Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Global Environmental Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha

Governing through disorder: Neoliberal environmental governance

and social theory
Luigi Pellizzoni *
Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Trieste, Piazza Europa, 1, 34127 Trieste, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Recent years have witnessed the spread of an array of market-inspired environmental governance
Received 27 September 2010 approaches, often associated with neoliberal ideas, programs and policies. Drawing on the
Received in revised form 28 March 2011 governmentality framework and focusing on the examples of biotechnology patenting and the
Accepted 29 March 2011
financialisation of climate and weather, the article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of these
Available online 22 April 2011
approaches lie in a novel understanding of the ontological quality of the biophysical world. The latter is
conceived as fully plastic, controllable, open to an ever-expanding human agency. Neoliberal governance
Keywords:
operates through, rather than despite, disorder – that is, through contingency, uncertainty, instability. In
Neoliberalism
Ecological modernisation
the public realm this idea constitutes a sort of shared horizon of meaning; but environmental social
Biotechnology theory has a difficult time accounting for it. By reviewing three major perspectives, namely ecological
Carbon markets modernization, neo-Marxism and poststructuralism, it is shown that behind contradictions and
Risk and uncertainty reticence in their assessments of neoliberal governance lie difficulties in making sense of the latter’s
Governmentality theoretical core. This sets a challenging research program for social theory.
ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction negotiations. With regard to the natural environment, sustainabil-

ity has replaced ‘limits to growth’ as a dominant theme, while
Ecological threats, technological and scientific advancement, market-based and contractualised policy approaches – taxes,
and social change intertwine in an oblique way. The world in incentives, ‘cap-and-trade’ arrangements, voluntary agreements,
which, decades ago, the environment emerged as a public issue is non-binding standards and rules – have gained growing relevance.
profoundly different from the present one. The current state of From fisheries quota systems to agricultural trade liberal-
global affairs conveys a widespread perception of disorder isation, from water supply privatisation to the commodification of
(Sonnenfeld and Mol, 2011). ‘Structures that had provided for genetic resources, from carbon offset schemes to the sale of
some predictability are breaking down and a trend towards ecological services, there is ample evidence of a major shift in
uncertainty and unpredictability is likely to characterize the environmental governance. Such shift is often associated with
present and foreseeable future’ (Arrighi and Silver, 2001, p. 258). neoliberal ideas, programs and policies. Neoliberalism is a complex
Jessop (2002) talks of a transition from ‘Keynesian welfare national and contested field of inquiry. This article advances two inter-
states’ to ‘Schumpeterian workfare postnational regimes’. The first, connected arguments about it. First, a distinctive and increasingly
developing in the post-WW2 decades, aimed at full employment dominant neoliberal outlook on the biophysical world can be
and economic planning, prioritised social policies over economic identified. Second, this outlook is inherently troublesome for
development, centred policy-making and implementation on the environmental social theory, affecting the latter’s understanding of
national scale, and grounded public choice on neo-corporatist ongoing changes in the relationship between society and nature.
models. The second, emerging since the mid-1970s, aim at Disorder is usually interpreted as the pathology of a transitional
increasing the competitiveness of national and local economies, period, bound to result in a new order (Arrighi and Silver, 2001).
