unit 4 part 2

Question 1

individual action

Answer 1

• private sphere enviroment
• individual buying choices

Often have direct environmental consequences

Question 2

political action

Answer 2

• enviromental activism
• non-activist behaviours in the public spbhere (ex:voting, latter to goverment,runing for office)
• try to influence policies

indirect consequences

Question 3

critisizim individual action (Maniates)

Question 4

Individual action:
What is the theory of change?

Answer 4

 Responsibility: Individual

 We all have a shared responsibility

 Individual consumers are essential in
making the change

 ‘Consumers vote with their wallets’

 Well-intentioned consumer choice is
the way for achieving “sustainability”

Question 5

Criticisms to the individualization of
responsibility

Answer 5

 Consists mostly of harm

Shifts responsibility away
from governments and powerful
producer groups to individuals

Diffusion of responsibility

Question 6

Criticisms to the individualization of
responsibility

Answer 6

 Complex problems cannot be
resolved by uncoordinated
individual and/or consumer choice

 Environmentalism as increasingly
individual and apolitical - most social changes has happened when people protested(political action) , came together for a goal.

 Leaves little room for collective
political action

Question 7

From citizens to consumers

Answer 7

 Individuals become consumers first and citizens second

Citizens are moral agents, consumers are not
- we take our ethics in our decions
- ex: policy that allows child labour would u vote it ? no

Citizens have more collective and long-term interests, consumers are mostly short-sighted and self-interested,self-interested
- dosnt take their ethics in their decions
- ex: would you buy a pice of cloth that is cheap and was probably done with child labour in bangadlesh? probably yes

 Resistance reduced to consuming vs. not consuming but dosnt change the world

Question 8

we need both political action and individual action

Question 9

Collective political action

Answer 9

 Environmentally concerned citizens understand ‘the
consumption problem’
 “They would see that their individual consumption choices are environmentally important, but that their control over these choices is constrained, shaped, and framed by institutions and political forces that can be remade only through collective citizen action, as opposed to individual consumer behavior.”

Question 10

Key points

Answer 10

 Green consumption resembles meaningful social
action…

 But, it does not alter institutional arrangements that
drive consumerism and unsustainability

 Narrative does not encourage ‘active citizenship’ and
narrows environmental imagination

 Individualization insulates people from the importance
of collective struggles.