cold monsters and ecological leviathans: reflections on the relationships between states and the...

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Geography Compass 2/2 (2008): 414–432, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00088.x

Cold Monsters and Ecological Leviathans: Reflections on the Relationships between States and the Environment

Mark Whitehead*Aberystwyth University

AbstractThe relationship between state administrations and environmental issues has beenan enduring concern of geographers, environmentalists, philosophers, sociologistsand political scientists for a considerable length of time. This article provides acritical review of approaches to the study of state–environment relations acrossof a range of different disciplines. While states have been criticised as eitherineffectual, unjust, or even irrelevant managers of socio-environmental relationsin the modern world, this article argues that states continue to play a significantrole within a range of environmental issues at a number of different scales. Inorder to explore the contested role of the state within contemporary environmentalaffairs, this article outlines three broad sets of approaches to state–environmentrelations: normative perspectives, critical approaches and notions of environmentalgovernmentality. It is asserted that approaches adopting theories of environmentalgovernmentality offer a critical, but highly creative, framework in and throughwhich to study the contemporary entanglements of states and the environment.

Introduction: The Contemporary State in the Global Environment

As I was writing this article, Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenbergannounced that Norway intended to become the first state to go carbonneutral (see Vidal 2007). In an address to the Norwegian Labour Party,Stoltenberg emphasised Norway’s responsibility for helping to combatglobal climate change, and reiterated the crucial role of his governmentin helping to reduce net carbon emissions to zero. Two things struck meabout this story that have critical implications for this article’s analysis ofthe relationship between states and environmental concerns. First, I wasintrigued by the notion of responsibility that Stoltenberg invoked in orderto explain the actions of the state in relation to tackling climate change.Whether it be the emergence of the first forms of large-scale politicalbureaucracy in Egypt’s New Kingdom – a state system that emergedaround the need to regulate the water economy of the Nile Basin (seeWeber 2006) – or the controversial actions of the Brazilian government’s

© 2008 The Author Geography Compass 2/2 (2008): 414–432, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00088.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Cold monsters and ecological leviathans 415

environmental protection agency, IBAMA, in the administration ofAmazonian resources (see Raffles 2002), the political responsibilities ofstates for environmental management have been central to their form andfunction. The second important aspect of Stoltenberg’s sanguine procla-mation is his apparently firm belief in the unique abilities of the state toaddress complex environmental concerns. One of the defining characteristicsof states has been their relative monopoly on administrative resources,technical expertise, bureaucratic intelligence and institutional influence.Anthony Giddens (1985, 19) describes the collective resources of govern-ment bureaucracies as the administrative power of the state. However it iscategorised, it is clear that the bureaucratic capacities associated with stateshave led to the popular ideology that states have the ability to save societiesfrom the various threats associated with environmental fluctuations(including climate change).

This article explores the highly contested nature of the relationshipbetween states and the environment. I have started this endeavour bydiscussing Jens Stoltenberg’s proclamation primarily because it serves toillustrate that despite a growing awareness of the globally interconnectedform of environmental systems and threats, nation-states still provide keyinstitutional contexts through which environmental issues are beingcalculated and on which salvage, or rescue, administrations, for variousenvironmental problems, are being constructed (Bahro 1987). The exampleof Norway’s attempts to move to a carbon neutral status is also a salutarytale. In order to be carbon neutral, it appears that Norway intends tooffset its carbon footprint (currently spanning an estimated 54 milliontonnes) by buying carbon quotas from other countries (Vidal 2007).Greenpeace have been highly critical of this plan, claiming that it isunclear whether Norway’s calculation of carbon neutrality takes intoaccount its huge annual export of oil and gas, and that Norway can onlyafford to buy international carbon credits because of the residual wealthit has accrued from its energy sales (reputed to be in the region ofUS$300 billion) (Vidal 2007). In this context, Norway’s intended con-tribution to climate change abatement policies illustrates the forms ofdeliberate obfuscation that can arise when calibrating environmentalpolicies at the level of the nation-state. This case also reveals that despitethe best environmental intensions of state authorities, strong economicimperatives can test the resolve of governments when it comes to long-termecological decision-making.

The role of the state in questions of environmental management andpolicy development remains keenly debated within both environmentalstudies and political science. This article explores why states are seen bysome commentators as being the most effective of environmental guardians,while they are portrayed by other theorists as key institutional frameworksin and through which the continued domination and destruction of thenatural world is being realised and legitimated. This article is organised

416 Cold monsters and ecological leviathans


into four main sections. In the first section, analysis critically reviews existingtheories of the state within environmental study, political science andgeography. The second section considers a number of normative theories ofstate–environment relations (largely inspired by Weberian state theory)that each, in very different ways, asserts the importance of state adminis-trations in the regulation of environmental affairs. In the third section,analysis outlines a series of more critical theories concerning state–environment relations. Inspired by various strands of anarchist philosophy,eco-Marxism, political ecology and actor-network theories, this sectionreveals how these critical theories not only question the practical value ofstate systems within the just management of socio-environmental relations,but also attempt to undermine the very notion of the state as an iden-tifiable zone of political action. The fourth, and final, section of thisarticle introduces a series of approaches that have emerged in the study ofenvironmental governance that can be collectively referred to as environ-mental governmentality. The value of these approaches, it is argued, is thatthey take neither the categories of the state nor the environment as pre-given objects of analysis and normative assessment. Instead, work withinenvironmental governmentality seeks to explore the ways in which differentrationalities of the state emerge out of the complex intersection betweenvarious political institutions, ecological sciences and environmental events.This approach has the benefit of making us look beyond the establishedideologies of state, science and environmental politics, to consider howand why socio-environmental relations are governed in certain ways, andwhether it is possible to imagine other ways and reasons why politicalinstitutions could engage in environmental issues.