focus on technological innovation, place economic development However, at least regarding the interaction between humans and
over social policies, centre policy-making and implementation at the environment, it is possible to argue that disorder – better:
the supranational and local scale, and ground public choice on uncertainty, contingency, instability – has become a way of
public–private partnerships and stakeholder consultations and governing. And this is related to a redefinition of the ontological
quality of the biophysical world. The next three sections elaborate
on the neoliberal stance on the biophysical world. To clarify
* Tel.: +39 040 5583730; fax: +30 040 5587829. neoliberal rationality I draw on the governmentality approach,
E-mail address: [email protected]. using biotechnology patenting and the financialisation of climate

0959-3780/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.03.014
796 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803

and weather as especially fitting examples. The subsequent however, sounds unconvincing, not only because these achieve-
sections turn to three major perspectives in environmental social ments have been complemented with an equally astonishing
theory: ecological modernisation, neo-Marxism and post-struc- record of disasters, but above all because the transformative
turalism. Their engagement with neoliberalism differs to a capacity of human labour is central to classic liberalism and
remarkable extent. Behind contradictions and reticence, I argue, neoliberalism (and Marxism) alike. It is more likely that there
lies a commonality in that all three perspectives have difficulties in exists a difference in the way nature is conceived. In contrast to
tackling the ontological core of the neoliberal approach to the liberalism, neoliberalism regards nature ‘no longer as an ultimate
biophysical world. The article concludes with reflections on some irreversible barrier [but as] a constraint that can be strategically
lines of further development in environmental social theory. manipulated’ (Fuller, 2008, p. 2). This idea of a ‘constraint that can
be strategically manipulated’ is worth elaborating.
2. Neoliberalism and nature
3. Disorder and contingency in neoliberal governance
In a relatively short time, a huge amount of literature has
emerged on neoliberalism.1 Neoliberalism is often portrayed as a For such an elaboration the governmentality approach looks
project of social change, for which ‘human well-being can best be promising. Foucault, who coined the governmentality concept,
advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and noticed that government is more than state power. It is ‘the
skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and
private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the reflections, the calculations and tactics’ (Foucault, 1991, p. 102)
state is to create and preserve an institutional framework that allow the exercise of a particular form of rule. Government
appropriate to such practices’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). Central includes a variety of practices, techniques and mentalities through
characteristics are thus rational, self-interested individuals and which subjects are governed, in the sense of both being led to
the market as the main regulative mechanism, while a lessened follow certain rules (subjection) and taking shape with respect to
role is assigned to traditional politics (Hay, 2007). such rules (subjectification). It is this mentality or rationality of
Many scholars, it has to be remarked, stress that talking of government that one has to understand to make sense of the
encompassing, ‘hegemonic’, projects sounds like an overstatement. ‘neoliberalisation of nature’.
The reality which we are confronted with is rather a complex, For governmentality scholarship, the key feature of such
contested, contradictory assemblage of policies, practices and mentality is ‘government at a distance’; its key actor is the
discourses (Ong, 2006; Birch and Mykhnenko, 2009). There are responsible, enterprising, self-governing individual. Neoliberal
different ‘waves’ of neoliberalization (Brenner et al., 2010). There are governmentality does not refer, as the liberal one, to the ‘natural,
diverse ways of reacting – in terms of promoting, adjusting or private-interest-motivated conduct of free, market exchanging
resisting – to the ‘global neoliberal turn’ (Jessop, 2002). Yet the very individuals [but] to artificially arranged or contrived forms of the
recognition of world-wide thrusts and counter-thrusts, albeit free, entrepreneurial and competitive conduct of economic-rational
spatially and temporally differentiated, conveys some sense of unity. individuals’ (Burchell, 1996, pp. 23–24, italics original). On this view,
In this context, a growing (mostly, but not uniquely, neo- ‘the regulation of conduct becomes a matter of each individual’s
Marxist) scholarship has identified the ‘neoliberalization of nature’ desire to govern their own conduct freely in the service of the
(McCarthy and Prudham, 2004; Castree, 2008) as the increasing maximization of a version of their happiness and fulfilment that they
management of natural resources and environmental issues take to be their own’ (Rose, 1996, p. 57). Moreover, in order to
through market-oriented arrangements, by off-loading rights promote competition, the market needs active regulation. If
and responsibilities to private firms, civil society groups and neoliberalism shares with classic liberalism a commitment to
individual citizens, with state power, in its national and limiting state intervention in favour of individual choice in the
transnational incarnations, providing the rules under which market, the latter is no longer seen as the spontaneous expression of
markets operate (Bumpus and Liverman, 2008; Castree, 2008). an anthropological propensity to exchange, as with Adam Smith; it
Sustaining growth in a market economy entails a ceaseless search must be purposefully crafted (Lazzarato, 2009).
