Green Material Citizenship? Rethinking Radical Democratic Politics as Socio-Material Practice

The paper presents theoretical reflections on cases of engagement for fundamental social-ecological change. Based on empirical research in Germany on community gardens, community supported agriculture and foodsharing (a digital platform to distribute food otherwise being dumped), the paper proposes an understanding of material citizenship which is centered around three key concepts. First, the concept of practice stemming from the practice turn allows focusing on socially widespread patterns of doings and sayings. A practice is a stable way of doing things with words or hands. The focus on practices allows overcoming the current mental bias regarding citizenship. It asks foremost what citizens are doing and de-emphasizes individual rational reflection beforehand. This is particularly helpful in understanding forms of socio-material engagement, such as socio-ecological community engagement as a form of citizenship since the related activism stresses to be less theoretical and talk-based but rather action- and place-centered. Second, this doesn’t mean that every practice is political which would lead into a problematic stretching of the citizenship concept. Against this backdrop, the second key concept is that of cultural code and is derived from Reckwitz’ who theorizes a cultural movement as being based on heterogeneous practices. These practices are integrated through a central disposition and particularly through a cultural code that tells actors how to feel regarding the practices and its others. Translated to theories of citizenship this means that we should identify empirically given political codes that bring given social practices into a political rank order instead of modeling the order of practices beforehand. The political in this regard refers to the struggle of hegemony in all public affairs and relates to non-violent, nonetheless irreconcilable conflict of values within democracy (Mouffe). In our cases, the key code varies from a need-based understanding of solidarity in German community supported agriculture, the notion of collective creative self-realization within community gardens or the difference between effective change and mere talk within foodsharing. These cultural codes can be construed as political citizenship if we abandon the still influential modeling of citizenship by Arendt which places labor and craft at the bottom in favor of talk-based action at the top. In contrast, it points into a direction that Sennett has advanced which emphasizes the politicizing and politically feasible role of material doings. Third, responding to the call of this section, the paper shifts the focus away from >“the doer” to “the deed”< and more precisely to manufactured goods and their political values. Theorizing green material citizenship allows identifying several such goods. These are forms of environmental education, stirring of public debate, manifesting and working out latent social conflicts, mobilizing for sustainable lifestyles, enabling political self-organization (inner-democracy), establishing and empowering heterogeneous collectives (“neighbourhood”, “community”), providing commons and care and eventually establishing political voices within the governance food (food policy councils).