Critical Reflections on the State

Having worked and reflected on various aspects of political geography forsome time now, the state remains for me the most stubbornly difficultcategory of analysis that I have to deal with. My anxieties stem from thefact that while many analyses of the state appear to offer far too simplistic,and at times deterministic, accounts of power, I find it hard to shake theintuitive feeling that something (perhaps a collection of things, perhapseven a network of things), which loosely resembles traditional descriptionsof the state, continues to shape the world in which I live and the variouslife opportunities that I have. At times I take comforting refuge in well-established, but nonetheless sophisticated definitions of the state. The mostuseful definition that I have found is that offered by Michael Mann (1984)when he describes the state (in Weberian inspired terms) as, ‘[a] differen-tiated set of institutions and personnel embodying centrality in the sensethat political relations radiate outwards from a centre to cover a territoriallydemarcated area over which it exercises a monopoly of authoritativerule-making, backed up by a monopoly of the means of physical violence’



(p. 185). As a political geographer, it is easy to deploy this quote as aconvenient way of saying to doubters, ‘that is what I study’.

While great comfort can be taken from the identification of state-studies with governmental institutions, centralised power, delimited territoriesand notions of legitimate violence, it is always undermined by the lingeringrealisation that governmental forms of power do not confirm to this fairlyrigid imaginary. The activities of states are not restrictively containedwithin the walls of government departments, but actively flow througha myriad collection of para-state institutions and civic realms (see Brown1997). Political power is not something that resides – like perhaps a reserveof gold – in some centralised location (whether it be the White House,Kremlin or Japanese Diet) (see Allen 2003). And the notion that statepower either completely covers a territorial area, or stops at the bordersedge, is clearly absurd (see Smith 2004).

Concerns over the inadequacies of state theory in dealing with thecomplexities of political power have led some to call for the de-statisationof government studies (Rose 1996). Within various forms of environmentalwork and theory, there have been commensurate suspicions raisedabout the value of state-based perspectives in dealing with the unrulyterritorialities associated with environmental systems (see Held et al.1999, Chapter 8; Latour 1993, 120–122; Whatmore 2002, 60–116). Inthis article, I argue not only for the need to acknowledge and embracemany of the justifiable criticisms of state theory that currently exist, but alsoof the value of preserving a state-orientated perspective on environmentalissues. Robbins (2007) indicates an important step in this intellectualdirection in his recent review of the accounts of the state withinenvironmental studies (and in particular work on political ecology).Robbins provides a typology of the uses of state theory within work onpolitical ecology. Robbins’s (2007) typology identifies the state appearingwithin studies of various environmental processes as a simplifying,explanatory agent; as a key axis within complex networks of globalgovernance; or as a data gathering and assessment node (p. 2). Robbins’sreflections emphasise that just as analyses of the state can be used togreatly simplify the processes informing complex environmental events,criticism of state theory within environmental studies can be equallysimplistic when it reduces the varied and diverse field of state studies toa single, and highly deterministic, approach. Furthermore, I believe thatmany of the infuriating difficulties associated with reviewing, criticisingand analysing work on the state stem from the fact that the notion ofthe state can be used not only to denote different political practices, butalso different objectives of enquiry. For some, the state is an ontologicalcategory, a material thing, which denotes what political existence is like.For others, the state is a theoretical category: a conceptual posture thatif deployed correctly can provide crucial insights into the contemporaryand historical operations of power. Finally, the state also exists as an



ideological category: a constant pool of reassurance for our enduringenlightenment beliefs in equity, democracy and security (Gandy 1999).Consequently, in addition to trying to develop more subtle and nuancedaccounts of states, it is important to be constantly aware of the verydifferent ways we can use the term.

There are a number of examples of recent work within geography thatseek to subvert deterministic depictions of the state as a unitary actorwith formal sovereign power. Joe Painter’s (2006) recent reflection on theprosaic state has revealed the myriad ways in which state power is expressedin our everyday lives in very ordinary, and often overlooked ways. Therelated work of Jones (2007), on the peopling of the state, has effectivelyuncovered the ways in which state actions are often the contingentoutcome of the personalities, allegiances and vendettas of those workingwithin state systems. At the same time, Neil Brenner (2003) has arguedpersuasively for a new spatial imaginary of the state that, rather thanfocusing exclusively on national territorial actions, explores the variedlocal, urban and regional strategies deployed by state authorities (see alsoWhitehead et al. 2006). It is to such complex imaginaries of the state thatI wish the reader to cling as we explore what Held et al. (1999) havedescribed as the varied enmeshings of states with the environment throughoutthe remainder of this review (pp. 396–408).

Unpacking the Ecological Leviathan: Eco-Administration, Risk Bureaucracies and the Normative State

Thomas Hobbes generated one of the most enduring images of the statein his 1651 thesis, Leviathan. The notion of the state as an all-encompassingcold monster, wielding sovereign power and influence over its people andterritory, has had a critical impact on modern perceptions of powerand the nature of government. This section explores the deployment ofLeviathaneque conceptions of the state in the construction of normativeaccounts of the relationships between state governments and the environ-ment. Two primary principles, which derive from Hobbes’ analysis ofstate power, continue to influence work on environmental managementand policy development. The first relates to the role of the state intempering the selfish and collectively destructive impulses of individualswithin a society. The second concerns the value of large-scale politicaladministrations in the regulation of human affairs.

