Precarious membership through the lens of ecological responsibilisation

ABSTRACT

From its very beginning in 2018, the Fridays for Future movement has been known for youth-led climate activism. This article examines the young activists’ activities in Germany between 2019 and 2021. 13 problem-centred interviews were conducted with activists aged between 14 and 23, along with approximately 50 h of participant observation on strikes and meetings of local FFF groups. Based on this data, this article focuses on the young activists’ perceptions, demands and practices with regard to individual responsibility taken on via an ecological lifestyle. Taking an ethnographic, praxeological perspective, interaction situations are discussed to examine how the young activists are made responsible for ecological transformation on an individual level, and how this relates to legitimate participation in the movement. The results comprise three types of practices: the embodiment of individual responsibility, coherence checks and the maintaining of ambivalence. Overall, the study finds that the climate activists create and are confronted with certain normative demands concerning their lifestyle. This phenomenon is expressed as a paradoxical ambivalence between dissociation from and affirmation of those demands. The analysis thus enables insights into movement-related lifestyle practices and uncovers contradictions resulting from the individualisation of responsibility that have received little attention so far.

KEYWORDS:

• Fridays for Future
• ethnography
• lifestyle politics
• responsibilisation
• political participation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants in this study for sharing their views and experiences, as well as the attendees of several scientific workshops for their perspectives. Finally, I sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their appreciative, detailed and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term ‘prefigurative politics’ describes activists’ attempts to model social change, and act out the values propagated, in their collective actions ‘through organisation, design, architecture, practices, bodies, or […] a gesture or demeanour’ (Jeffrey and Dyson 2020, 3) and also in their own everyday life practices (Haunss 2011, 43). Hence, in the context of environmental activism, it closely relates to the concept of ‘lifestyle politics’, i.e. the ‘politicization of everyday life choices, including ethically, morally or politically inspired decisions about, for example, consumption, transportation or modes of living’ (de Moor 2017, 183) – sharing a focus on lifestyle as collective issue aiming for social change.

2 With its integrated theory of social worlds and arenas (Clarke 2005; Strauss 1978) and its relational approach, Situation Analysis is a fruitful procedure to analyse social collectives, focusing on ‘actual practices rather than […] individuals’ (Clarke, Friese, and Washburn 2018, 75, emphasis added). Moreover, it is suitable here because this study considers the German FFF movement to be a complex collective arrangement; an arena of concern where ‘various issues are debated, negotiated, fought out, forced and manipulated’ (Strauss 1978, 124) – such as the individualisation of ecological responsibility.

3 When translating the transcriptions and protocols, special attention was paid to maintaining the original meaning. For reasons of comprehension, the transcription rules have been simplified.

4 All names used are pseudonymised or anonymised.

5 The fact that non-human beings participate in practices by ‘making a difference’ (Latour 2007, 71) is elaborated upon by Bruno Latour, according to whom things can also ‘authorize, allow, afford, encourage, permit, suggest, influence, block, render possible, forbid, and so on’ (Latour 2007, 72). In interactions in which ecologically responsible subjects are at issue, non-human actors (such as single-use coffee cups, shopping bags or paper towels) are often conspicuously involved, provoking individuals to doubt activists’ subject status (see Posmek 2021).

6 Nevertheless, subsections 3.1 and 3.3 offer evidence that the young activists also undergo coherence checks within their peer group, what they also reflect themselves: Tina (l. 265–267), for example, considers the denial of their participation due to their supposedly unsustainable behaviour as a ‘problem of authenticity that we have also contributed to’. This reveals a paradox in the field, which is disclosed through the ethnographic stance of alienation. The paradox becomes particularly evident from the observation that the young activists often perform a balancing act between reproducing individuals’ responsibility and distancing themselves from overly strong individualisation (subsection 3.3).

7 The local groups usually have an opening session in which each person briefly comments on a predefined topic such as their current state or pleasant experiences they have had.