The environmental consumer subject: Multispecies relationality in neoliberal environmental governance

Abstract

Investigating the empirical case of Denmark's newly established Nature National Parks, this paper addresses the formation of environmental consumer subjects through neoliberal environmental governance. Drawing on Haraway's (2016) multispecies relationality and Agrawal's ( 2005a) concept of environmentality, the paper explores how governance-induced transformations of multispecies relations impact human subjectivities and efforts to encourage sustainable use of nature spaces. By integrating multispecies agency into environmentality, this paper shows that environmental governance not only shapes human subjectivities but also changes intra- and interspecies relations through a process that repositions both humans and animals in ways that has implications for policies and practices. Part of this repositioning is the construction of an ‘environmental consumer subject’; a subject position requiring adaptation of consumption practices to the livelihood of other species. We demonstrate that neoliberal environmentality uses ecological and market logics to encourage citizens to become environmental consumer subjects, and that doing so can result in interspecies collaboration and coexistence when successful, but induce conflicts, disempowerment, and displacement when not. This reveals that public opposition and conflict can reach beyond the restoration project itself and arise from the relational and ontological stakes of environmental governance. By conceptualizing environmentality as a multispecies relational process, we highlight the need for future research and environmental policy to pay closer attention at the entanglements of humans, animals, and nature spaces in the restoration of environments.