In relation to first perspective, Hobbes recognised that, if unchecked,the competitive impulses of human beings could lead to the chaos ofwar and social disintegration. The problems associated with unregulatedsocio-ecological greed have been utilised to critically interpret a range ofcontemporary environmental problems ranging from the management ofcommon pastoral land to global atmospheric pollution (see Hardin 1968).The problems associated with unregulated common resource regimes have



led to calls for either the greater privatisation of environmental commons,or for the creation of institutional regimes that are able to effectivelynegotiate and manage the use of environmental assets it an equitable andsustainable way. Whether it is as the guarantor and guardian of propertyrights (Lipschultz and Conca 1993), or the referee within resource conflicts( Johnston 1996), the state has been constructed as a key site for environ-mental management. In his game-theoretic analysis of state–environmentrelations, Ron Johnston (1996) claims that there are two key reasonsfor the enduring significance of the state within environmental policydevelopment and delivery. First, Johnston recognises the ability of statesto act as impartial arbiters within socio-environmental disputes. With theirrelative monopoly on institutional intelligence and constitutional commitmentto equity among citizens, Johnston claims that states can act to preventthe potential environmental damage that can be caused by naked economicambition and to ensure the best common use of environmental utilities.Johnston’s (1996) work also emphasises that it is only state institutions, withtheir broad-ranging but highly specialist expertise in agriculture, pollutiontreatment, environmental legislation, water treatment, toxicology, conser-vation, tax, health and education, that can deal with the interconnectedcomplexities of the contemporary environmental crisis (see also MacLeod1988).

The work of Ulrich Beck (1992a,b), and others, who have exploredthe various socio-ecological consequences associated with the rise ofa so-called risk society, has revealed a newly emerging role for statebureaucracies within contemporary forms of environmental management.According to Beck, the risk society is a direct product of the variousforces of industrialisation that have been occurring over the last 250 yearsof human history (1992a). The rise of the industrial society has beensynonymous with new industrial processes, the production of unprece-dented levels of pollution, the creation of previously inconceivable chemicalcompounds and biochemical substances, new settlement patterns, andpreviously unimaginable changes in the global environment (ranging fromclimate change to the depletion of the ozone layer). Living in this newindustrial world is, according to Beck, like living in an open laboratorywithin which the consequences of various industrial processes on theenvironment are experienced in real time by all of those who inhabit theEarth’s ecosystem.

Beck’s work reminds us that although industrial society has producedunprecedented levels of socio-environmental risk, exposure to risk is notuniform across society. Various studies have indicated that not only arepoor communities often exposed more to various forms of socio-ecologicalrisk, but also that wealthy communities and classes are more able toinsulate themselves against the worst consequences of risk. It is in the faceof elevated socio-ecological risk that the ability of states to act as large-scalecollective agents, as suggested by Hobbes, becomes significant. According



to Beck (1995, Chapter 4), states are increasingly being required to formrisk bureaucracies in order to insulate their populations, both rich and poor,against the worse side effects of industrial risk-taking. Risk bureaucraciescan range from the environmental protection agencies that are chargedwith monitoring levels of dangerous toxic materials within our environ-ments, or rapid-response ecological disaster units such as the US government’sFederal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Although environmentalrisk bureaucracies are becoming increasingly important features of manypeople’s lives, they are far from the socio-ecological panaceas that areoften associated with notions of ecological leviathans. At a conceptuallevel, Beck (1992, 1995) has argued that state bureaucracies often onlyserve to militate against the worst consequences of environmental risk,and to appease public anxieties through superficial risk assessment exercisesand scientific surveys. At a more practical level, the events surroundingHurricane Katrina in the autumn of 2005 also indicate the weaknessesassociated with even the most purportedly advanced risk bureaucracies.The failure of FEMA to respond quickly and effectively to the needs ofthe afflicted Gulf Coast communities of the US following HurricaneKatrina led to accusations of bureaucratic incompetence (The Economist2005) and even institutional racism (Bullard 2006).

Despite critiques of normative accounts of the state-orchestratedmanagement of environmental resources and risks, the work of MatthewGandy (1999) asserts the continuing relevance of state bureaucracieswithin contemporary environmental debate. In his defence of the roleof states within various forms of environmental management, Gandy(1999) argues that we need to abandon our rigid imaginaries of the stateas a sovereign power residing over a fixed and subservient territory (p. 60).In this context, Gandy reminds us that just as many 19th-century statepolicies and institutions focused on the environmental needs and manage-ment issues of municipal areas, it is to be expected that states of thefuture will have to operate in a range of new scalar frameworks as theyengage in the complexities of global environmental change (see alsoBulkeley 2005). Furthermore, Gandy argues that state authorities willincreasingly be detected working through complex governance networks– incorporating private corporations and civic groups – as they attemptto tackle contemporary environmental threats (ibid., p. 63). Gandy alsoreminds us that despite claims of bureaucratic inefficiency, burdensomeregulations and institutional favouritism, states still offer an enduringhope of universal environmental care and collective ecological decision-making (ibid., p. 60). Finally, Gandy’s re-analysis of the ecologicalleviathan ideal emphasises that the contemporary weaknesses of environ-mental law, and the vagaries of private insurance, mean it is only,perhaps, an enhanced ecological leviathan that can offer the types ofdemocratically accountable socio-ecological care we desire and need(ibid., pp. 64–66).



The Ecological Critique of the State: Environmental Alienation and the Limitations of State Theory

Having considered some of the normative arguments supporting thecontinued relevance of state administrations within various forms ofenvironmental management, in this section I want to outline some of themore concerted critiques of the state that have emerged from withinenvironmental politics and philosophy. While we have already discussedcritiques of the capacity of contemporary states to deal with the scale andcomplexity of current environmental problems, the critical assessments ofthe state presented in this section reflect a form of environmental analysisthat question the very enlightenment values on which the ideals of liberalstates are predicated (Gandy 1999).

