Greenmentality: A Political Ecology of the Green Economy in the Global South

The research will focus on ecotourism, carbon forestry and climate-smart agriculture as expressions of this new green economy. It will be carried out by a strong interdisciplinary and international team consisting of both experienced and promising young scholars. The project will apply a novel approach to understanding current environmental governance in the Global South, and not only because of the newness of the green economy itself. The project also develops a novel conceptual approach by combining Michel Foucault's notion of 'governmentality' (understood as the techniques and tactics of government) with theories of resistance, social agency and critical institutionalism. We believe this theoretical combination retains the potential to break new ground in environmental governance studies by combining a focus on power and authority with one on agency, rights, and institutions. The ambition is thus to develop an understanding of the interplay between structural power and individual agency as played out in the context of global economic and environmental change in the Global South. While the current outline is ambitious, we also believe it is realistic in view of the team consisting of experienced scholars from both the North and the South, who can document excellent publication records and have good access as well as strong working relationships in the research sites.