Volunteer Environmental Stewardship and Affective Labour in Philadelphia

Recent research has critically evaluated the rapid growth of volunteer urban environmental stewardship. Framings of this phenomenon have largely focused upon environmentality and/or neoliberal environments, unfortunately often presenting a totalising picture of the state and/or market utilising powe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Conservation and society 2018-01, Vol.16 (1), p.52-63
Main Author: Foster, Alec
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affective Labour
Census of Population
Cities
Ecological sustainability
Economic liberalism
Environmental aspects
Environmental conservation
Environmental Identities
Environmental management
Environmental protection
Environmental stewardship
Environmentality
Geography
Methods
Neighborhoods
Neoliberalism
Participation
Philadelphia
Qualitative research
Social aspects
Special Section: Affective Ecologies
Sustainable cities
Sustainable communities
Trees
Urban environments
Urban farming
Volunteer labor
Volunteerism
Volunteers
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Summary:Recent research has critically evaluated the rapid growth of volunteer urban environmental stewardship. Framings of this phenomenon have largely focused upon environmentality and/or neoliberal environments, unfortunately often presenting a totalising picture of the state and/or market utilising power from above to create environmental subjects with limited agency available to local citizens. Based upon qualitative research with volunteer urban environmental stewards in Philadelphia, affective labour is proposed as an alternative explanation for participation. Stewards volunteered their time and labour due to the intense emotional attachments they formed with their neighbourhoods, neighbours, and nonhuman others in relationships of affective labour. Volunteer urban environmental stewardship as affective labour provides room for agency on the part of individuals and groups involved in volunteer urban environmental reproduction and opens up new ways of relating to and being with human and nonhuman others.
ISSN:0972-4923
0975-3133
DOI:10.4103/cs.cs_16_49