One of the oldest, and most consistent, assaults launched against theability of different states to effectively address environmental concerns hascome from the anarchist tradition. Anarchism, as a political and philo-sophical movement, dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries. It does,however, continue to find popular contemporary expression in thework of neo- and eco-anarchist scholars and activists (see Sheenhan2003). From its foundation within the classic work of Mikhail Bakunin,Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin, anarchism has beenopposed to the application of arbitrary and hierarchical leadership and hasthus made the modern state one of its prime targets of critique. Whileoften implicit within contemporary discussions of state–environmentrelations, the principles of anarchism continue to inform some of thedeepest ecological suspicions of the state (see Whitehead et al. 2007, 28–33).While theorists and advocates of globalisation often suggest that states aretoo small to deal with the scale of contemporary environmental problems(see above), eco-anarchist inspired critiques of the state claim that statesare too large and insensitive to be able to deal with the local ecologicalspecificities of the natural world (Carter 2007, 74–76). Many eco-anarchist writers, like Murray Bookchin (2004), see the environmentalproblems of the state as being two-fold: (i) that states tend to vastlysimplify the local social and ecological complexities of the environmentin order to be able to govern them (see here Neumann 2004; Scott 1998);and (ii) that in taking collective responsibility for environmental management,states tend to prevent citizens from developing the necessary skills toengage themselves in important forms of ecological conservation, care andrestoration. The impacts of eco-anarchist thinking can be discernedwithin recent work on radical ecological and sustainable citizenship(Anderson 2004; Dobson 2003; Bullen and Whitehead 2005), and associatedways of thinking about post-territorial citizenship. The influence ofeco-anarchist thought can also be seen within contemporary accounts ofsubnational environmental management regimes based on sustainableregions, cities and more local environmental cooperatives (see Bulkeley



and Betsill 2005; Haughton and Counsell 2004; Whitehead 2006, Chapter8). At a more practical level, the ethos of eco-anarchism can been seen inaction right across the political spectrum – from the current ClimateChange Camp (constructed to oppose the British government’s plans toexpand Heathrow Airport), to the more traditional demands of theWise Use Movement in the western USA (who are opposed to federalinterference within various forms of rural environmental management; seeMcCarthy 1999).

Related to, but by no means synonymous with, the eco-anarchistcritique of state–environment relations has been a collection of work thatcould be broadly termed eco-Marxism (see Carter 2007, 74–76). Muchwork within Marxist-inspired accounts of socio-environmental relationshas considered the ideological construction and exploitation of natureunder hegemonic capitalist modes of economic production and calculation(see Burkett 1999; Castree 2001; Smith 1984). Applying the writings ofMarx to contemporary agricultural processes (see Castree 2001), miningand extraction industries (Bridge 2004; Bridge and McManus 2000) andurbanisation (Swyngedouw 2004), such work has revealed the role ofcapitalist ideologies and economic expansionism within the dominationand, often uncosted, exploitation of the environment. While the stateoften appears only as a contextual point of reference within the work ofeco-Marxists, recent work has drawn on Marxist-inspired state theory inorder to explore the role of state systems within the capitalist appropriationof nature (see Swyngedouw 2007; Whitehead et al. 2006). Work on therelationship between capitalism, state and the environment has revealedthat far from being a neoliberal free-for-all, the capitalisation of nature isdependent on a range of state practises and modes of intervention. Thecapitalist state provides heavily subsidised collective infrastructures (likecanals, roads and water networks) without which various economicpractices would not be profitable (Whitehead et al. 2006). At the sametime, the regulation of property rights by the state (both in relation toprivate land and biotechnological patents) facilitates the large-scale capitalistappropriation of nature at both a global and microbiological level (seeCastree 2003a,b; Whatmore 2002, Chapter 5). While those writing onthe links between Marxism, state and the environment do not simply seethe state as the tool of the capitalist class (or as Marx himself put it, theCommittee of the Bourgeoisie), many claim that far from acting as the guardianof nature, states are often complicit within strategies that result in thedeliberate, uneven and harmful exploitation of the environment.

While various strands of eco-Marxism have provided a powerfulcritique of the role of the state within socio-environmental relations, theyhave themselves become the subject of much criticism. These criticismshave focused on the propensity within eco-Marxism to explain environ-mental exploitation through narrow models of economic causality and thetendency of allied state theories to greatly simplify the complex modalities



that political power can take. Many of these attacks have emerged fromwithin a body of work known as political ecology (see Robbins 2004).While itself emerging out of certain strands of eco-Marxism, so-calledpost-Marxist political ecologies have developed far less economically focusedaccounts of socio-environmental relations (see Bryant 2001; Robbins2007). Specifically in relation to the state, post-Marxist political ecologieshave sought to reprioritise the state and address its relative marginalisationwithin eco-Marxism (Bryant 2001). Where the state has been analysedwithin post-Marxist political ecologies, it has thus not been constructedmerely as an accomplice to capitalist class relations. Post-Marxist politicalecologists have instead analysed the role of states within the consolidationand contestation of various forms of gender, race and imperial inequalities,and how these disparities are expressed in relation to environmentalresource access and levels of exposure to environmental injustices (seeBryant and Bailey 1997; Peet and Watts eds 2004). In certain post-Marxistpolitical ecologies, the state is depicted as a networked actor liaising andcooperating with a range of local and transnational actors and organisations(see Robbins 2007). While such a depiction of the state is not particularlydifferent from the more nuanced accounts of ecological leviathansdescribed above, certain political ecologists have suggested some highlyoriginal theories of the state. In his account of parasitic states, for example,Paul Robbins (2007) describes how, in many less economically developednations, states attempt to construct highly lucrative, but ecologicallydamaging agricultural and extractive resource industry complexes in orderto service expanding international debts. Robbins’s notion of the stateas environmental parasite is original because rather than ascribing theecological failings of states to economic, cultural or imperial forces, itrecognises the inherent tendencies of over-reaching state bureaucracies tothemselves facilitate the harmful depletion of ecological resources.

The final set of approaches to socio-environmental relations that havea bearing on our discussion of the state emanate from work on associa-tions, collectives and theories of actor-networks. Inspired by the collectivewritings of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law contemporarynetworked theories of reality provide a very different critique of accountsof the state within environmental studies than those previously reviewed(see Callon 1986; Latour 1993, 1999, 2004, 2005; Law 1995). At a verysimple level, theories of actor-networks question the very ontologicalrelevance of a thing called the state within environmental studies (seeLatour 1993, 120). Actor-network theories argue that despite what manyof our most respected categories of sociological analysis may suggest (i.e.society, nature, politics, ecology) reality is not constituted by a series ofdiscrete realms of existence, but is a complex and highly messy mixture,whose constant stitching and unstitching is what makes the world goround (see Latour 2005, 21–26). According to Bruno Latour (1993),modern ideologies of the state – that represent it as a totalitarian regime



of rational social judgement and autonomous action – have activelycontributed to the prevailing sense of human domination over the envi-ronment, while actively veiling our intimate interdependencies with thenon-human world (pp. 120–122). In other words, the notion of themodern state is a myth, but a myth that continues to have seriousconsequences for the environment.