for new products, techniques, markets and raw materials. In this All this entails a profoundly different conception of the
sense neoliberalism and classic liberalism share a basic commit- relationship between action and the world, thus of risk and
ment to restructuring social relations with nature. The privatisa- uncertainty. ‘The way in which risk is built into governmental
tion and commodification of land, forests and many other practices [varies] under differing governing conditions – specifi-
resources was justified by liberal thinkers by arguing that, since cally, in relation to differing political rationalities [. . .] Differing
nature gains value through the application of human labour, approaches to risk give shape to different forms of liberalism’
conferring exclusive control of natural resources on those (O’Malley, 2008, p. 69, italics original). The liberal view of freedom,
individuals who work them is both morally right and collectively rationality and responsibility entails a future neither totally fixed
beneficial. This is basically the same rationale used to advocate nor totally random. On the one hand, risk means a future event
current market-based environmental policies. Yet, while in related to behavioural choices, the probability of which is
classical liberalism there was a sustained debate over the material amenable to calculation (Luhmann, 1993). On the other, profit
limits to economic growth, the neoliberal discourse is dominated stems from those ‘unpredictable risks’, as related for example to
by Promethean accounts of technology and economic expansion, innovation, which no insurance company will cover, nor any
where the case for the limits to growth is reverted into a case for investment programme can calculate.2 So on the one hand,
the growth of limits (Lemke, 2003; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). through calculability it is possible ‘to transform a radically
There is, thus, no total equivalence between the liberal and the indeterminate cosmos into a manageable one’ (Reddy, 1996, p.
neoliberal outlook on the biophysical world. It would be tempting 237). On the other, non-calculable uncertainty prevents humans
to ascribe the difference to the amazing record of technoscientific from being prisoners of an inevitable path: ‘we create the future in
achievements accumulated over recent decades. Such explanation, innovative ways and escape the bonds of a statistically knowable
future’ (O’Malley, 2008, p. 73). Moreover, the reference of risk to
1
Peck et al. (2009) account for 2500 English language articles in the social
behavioural choices entails that the difference tends to vanish
sciences that cite neoliberalism as a keyword, the vast majority of which published
2
after 1998. Knight and Keynes were arguably the first economists to stress this point.
 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803 797

between states of the world independent of any observer rules of thumb, and so on’ (O’Malley, 2008, p. 73). This is reflected
concerning stochastic laws of chance processes and cognitive in the growing use of scenario techniques (Cooper, 2010).
states concerning degrees of belief in propositions. Bayesian Scenarios are not proper forecasts but alternative images of the
theories of subjective probability actually refer all probabilities to future, where likelihoods of occurrence are replaced by degrees of
the agent’s knowledge, ‘because relative frequencies are only confidence. Scenarios seek to identify discontinuities, possible
sample data of past events that influence subjective probabilities of surprises, effects of unknowable events, and so on. Their goal is to
future events’ (Stewart, 2000, p. 42). prepare for the unexpected. They construct possible worlds on the
This understanding of risk and uncertainty stands in stark idea that imagination and belief have a creative, and not just
contrast with a perspective gaining salience in the environmental descriptive, force. Radical contingency, rather than risk, is their
sciences since the 1970s, which pinpoints complexity as the crucial target and resource.
feature of natural and social systems and their interactions.3 For The basic orientation of neoliberalism, thus, is speculative,
von Neumann, one of the founding fathers of complexity theory, an rather than predictive: proper calculations of risk are seen as an
object of inquiry is complex when its structure is simpler than the exception, while reasoned bets over unpredictable futures are
description of its properties, which means that the only way to regarded as the rule. Rather than paralysing, the eventuality of
know how it works is to run it and see what happens (Dupuy and future, or the subjectivity of expectations, enables the construction
Grinbaum, 2004). Complex systems are therefore intrinsically of purposefully designed task environments where new opportu-
unpredictable. ‘Disorder’, in the sense of instability and uncon- nities take shape. The fundamental difference between the liberal
trollability, defines their ontological status. There is a permanent and the neoliberal entrepreneurial agent, therefore, is not only that
gap between biophysical processes like climate change or the the latter corresponds to the citizen or the human being as such,
spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the open but that this entrepreneur operates within an artificially crafted
environment and our calculated intervention on them (Wynne, world. Abstraction is the key to this creative capacity.
