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Article
Publication date: 29 September 2022

Tarek Rana, Alan Lowe and Md Saiful Azam

This study examines green investment reforms carried out in Bangladesh. The reform process curated significant changes by promoting green investment and fostering the adoption of…

Abstract

Purpose

This study examines green investment reforms carried out in Bangladesh. The reform process curated significant changes by promoting green investment and fostering the adoption of risk management (RM) rationalities. This study’s focus is on revealing changes in behaviour and explaining how RM can act as an effective generator of climate change mitigation practices.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on Foucault's concept of governmentality, the authors apply a “green governmentality” interpretive lens to analyse interviews and documentary evidence, adopting a qualitative case study approach. The authors explore how green governmentality generates RM rationalities and techniques to induce policies and practices within banks and financial institutions (FIs) for climate change mitigation purposes.

Findings

The findings provide valuable insights into the reform process and influence of RM rationalities in the context of environmental concerns. The authors find that the reforms and creation of RM rationalities affect the management of climate mitigation practices within banks and FIs and identify the processes through which the RM techniques are transformed as climate concerns are emphasised. The authors illustrate green governmentality as persuasive strategies, which have generated specific ways of seeing climate change reality and new ways of inserting RM into organisational activities, through the green governmentality effects they created. These reforms made climate change actionable and governable through the production of RM rationalities, supported by accounting conceptualisations and processes.

Research limitations/implications

The insights from this study can assist with how we act upon questions of climate change from an RM perspective. Governments, policymakers and regulators who develop climate change-related laws, regulations and policies can draw on these insights to help foster green governmentality for climate change mitigation actions informed by RM practices.

Originality/value

This study offers insights into how climate change is not simply a biophysical reality but a site of power-knowledge dynamics where RM rationalities are constructed, and accounting processes are transformed. The authors show the application of RM and accounting efforts to change investment practices and how changes were encouraged and promoted by using regulation as a persuasive force on knowledgeable subjects rather than a repressive or oppressive power. The analytic power of green governmentality can be applied to increase understanding of how RM rationality contribute to the creation of useful conceptualisations of climate change and provide insights into how organisations respond to green governmentality.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 36 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2009

Timothy W. Luke

This preliminary survey begins to probe a few purposes and practices of “Earth System Science” to rethink the ways in which Nature is “taken into account” by this new…

Abstract

This preliminary survey begins to probe a few purposes and practices of “Earth System Science” to rethink the ways in which Nature is “taken into account” by this new power/knowledge formation. The workings of “environmentality,” or green governmentality (Luke, 1999c), and the dispositions of environmental accountancy regimes depend increasingly on the development and deployment of such reconceptualized interdisciplinary sciences (Briden & Downing, 2002). These practices have gained much more cohesion as a technoscience network since 2001 Amsterdam Conference on Global Climate Change Open Science. Due to its brevity, this study is neither an exhaustive history nor an extensive sociology of either Earth System Science or the new post-2001 Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP), which acquired new legitimacy during and after this professional-technical congress. Instead this critique reexamines these disciplinary developments to explore the curious condition of their rapid assembly and gradual acceptance as credible technoscience formations. This reevaluation allows one, at the same time, to speculate about the emergent interests hoping to gain hold over such power/knowledge programs for managing security, territory, and population on a planetary scale (Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991; Foucault, 1991c, pp. 87–104).

Details

Nature, Knowledge and Negation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-606-9

Article
Publication date: 25 July 2019

Roger Berquier and Delphine Gibassier

Cities are key actors in the fight against climate change. They have developed integrated strategies harnessing the power of information and communication technologies (ICT) as…

Abstract

Purpose

Cities are key actors in the fight against climate change. They have developed integrated strategies harnessing the power of information and communication technologies (ICT) as part of the move towards smart(er) cities. In spite of our knowledge of the role of technological infrastructure in tackling climate change, the role of governance mechanisms to actively pursue environmental sustainability is often understated. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse governmentality mechanisms developed by a small town in Europe to render energy savings and new energy sources visible and to create new identities with which the citizen and other cities could then identify with, thereby participating in the fight against climate change.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were gathered through non-participant observation, interviews and access to internal data from the city’s energy control project.

Findings

The outcome of these governmentality mechanisms was to create two new identities: the “good citizen”, responsible to lower his impact on climate change, and the “model city”, a laboratory that would serve as a guide for future policies to tackle climate change at the city level. While the “model city” was successful and identification happened with other small cities taking example from it, the “good citizen” failed and inhabitants did not identify with this role model that was defined for them as a way to participate in the fight against climate change.

Practical implications

This case study is a concrete example, based on a longitudinal study, of a city’s strategy and actions on climate change. Other small cities will be able to use this case study to gauge their possibilities for action on climate change. Notably, it is an example of how a network of mechanisms can achieve results in CO2 emissions reduction. It also demonstrates the difficulty to enrol citizens into an environmental sustainability scheme.

Social implications

This paper has implications for how climate change can be tackled in rural areas by small cities. While the role of organizations and large cities (e.g. C40 city network) has been acknowledged, there is a possibility for smaller local actors to act upon grand challenges with local strategies and their own governmentality mechanisms.

Originality/value

The case study contributes to the literature on cities, bringing new insights into how they can become actors of climate change beyond acting on internal controls, and the literature on governmentality by demonstrating how mechanisms can act upon a population without being calculative.