Closer inspection of the work of actor-network theorists does, however,reveal that there is, even here, a vision of a reconstituted state that couldplay a positive role in a collective environmental future. In his book ThePolitics of Nature, for example, Bruno Latour (2004) sets out an alternativevision for the potential state of the future (pp. 200–209). According toLatour, just because state administrations of the past have been complicitwithin the production of simplified knowledge about environmentalsystems, which have been utilised to exploit such systems for expedienteconomic ends, it does not mean that state bureaucracies cannot facilitatethe construction of much more complex knowledge regimes concerningthe environment. Latour consequently asks,

How can we detect new phenomena at the extreme limit of the sensitivity ofinstruments, without a meticulous accumulation of data over a very longtime? No one has the ability to keep track of these except administrators.(ibid., p. 205)

Latour’s point is that it would be foolish to dispense with the latentcapacities (both technological and procedural) of state systems to act asdynamic and versatile agents of collective environmental data gathering.As strong procedural powers, Latour recognises the ability of states (whenliberated from their modernist ideological postures and capitalist economicconstraints) to produce synchronised knowledge of the environment thatreveals the intricacies of socio-ecological interdependence and the inherentinstability of contemporary socio-ecological hybrids (ibid., p. 204).

Ecological Rationalities and Environmental Governmentalities

The third and final group of approaches to state–environment relations Ioutline in this article occupy a more ambiguous ideological terrain thaneither the normative accounts of the ecological leviathan (described in thesecond section), or the various critiques of states’ ecological credentialsoutlined in the previous section. Inspired by the work of Michel Foucaulton the history of governmental power (and allied theories of poweradvocated by Friedrich Nietzsche), this collection of work goes by variousnames, including environmental governmentality, eco-power, environmen-tality and green governmentality. What this collective oeuvre has in commonis a desire to apply Foucault’s account of the evolving nature of liberalgovernmental power to an analysis of the governance of various socio-ecological and environmental systems (see Darier 1996, 1999; Goldman 2004;



Luke 1995). In keeping with the work of Gandy (1999) and Latour (2004)already outlined, notions of environmental governmentality do not assumethe pre-existence of an ideal-type state system or bureaucracy. In keepingwith Foucault’s (2007) own genealogy of governmental systems (fromnotions of absolute Machiavellian sovereignty to 20th-century stateliberalism), theories of environmental governmentality recognise that statesystems that have sought to administer various aspects of the environmenthave varied greatly over time. Critically, however, advocates of environ-mental governmentality also recognise that not only have systems ofenvironmental governance changed over time, but so too have understandingsof the, often taken for granted, notion of the environment.

Foucault’s account of governmentality derives in large part from hisanalysis of biopower. Foucault’s notion of biopower was developedinitially through a series of lectures delivered at the State University ofRio de Janeiro in 1974, before being explored more completely inFoucault’s lectures at the Collége de France and the first volume of hisHistory of Sexuality (Foucault 1976 [Trans. 1998]). Within this body ofwork Foucault describes how, from the 17th century, the political powerof the state moved from being a power over death (i.e. execution and thetaking of life) to a power over life (i.e. facilitating the right conditionswithin which life can continue and prosper) (Foucault 1976 [Trans. 1998],135–159). The age of biopower essentially sees questions of medicinemoving from being the exclusive realm of the physician, and into theremit of state policies concerning demographics, planning, sanitation andpublic health. Biopower is connected to notions of governmentality to theextent that it required a new state rationality with regard to the scienceof governing. No longer is state power expressed exclusively througharbitrary acts of violence and repression, but on the basis of the calculationof aggregate social welfare provision and economic need. In the contextof his analysis of the rise of biopower Foucault outlined his notion ofgovernmentality in his 1978 lecture series at the Collége de France: Security,Territory and Population (Foucault 2007). Foucault’s account of governmen-tality is not meant to supersede his theories of biopower and population:rather Foucault claims that an inventory of governmental forms andprocedures is required if we are to begin to understand the nature ofmodern state power with regard to aggregate entities like a nationalpopulation (Foucault 2007, 29). According to Foucault, governmentalityreflects the mentality (or rationality of government) that started to emergeduring the European Enlightenment and has found its fulfilment withinmodern liberal democratic forms of government. Governmentality isperhaps best thought of as the governmentalisation of the state, or thesubjection of the state to a rational science of administrative calculationand resource calibration. Crucially, within his account of governmentality,Foucault describes the science of modern government as being aboutsecuring the ‘right disposition of things’ for a national economy to prosper



and flourish. Of course, in relation to the functioning of a nationaleconomy, the ‘right disposition of things’ not only involves the health ofa population, but also the broader territorial integration of soils, climateand mineral resources (see Elden 2007).

Environmental governmentality attempts to apply Foucault’s outline ofmodern governmental power to questions of socio-environmental governance.At one level, contemporary work on environmental governmentality hasfocused on how modern science and state systems have come together tofacilitate the regulated exploitation of territorial resources like coal, woodand agricultural land (see Braun 2000). Other advocates of environmentalgovernmentality have sought to use Foucault’s work as a framework forexploring the government of the new environmental threats that havebecome synonymous with the second half of the 20th century (see Darier1996; Luke 1999). Work on environmental governmentality has, however,not only explored the changing modes of state intervention in environ-mental systems, but also has exposed how changing scientific andeconomic understandings of the environment have reshaped governmentalrationality over time. In his own account of state intervention withinurban heath, for example, Foucault describes how nascent notions of ‘theenvironment’ (as a relationship between an organism and its social ornatural context), which were emerging within natural science andHippocratic medical theories, facilitated the construction of the urbanenvironment as an object of government (see Foucault 1994, 150). In asimilar way, it is possible to see how certain promethean notions of theenvironment as a capitalist resource (Braun 2000), imperial depictions ofthe environment as chaotic and dangerous (Gregory 2001), or conservationistdiscourses of the environment as a fragile remnant, have all shaped thereasons for, and sciences of, environmental government over time.