1992; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). Abstraction is a long-noticed feature of capitalism. For Polanyi
What the governmentality literature shows, then, is that in its (1944) free market capitalism treats many elements of nature,
account of the interaction between humans and the world, such as water or trees, as ‘fictitious commodities’, that is
neoliberalism departs from both liberal and complexity perspec- marketisable resources disembedded from their socio-cultural
tives. The basic conceptual move lies in a stretching of the meaning and biophysical function. Being a quantitative and
subjective approach to uncertainty – the way uncertainty ‘makes impersonal way to express things, use values and needs, capital
free’. The entrepreneur is depicted as possessing abstracts the real world, transforming itself into increasingly
abstract forms, as the dematerialization of money testifies.
the responsibility and skills for managing and creating not Abstraction translates differences into exchangeable equivalences,
merely wealth but the future. [. . .] An extensive and immensely which means giving disorder or contingency an ordered, manage-
influential managerial literature appearing since the early able form.
1980s [. . .] celebrates uncertainty as the technique of entrepre- Since its beginning, the neoliberal era has been characterized by
neurial creativity, [. . .] the fluid art of the possible. It involves processes of intensive abstraction.4 Such work is qualitatively
techniques of flexibility and adaptability, requires a certain kind different from previous capitalist performances, in that it operates
of ‘vision’ that may be thought of as intuition but is nevertheless at an ontological, rather than epistemic, level. This point is crucial
capable of being explicated at great length in terms such as and is developed in the next section, drawing on the examples of
‘anticipatory government’ and ‘government with foresight’ biotechnology patents and the financialisation of climate and
(O’Malley, 2004, pp. 3–5). weather.

Uncertainty, thus, is seen no more as a circumscribed situation 4. Biotechnology patents and the financialisation of climate
on which to build a few strategic decisions, but as an empowering and weather
everyday condition. Entrepreneurial agency is located within the
artificially arranged, ever-changing task environment produced by The basic justification for biotechnology patents is straightfor-
global trade, innovation-based competition and the financial ward. Innovation is beneficial to the whole society and patents are
turbulence created by floating exchange rates. This affects how the best way to promote and spread it, since they encourage
contingency is accounted for. Indeterminacy, one could say, does investment in research and make its results publicly available. The
not mean constraining non-determinability, but enabling non- enduring question of patenting is the distinction between
determination. While in the first case the causal chains are regarded discovery and invention. The requirements for patentability differ
as open in the sense that the events can take unpredictable turns to some extent from place to place. In the US a patent must be novel
because of unknown intervening variables, emergent systems (not previously made public), non-obvious (to someone ‘skilled in
properties and so on, in the second case the causal chains are the art’) and useful; in Europe a patent must be novel, constitute an
regarded as open in the sense that the agent does not find them inventive step and demonstrate industrial applicability (Calvert,
predetermined, but can handle and orient them in the desired 2007). Though legally relevant, these differences do not affect the
direction. Contingency means lack of limits rather than lack of underlying logic of the patenting of biotechnology, which may be
order. Better: disorder, as a positive, enabling systems condition, synthesized as follows: (a) a mechanistic conception of the world:
can be handled by carving out provisional room for purposeful both organic and inorganic matter are assemblies of parts; (b)
manoeuvre. The more unstable the world, the more manageable. isolation and purification as criteria for distinguishing what is
Entrepreneurial agents, of course, do not just close their eyes manufactured from what is not (in other words, making things
and jump. Rather, they estimate ‘the future in much the same way
4
that people do engaging in extreme sports: that is by accumulating The obvious example is the fall of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange
rates, in 1971, which allowed the growing financialisation of economy. Of no lesser
information, relying on experience, using practiced judgment and
relevance is the fiscal crisis of New York City, in 1975, when the employees’ pension
funds were for the first time used to buy corporate bonds (of the Municipal
3
One early, well-known expression of this view is Weinberg’s (1972) notion of Assistance Corporation). Linking the workers’ future incomes to the fluctuations of
‘trans-science’, that is of a field of scientific questions that cannot be scientifically the stock exchange market means transferring in an abstracted form the capital-
answered. labour conflict over the distribution of resources within labour itself.