Details

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 10 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8021

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 January 2023

Randolph Nsor-Ambala

The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana “collateralization” of gold resources and other mineral royalties in 2020 (dubbed the “Agyapa deal”) espouse tenets of Foucault’s (2009) “governmentality” and “counter conduct” dispositions.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on Dean’s (1999) discussion of government analytics to highlight how CSO activism can simultaneously challenge government practice and share in it. This paper uses an evidence-based and interpretive qualitative content analysis approach. This paper relied on secondary data sources from 1 January 2020 to 21 August 2021. Data collection involved an extensive review of secondary materials concerning the Agyapa deal, relying on the author's local knowledge to identify the likely sources of information.

Findings

This paper exposes how the counteractions of CSOs, underpinned by the desire for so-called “good governance”, invariably extend governmentality and other neo-liberal ideals. In this case, CSOs' actions espoused the ideals of marketisation, extended governable spaces, engrained subjectivation and treated citizens as incapable of formulating and advancing their desires without overt help. Secondly, it provides evidence that massive deployment of accountability and other calculable practices, however wilful, complement efforts at shaping public opinion.

Practical implications

CSO counter-conduct is merely symbolic rather than substantive. Substantive counter-conduct requires the citizenry to actively lead the problematisation process, holding CSOs accountable for acting on their behalf. The current trajectory where CSO accountability is primarily to their international financiers, predominantly neo-liberal advocates, raises questions about “in whose interest they seek another form of governance?” Practically, the splinter of interests that may emanate from citizenry directly led counter-conduct can affect garnering the critical mass needed to force a policy change. That said, however, there is a case for citizenry “making themselves” rather than “being made” within the governmentality process.

Originality/value

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first application of the Foucauldian and Dean framework to a data set from Ghana.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 19 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2009

John Barry

Robert J Antonio's ‘Climate Change, the Resource Crunch, and the Global Growth Imperative’ is an excellent starting point for examining the dominance of the ideology of ‘economic…

Abstract

Robert J Antonio's ‘Climate Change, the Resource Crunch, and the Global Growth Imperative’ is an excellent starting point for examining the dominance of the ideology of ‘economic growth’ within contemporary societies and social thinking against the background of the growing and profound socio-ecological crises such as climate change, resource scarcity and rampant consumerism. His article integrates contemporary scientific evidence about climate change and the ecological devastation being wrought by contemporary patterns of globalised carbon-fuelled and climate changing capitalism with classical and contemporary sociological theorising and calls for a greater engagement of social theorising with these defining challenges of the 21st century. In particular, Antonio's article begins the process of sociological theory re-engaging and re-interpreting classical sociology (Weber, Durkheim, Mead and Dewey) to develop forms of social theorising, which overcome a simplistic nature–cultural dualism and can equip critical social theory as fit for purpose for analysing the ecological, climate and resource ‘crunches’ facing all societies in the 21st century.

Details

Nature, Knowledge and Negation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-606-9

Article
Publication date: 19 April 2011

Ismar Borges de Lima and Leszek Buszynski

The purpose of this paper is to examine the problem of deforestation in Amazonia and the role of the Brazilian government with regard to the capitalist demands and development…

2452

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the problem of deforestation in Amazonia and the role of the Brazilian government with regard to the capitalist demands and development needs for the region. It offers a brief historical review of public policies and programs for Amazonia, and critically analyzes their conflicting aspects. Local environmental governance (LEG) is proposed as a conceptual framework and a participatory forest management strategy for dealing with the forest destruction.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is a qualitative‐based study which provides a systemic analysis of the process of occupation and the key public policies for Amazonia from over the last decades, particularly during the coup d'état regime. Based on a literature review and official documents, descriptive data are produced which helped in understanding the political phases of the Brazilian government administrations.

Findings

The study identified some participatory‐based, decentralized models of forest management and existing forest regulatory frameworks which can serve as an illustrative sketchy arrangement on how local environmental governance can become operative and serviceable for a sustainable balance between the use of natural resources, conservation and regional planning. These findings can help future investigations on governance models. The research also shows how the Brazilian government has perceived Amazonia throughout the decades and how this perception influenced the implementation of development and settlement policies for the region.

Originality/value

The main focus of this article is the debate on the concept of local environmental governance (LEG) as a tool for empowering the local communities through the decentralization of decision making as well as the attempt to find implemented normative and institutional structures within the Amazonian context which can translate aspects of LEG.

Details

Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, vol. 22 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7835

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 October 2016

Romain Felli

The language of resilience is increasingly used by International organizations that seek to respond to contemporary social, economic, and environmental crises. This paper focuses…

Abstract

The language of resilience is increasingly used by International organizations that seek to respond to contemporary social, economic, and environmental crises. This paper focuses on the World Bank’s World Development Reports, and its uses of resilience. By deploying a quantitative critical discourse analysis, this paper shows how in the recent years resilience has gained traction within the Bank’s discourse. It further analyses the evolution of the genre, the style, and the ideational content of the Bank’s discourse related to resilience. Resilience is now depicted as something that can be built and not just observed. Furthermore, it is increasingly reified in these reports and ascribed to a whole gamut of entities. The ontological indistinction of resilience reinforces its fit with contemporary neoliberal governance.

Abstract

Details

The Environmental State Under Pressure
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76230-854-5

Abstract

Details

Health and Illness in the Neoliberal Era in Europe
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-119-3

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 17 September 2018

James Reid

Abstract

Details

Primary Teachers, Inspection and the Silencing of the Ethic of Care
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-892-1

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