I have ended this review by outlining the relevance of environmentalgovernmentality to work on state–environment relations because I believethat it offers a critical, yet flexible framework within which to explore thevaried entanglements of states and environments over time. As with thevaried theories surrounding the notion of an ecological leviathan, envi-ronmental governmentality recognises the enduring political legacies andinfluence of the state. Like the more nuanced accounts of the ecologicalleviathan, however, it also recognises that the environmental power of thestate is not expressed as a form of territorial sovereignty, but on thebasis of complex networks of people, local communities and global organ-isations that are able to secure, however temporarily, the right dispositionof environmental conditions for life and development. In keeping withmore critical accounts of state–environment relations (evident withinanarchism, eco-Marxism and actor-network theory), notions of environ-mental governmentality are able to preserve a high degree of criticalperspective on the state. A central part of Foucault’s work on governmentalitysought to uncover how, despite its various moral discourses, the modern



science of government was really about facilitating the welfare of nationaleconomies and the production of financial wealth. To this end, Foucaultasserts that while displaying concern for the health of the populationand the environment, modern states are really dedicated to ensuring thatcertain bandwidths of tolerable social and environmental exploitation aremaintained (2007). These bandwidths are not designated on the basis ofthe calculation of the varied qualities of human life, or the rich diversitiesof ecological systems, but on what the minimum levels of social andecological welfare are for continued socio-economic stability (Foucault2007, 1–23).

Despite the valuable perspectives that notions of environmental govern-mentality offer to work on state–environment relations, it is important toacknowledge a number of concerns that have emerged recently withingeography with Foucault’s work, and that appear to have a significantbearing on the themes raised in this article. In his analysis of the Kantianinfluences of Foucault’s analyses, for example, David Harvey questions thetreatment of the geographical nature of knowledge within both scholars’writings (Harvey 2007). Harvey claims that Foucault’s oeuvre is hauntedby a static (Kantian/Newtonian) epistemology of space, against which isset the dynamic fluidity of time and history. In respect of notions ofenvironmental governmentality, it could thus be argued that there is atendency to explore historical changes in the meanings and practices ofgovernment and environment, while ignoring the important ways inwhich place, culture and environment come together in particular nationaland subnational spaces to affect the nature of environmental governmentality(see Harvey 2007, 46). Nigel Thrift meanwhile asserts that in Foucaultwe find dark accounts of inescapable power that are unable to dealadequately with the irrational contingencies of embodied actions andemotions (Thrift 2007). Recent work on the state has revealed that farfrom being characterised by the rational exercise of political knowledgegathering and dispassionate decision-making, states are clusters of sub-jectivities, emotions and irrationalities. Such a realisation can equally bea source of despair and hope when thinking about the nature of politicalchange and revolution (see Jones 2007). The combined reflections ofHarvey and Thrift do, however, raise important questions concerning theability of Foucauldian-inspired accounts of environmental governmentalityto recognise and assess the contingent affects of both spaces and peopleon forms of environmental government.

Beyond these purported weaknesses, what notions of environmentalgovernmentality do offer is sensitivity to the co-evolution of governmentalsystems and prevailing ecological rationalities. Consequently, whether it isthe impact of the often reductionist, experimental sciences of nature on18th-century state mentalities, or the influence of the more holisticsciences of ecology on the states of the late 20th century, it appears thatthere is a complex relationship between environmental knowledge and



state action. It is in this context that an appreciation of theories ofenvironmental governmentality enables the researcher to move theirattention away from the question of whether states are good, bad ormerely insignificant when it comes to environmental management, and toconsider, at any given time, what types of understandings of the environment(reductionist, holistic, Hippocratic, ecological, resourcist) are informingwhat types of state practices towards the environment (protection, security,exploitation, adaptation) and how desirable such a state of affairs may be.

Conclusion

This article has provided a critical overview of a series of different analyticalapproaches to the relationships between states and the environment. Aswe have seen, despite the onset of globalisation states continue to play asignificant, if ambiguous role, within the management and regulation ofsocio-environmental relations. Despite the enduring legacy of stateswithin environmental policy-making, analyses of state–environment relationsare consistently inhibited by analytical confusion surrounding what thestate is and what the state does. In this article, we have seen the importanceof abandoning notions of states as cold monsters of sovereignty andbureaucratic absolutism, and instead exploring the state as a varied networkof governance programmes operating through numerous public and privatesites and at multiple spatial scales. This article has also asserted the impor-tance of recognising that the notion of the state can, at different times,denote questions of ideology, ontology and/or epistemologies of power.In this context, particular care needs to be taken to identifying which typeof approach to the state is being deployed within different accounts ofstate–environment relations.

The main sections of this article have categorised approaches to, andtheories of, state–environment relations into three principal groups. Thefirst section outlined normative accounts of the state that depict the stateas a kind of ecological leviathan that is able to develop collective strategiestowards environmental protection while effectively insulating peoplefrom a range of ecological risks. The second section described a series ofapproaches that have been more critical of the role of the state withinhuman–environment relations. In this section, we saw how anarchist,eco-Marxist and, more recently, political ecologists had all exposed waysin which states were complicit within the human destruction of the naturalworld. Towards the end of this section analysis also outlined a series ofmore ontological critiques of the state that have emerged out of a collectionof work that can broadly be referred to as actor-network theory. Whilenormative, and more critical, anarchist and eco-Marxist approaches to thestate interpret the role of the state within environmental affairs in verydifferent ways, they do have one thing in common: a belief in the existenceof a thing that can be isolated and designated as the state. Actor-network



theorists raise the challenging question that perhaps the ideologies of thestate are just that: mythical ideologies that suggest the existence of a kindof super-human structure with the ability to control and manipulate theenvironment while hiding the messy complexities and incompleteness ofcontemporary government processes.

