1 Environmental Citizenship and the Administration of Life Sherilyn MacGregor and Bronislaw Szerszynski Institute for Environment, Philosophy & Public Policy Lancaster University Paper presented at Citizenship and the Enironment workshop, Newcastle University, 4-6 September 2003 Please do not cite without authors’ permission Abstract We develop a critical analysis of emerging discourses and practices of ‘environmental citizenship’, using a framework developed from the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt. Firstly, we explore some convergences between the two theorists – their analyses of modern society in terms of the social organisation of biological life, their emphasis on the openness of human possibilities, and their suspicion of absolute morality in public life. We also note some important contrasts between them, the navigation between which enables us to avoid some of the excesses of either position. Drawing on their insights, we argue that ‘environmental citizenship’ is increasingly interpreted as ‘citizenship’ put at the service of ‘the environment’, thus disciplining the subject and making citizen action subordinate to the administration of the biosphere. Secondly, using examples of government and NGO discourse and empirical research on environmental citizenship in the UK and Canada, we highlight three key injunctions characteristically addressed to citizens in the name of environmental citizenship: to ‘change their minds’, to ‘do their bit’, and to ‘have their say’. We then make use of our Arendtian-Foucauldian framework to identify problematic implications of these injunctions for the concept of citizenship and conclude with practical suggestions for how environmental citizenship might be reformulated as a politics of freedom. Keywords Arendt, citizenship, environmental politics, Foucault, governmentality