Governmentality

When approached from the horizon of Foucauldian analytics of government, climate governance can be examined as practical activity, historicized and specified at the level of the rationalities, programmes, techniques and subjectivities which underpin it and give it form and effect. This chapter identifies three main interrelated ‘studies of climate governmentalities’ that have begun to contribute to the ways in which climate governance can be understood. These focus on: (1) the climate imagined as a historical and political object that is possible to govern; (2) advanced liberal climate government; (3) subjectivity and the personal conduct of carbon. Studies in climate governmentality becomes an inquiry not only about the design of policy, regulations and codes of conduct, but offers a close engagement with how these are taken up, worked through and reconfigured in the day-to-day practice and culture of everyday life.