The final part of this article outlined a series of approaches to state–environment relations that have emerged out of Michel Foucault’s workon modern forms of liberal government. Related work on environmentalgovernmentality has the advantage of not having a set ideology towards,or theory of, the state and no fixed normative sense of what the stateshould do. Instead, work on environmental governmentality explores thepractices through which the science of environmental government isbeing carried out at any given time, and how these processes of governmentflow through a number of public and private arenas, and governmentaland para-governmental sites. In order to understand the value of environ-mental governmentality to work on state–environment relations, it isworth returning to the story of Norway’s ambition to go carbon neutral(with which we began this article). My question is: how would someonedeploying theories of environmental governmentality study Norway’s newclimate change policy regime. As opposed to normative accounts ofstate–environment relations, it would not necessarily assume the state isthe only, or even the best, framework within which to address carbondioxide emissions reduction. At the same time, an environmental govern-mentality perspective would also require that we do not deploy a cynicalposture to Norway’s ambitions and assume that the new initiative is eitherstate propaganda, or likely to be doomed to fail. Environmental govern-mentality suggests the need to study Norway’s drive to become carbonneutral in fine detail, studying how its policies are going to be imple-mented at a government level, how they will be internalised within familyor individual behaviour patterns and, crucially, the mechanisms, formulasand technologies that will actually be used to monitor Norway’s reductionin carbon dioxide emissions. The object of analysis is thus shifted from ageneric reflection on the broad nature of state–environment relations, toa detailed analysis of the practices of a specific government on a particularform of socio-environmental relation. This is a shift that should bewelcomed within the diverse and complex field concerned with the studyof ecological leviathans of all kinds.

Short Biography

Mark Whitehead is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the Instituteof Geography and Earth Sciences, at Aberystwyth University, and SeniorResearch Fellow at the City Institute, York University, Toronto. Hehas written widely on urban and environmental politics and has aparticular interest in the political geographies of nature. He has authored



and co-authored papers on these topics for the journals Environment andPlanning A; Urban Studies; Society and Space; Geografiska Annaler; CitizenshipStudies; Ethics, Place and Environment; Area; and Policy and Politics. He is theauthor of Spaces of Sustainability: Geographical Perspectives on the SustainableSociety (Routledge, 2006), co-author of The Nature of the State: Excavatingthe Political Ecologies of the Modern State (Oxford University Press, 2007,with Martin Jones and Rhys Jones), and co-editor of New Horizons inBritish Urban Policy: Perspectives on New Labour’s Urban Renaissance (Ashgate,2004, with Craig Johnstone). He is presently writing a book on thegovernmentalisation of air pollution in the UK. He holds a BSc and aPhD from the University of Wales, and was the winner of the GregynogPrize for Human Geography in 1997.

Note

* Correspondence address: Mark Whitehead, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. E-mail:[email protected].

References

Allen, J. (2003). Lost geographies of power. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Anderson, J. (2004). Spatial politics in practice: the style and substance of environmental direct

action. Antipode 36, pp. 106–125.Bahro, R. (1987). Logik der rettung: Werr kann die Apokalypse aufhalten? – Ein Versuch Über die

Grundlangen Ökologischer Politik. Stuttgart, Germany: Transaction Press.Beck, U. (1992a). From industrial society to the risk society: questions of survival, social

structure and ecological enlightenment. Theory, Culture and Society 9, pp. 197–123.——. (1992b). Risk society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage.——. (1995). Ecological politics in an age of risk. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Bookchin, M. (2004). Post-scarcity anarchism. Oakland, CA: AK Press.Braun, B. (2000). Producing vertical territory: geology and governmentality in late-Victorian

Canada. Ecumene 7, pp. 7–46.Brenner, N. (2003). New state spaces: urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press.Bridge, G. (2004). Mapping the Bonanza: geographies of mining investment in an era of

neo-liberal reform. Professional Geographer 56, pp. 406–421.Bridge, G., and McManus, P. (2000). Sticks and stones: environmental narratives and discursive

regulation in the forestry and mining industries. Antipode 32, pp. 10–47.Brown, M. (1997). Replacing citizenship: AIDS activism and radical democracy. New York: Guildford.Bryant, R. L. (2001). Political ecology: a critical agenda for change. In: Castree, N. and Braun,

B. (eds) Social nature: theory, practice and politics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 151–169.Bryant, R. L., and Bailey, S. (1997). Third world political ecologies. London: Routledge.Bulkeley, H. (2005). Reconfiguring environmental governance: towards a politics of scales and

networks. Political Geography 24, pp. 875–902.Bulkeley, H., and Betsill, M. (2005). Rethinking sustainable cities: multilevel governance and

the ‘urban’ politics of climate change. Environmental Politics 14, pp. 42–63.Bullard, R. D. (2006). Justice, nature and the city: environmental justice in post-hurricane New Orleans.

Paper Presented at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society(with the Institute of British Geographers).

Bullen, A., and Whitehead, M. (2005). Negotiating the networks of space, time and substance:a geographical perspective on the sustainable citizen. Citizenship Studies 9, pp. 499–516.

Burkett, P. (1999). Marx and nature: a red and green perspective. London: Macmillan.



Callon, M. (1986). Some elements in a sociology of translation. In: Law, J. (ed.) Power, actionand belief. London: Routledge, pp. 19–34.

Carter, N. (2007). The politics of the environment: ideas, activism and policy, 2nd ed. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.

Castree, N. (2001). Marxism, capitalism and the production of nature. In: Castree, N. andBraun, B. (eds) Social nature: theory, practice, and politics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 189–207.

