From campaign-style governance to multiple environmentalities: urban political ecologies of e-waste regulation in Guiyu, China

ABSTRACT

Recent urban political ecology (UPE) literature on urban environmentality, drawing on Foucauldian power analytics, sheds important light on how powers in non-coercive, non-sovereign, and diffused forms emerge and produce docile environmental subjects. Meanwhile, much literature on urban environmental politics in the Global South works with an environmental governance approach, focusing on the role of sovereign power in governing urban socio-ecological changes. This paper collapses the distinction between sovereign and non-sovereign forms of governance by engaging with the multiple environmentalities thesis. This theoretical perspective is illustrated through a case study of a highly polluted global e-waste processing hub, namely Guiyu Town, Guangdong Province, China. In all, this study not only highlights the relevance of the multiple environmentalities paradigm to UPE but also paves a way towards developing situated theories and empirics amidst environmental politics in the urban South.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental governance
• sovereign power
• multiple environmentalities
• campaign-style governance
• e-waste

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the valuable comments from the Editor and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Department of Ecology and Environment of Guangdong Province, Retrieved in October 2018 http://www.gdep.gov.cn/zwxx_1/gzdt/dsdt/shantou/201305/t20130524_152894.html.

2 Information posted on the bulletin boards of local government, which was also confirmed in multiple interviews, 2016–2018.

3 Data were provided by an official in Guiyu town government, August 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 41871165], [grant number 41871124].