Interacting for the Environment: Engaging Goffman in Pro-Environmental Action

Abstract

While there are profound disagreements about how more sustainable forms of living might be achieved, most research on pro-environmental action recognizes it as a fundamentally social challenge—demanding shifts not merely in individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, but also in social norms, contexts, and practices. Despite the social nature of the challenge, perhaps the most fundamental social medium—social interaction—remains undertheorized in this area. To address this gap, this article applies Erving Goffman's understandings of social interaction to an ethnographic case study of a pro-environmental change initiative called Environment Champions. The analysis shows that social interaction plays a crucially important role in shaping responses to pro-environmental change processes, a role that has the potential to both help and hinder the spread of pro-environmental action. The article concludes by exploring how Goffman's ideas develop and extend current debates about pro-environmental behavior change.

Keywords:

• banal environmentalism
• conspicuous environmentalism
• Erving Goffman
• pro-environmental behavior
• social interaction
• social practice

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Professor Jacquelin Burgess and Dr Gill Seyfang, who supervised my PhD thesis, and for the valuable comments of three anonymous reviewers.

Notes

To preserve the anonymity of participants, Burnetts and all participants’ names used in this article are pseudonyms.

All quotations are drawn from interviews with members of the Champions team unless otherwise stated.

I thank an anonymous reviewer for this interpretation.