——. (2003a). Commodifying what nature? Progress in Human Geography 27, pp. 273–292.——. (2003b). Bioprospecting: from theory to practice (and back again). Transactions of the

Institute of British Geographers 28, pp. 35–55.Darier, É. (1996). Environmental governmentality: the case of Canada’s green plan. Environmen-

tal Politics 4, pp. 585–606.——. (ed.) (1999). Discourses of the environment. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Dobson, A. (2003). Citizenship and the environment. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Elden, S. (2007). Governmentality, calculation, territory. Environment and Planning D: Society

and Space 25, pp. 562–580.Foucault, M. (1976 [trans. 1998]). The will to knowledge: the history of sexuality, vol. 1. London:

Penguin Books.——. (1994). The birth of social medicine. In: Faubion, J. D. (ed.) Michel Foucault Power –

essential works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 3. London: Penguin, pp. 134–156.——. (2007). Security, territory and population: lectures at the Collége De France 1977–1978. Senellart,

M. (ed.); Burchell, G. (trans.). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.Gandy, M. (1999). Rethinking the ecological leviathan: environmental regulation in an age of

risk. Global Environmental Change 9, pp. 59–69.Giddens, A. (1985). A contemporary critique of historical materialism, vol. 2, the nation–state and

violence. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Goldman, M. (2004). Eco-governmentality and other transnational practices of the ‘green’

World Bank. In: Peet, R. and Watts, M. (eds) Liberation ecologies: environment, development,social movements. London: Routledge, pp. 166–192.

Gregory, D. (2001). (Post)Colonialism and the production of nature. In: Castree, N. and Braun,B. (eds) Social nature: theory, practice and politics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 84–111.

Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162, pp. 1243–1248.Harvey, D. (2007). The kantian roots of Foucault’s dilemmas. In: Crampton, J. W. and Elden,

S. (eds) Space, power and knowledge: Foucault and geography. London: Ashgate, pp. 41–47.Haughton, G., and Counsell, C. (2004). Regions, spatial strategies and sustainable development.

London: Routledge.Held, D., et al. (1999). Global transformations: politics, economic and culture. Cambridge, UK:

Polity Press.Johnston, R. (1996). Nature, state and economy: a political economy of the environment. Chichester,

UK: John Wiley.Jones, R. (2007). People/states/territories: the political geographies of British state transformation.

Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Latour, B. (1999). To modernise or ecologies? That is the question. In: Braun, B. and Castree,

N. (eds) Remaking reality: nature at the millennium. London: Routledge, pp. 221–242.——. (1993). We have never been modern. London: Prentice Hall.——. (2004). Politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.——. (2005). Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press.Law, J. (1995). Notes on the theory of actor-network: ordering, strategy and heterogeneity.

Systems Practice 5, pp. 379–393.Lipshutz, R., and Conca, K. (eds). (1993). The state and social power in global environmental politics.

Chichester, UK: Columbia University Press.Luke, T. W. (1999). Environmentality as green governmentality. In: Darier, E. (ed.) Discourses

of the environment. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 121–151.MacLeod, R. (ed.) (1988). Government and expertise: specialists, administrators and professionals,

1860–1919. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.



Mann, M. (1984). The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results.European Journal of Sociology XXV, pp. 185–213.

McCarthy, J. (1999). Environmentalism, wise use and the nature of accumulation in the ruralWest. In: Braun, B. and Castree, N. (eds) Remaking reality: nature at the millennium. London:Routledge, pp. 126–149.

Neumann, R. (2004). Nature-state-territory: towards a critical theorization of conservationenclosures. In: Peet, R. and Watts, M. (eds) Liberation ecologies: environment, development, socialmovement. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, pp. 195–217.

Painter, J. (2006). Prosaic geographies of stateness. Political Geography 25, pp. 752–774.Peet, R., and Watts, M. (eds) (2004). Liberation ecologies: environment, development, social

movements. London: Routledge.Raffles, H. (2002). In Amazonia: a natural history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Robbins, P. (2004). Political ecology: a critical introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.——. (2007). The state in political ecology: a postcard to political ecology from the field. In:

Cox, K., Lowe, M. and Robinson, J. (eds) The handbook for political geography. London: Sage,pp. 251–268.

Rose, N. (1996). Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In: Barry, A., Osborne, T. andRose, N. (eds) Foucault and political reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism and the rationalities of government.London: UCL Press, pp. 37–64.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.London: Yale University Press.

Sheenhan, S. (2003). Anarchism. London: Reaktion Books.Smith, N. (1984). Uneven development: nature, capital and the production of place. Oxford, UK: Basil

Blackwell.——. (2004). American empire: Roosevelt’s geographer and the prelude to globalization. Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press.Swyngedouw, E. (2004). Social power and the urbanization of water flows of power. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press.——. (2007). Technonatural revolutions – the scalar politics of Franco’s hydro-social dream for

Spain, 1939–1975. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32 (1), pp. 9–28.The Economist (2005). When government fails. The Economist 10 September, pp. 24–26.Thrift, N. (2007). In: Crampton, J. W. and Elden, S. (eds) Space, power and knowledge: Foucault

and geography. London: Ashgate, pp. 53–58.Vidal, J. (2007). Norway aims for zero-carbon status with all emissions offset by 2050. The

Guardian 21 April, p. 24.Weber, M. (2006). Bureaucracy. In: Sharma, A. and Gupta, A. (eds) The anthropology of the state

– a reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 54–56.Whatmore, S. (2002). Hybrid geographies: space, nature, culture. London: Sage.Whitehead, M. (2006). Spaces of sustainability: geographical perspectives on the sustainable society.

London: Routledge.Whitehead, M., Jones, M., and Jones, R. (2006). Spatializing the ecological leviathan: states,

nature and the production of regional space. Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography88, pp. 1–17.

Whitehead, M., Jones, R., and Jones, M. (2007). The nature of the state: excavating the politicalecologies of the modern state. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

cold monsters and ecological leviathans: reflections on the relationships between states and the...

Documents