Is it Political, is it New? Ecofeminist Questions About Environmentalism’s Everyday Turn

A decade after his oft-quoted claim that individual acts (planting trees, riding bikes) are the bane of properly political green politics, Michael Maniates has changed his tune: ‘A closer look at everyday life—its rhythms and possibilities as they bear on an individual and collective politics of environment—may open up critical lines of inquiry and action. In the search for a potent politics of transformation, everyday life may not be so everyday after all’ (2012:121). Whatever the reasons for his and other green political theorists’ recent (re)turn to ‘everyday life’; I argue that it should be met by a healthy does of suspicion -- of both its politics and its newness. In this paper I offer an analysis of the discourse and strategies of ‘everyday environmentalism’, including the so-called new politics of consumption and the new materialism, through an ecofeminist lens. This lens makes visible the gender norms, relations and asymmetries that shape human experiences of environmental change, and how these norms, relations and asymmetries influence the commitments of women and men participating in green enterprises in private and public spheres. It is a lens that is fine-tuned to detect unequal divisions of labour and duty and to magnify dangers of political co-optation. It is a lens that brings into focus a vision of a gender-just society somewhere in the distance. I start by asking questions about the assumptions and blind-spots that can be detected in recent green literature that celebrates the potential of a new politics of consumption for the future of environmentalism. I then offer some suggestions for how this literature might benefit from ecofeminist insights.