships from human bonded relationships misses the point that environmentally positive results can follow from attachments to the specific community. Commitment towards projects, such as the 'dugnad (lets-do-it-together) culture', that benefit the community through voluntary action--painting a school in the recess or cooking weekly meals for residents (Haugestad 2003). These are not strictly binding but an expression of bondedness; non-participants may feel guilt and be treated differently but without retribution.

Conclusion

The arguments above alert us to the difference between obligations and duties as well as identifying the informal kinds of binding and bonding through which obligations are sustained. This approach avoids privileging one virtue such as justice or compassion for different virtues may be relevant in various combinations in each manifestation of citizenship (including environmental and ecological varieties). Practical wisdom (or prudence) is more compatible with the precautionary principle and notions of environmental stewardship than justice. Potential exists in using the virtues of temperance, kindness, forgiveness, self sacrifice and even sadness (being resigned to one's fate). The key point is that notions of virtue are not simply imposed, they are cultivated as deliberate attempts to live up to regard for others (whether they are our adversaries or our friends). Fulfilling obligations is also an honourable act of self-regard, completing one's side of an agreement, living up to a mission, feeling good about one's reputation, being a 'good human being' or leading a flourishing life. There will be dilemmas when adjudicating upon the relative importance of one species compared to another (including the human species) but then ethical dilemmas are not absent from other approaches. Citizens often articulate ethical and political ideas in hybridised and analytically inconsistent ways. Focusing on concrete manifestations of 'the virtuous', 'the good' or 'the right'--along with the use of epistemological and aesthetic judgements--will help us understand how culturally specific antagonisms affect environmental debate and treat other political subjects as adversaries we respect rather than as enemies.

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Mark J. Smith, Department of Politics and International Studies, Open University, UK, researches environmental responsibility, transnational corporations, civic engagement, ethics and environmental citizenship in Asia, America and Europe. He is author or editor of thirteen books including Ecologism: Towards Ecological Citizenship (1998), Thinking Through the Environment (1999), Culture: Reinventing the Social Sciences (2000), and Rethinking State Theory (2000). Table 1. Dobsons's three types of citizenship (Dobson 2003: 39) Liberal Civic republican Post-cosmopolitan Rights/entitlements Duties/responsibilities Duties/responsibilities (contractual) (contractual) (non-contractual) Public sphere Public sphere Public and private spheres Virtue-free 'Masculine' virtue 'Feminine' virtue Territorial Territorial Non-Territorial (discriminatory) (discriminatory) (non-discriminatory) Table 2. Classifying citizenly relations

Capacities to act Liabilities to others (based

(enablement) on binding constraint) Formal Rights Duties Informal Entitlements Obligations Table 3. Rules, norms and obligation Claiming/Obedience Rules Assumes compliance is normal, for example

that all strangers must be respected Rights/Duties Concrete Norms on how to treat a visitor

norms Entitlements/ Abstract Living up to the virtue of acting with Obligations norms civility to strangers