Governing Our Choices: ‘Proenvironmental Behaviour’ as a Practice of Government

Luke T M Dilley
Additional contact information
Luke T M Dilley: Centre for Global Communication Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan

Environment and Planning C, 2015, vol. 33, issue 2, 272-288

Abstract: The concept of proenvironmental behaviour change (PBC) has been the subject of an increasing volume of research. Much of this has either sought to make PBC ‘work better’ or offered critiques of the concept. This paper uses an ethnography of the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Sustainable Behaviours Unit to understand PBC as a practice of government. Drawing on a governmentality framework, in this paper I explore how PBC can be thought of as a heterogeneous array of elements. I demonstrate not only the intellectual labours behind PBC but also how agents have sought to make it practicable. In exploring the coming together of PBC, I try to critically examine a practice which seeks to govern the way we ‘choose to behave’.

Keywords: proenvironmental behaviour change; governmentality; choice; environmental policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c12321 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:33:y:2015:i:2:p:272-288

DOI: 10.1068/c12321

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().