798 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803

usable counts more than whether such things already exist in Carbon markets commodify climate regulation by assigning
nature in some form); (c) dematerialization of physical matter into highly speculative capacities to allegedly equivalent (thus valuable
its informational contents, that is pure function; and (d) according to their cost effectiveness and tradable) emission cuts.
presumption of manufacture by virtue of the very demand of a For example, a factory in China that produces chlorodifluoro-
patent (it is the task of the denying authority to prove that methane (HCFC-22), a substance mainly used as a refrigerant, can
something ‘exists in nature’). So, for example, a product patent for a earn CER (Certified Emission Reduction) credits under the Clean
genetic sequence entails regarding it as a ‘composition of matter’, Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto protocol by
novel in that in its isolated and purified form it is not available in installing an incinerator furnace capable of decomposing trifluor-
nature, and the ‘utility’ or ‘industrial applicability’ of which lies in omethane (HFC-23) – a by-product of HCFC-22 and a greenhouse
the disclosure of its function. Such disclosure basically corresponds gas – and showing that in this way it cuts its emission below a
to understanding the biochemistry of the protein a gene produces baseline level (the minimum achievable without using the
and how this leads to a specific trait of the organism.5 Therefore incinerator). With the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), then,
genes are regarded as carriers of information, suitable for these CER credits can be transformed into emission permits for an
translation into different media (Kay, 1999). Though information oil power plant in a European country. ‘By decomposing a tonne of
as such, like ideas, scientific theories or laws of nature, is excluded HFC-23 in China one can – via the link between the CDM and ETS –
from patenting, the demonstration of some technical effect or earn allowances to emit 11,700 tonnes of CO2 in Europe’
functionality allows for property rights claims. In the end, (MacKenzie, 2009, p. 445). The 11,700 multiplier corresponds to
the global warming potential’ (GWP) of HFC-23 established by the
the gene has an ambiguous status where it is simultaneously International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Behind this figure lie
thought of as both a material entity and a carrier of information. considerable processes of abstraction and speculation. The
[. . .] This duality of the genome is exploited in patenting, where comparison of the GWP of CO2 and HFC-23, respectively, is based
a slippage has occurred between patenting the material DNA, on an estimate of their atmospheric effects according to
disclosing the sequence, and patenting the genomic informa- mathematical models and the conventional fixing of a 100-year
tion, in computer or other media (Calvert, 2007, p. 215). period; an estimate which is theoretically debatable and empiri-
cally surrounded by significant uncertainties.6 Yet the figure works
On the one hand, therefore, any difference between living and as a black box and is accepted in carbon markets as exchange rate.
non-living entities is erased. On the other, a living entity is In this way the intractable complexity of the real impact of
considered an artefact if its basic functional parameters can be different quantities of diverse gases emitted in opposite parts of
controlled, thus reproduced, and a correspondence is implicitly the world at different times is transformed into a matter of
established between matter and information, so that rights in calculation.
property over information can be subsumed into rights in property The potentials for profit offered by CDM-ETS and other
over the organisms incorporating such information, and vice versa. mechanisms are huge for those who find themselves in the ‘right’
This ontological ambiguity or oscillation translates into actual geographical, technological and cognitive place (high levels of
court rulings when, as with the Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Percy pollution in 1990, for example, or easily achieved efficiencies, or
Schmeiser case (2004), patents are recognized to cover genes the professional capacities related to verification, insurance and
provided with specific capacities (in this case, resistance to the finance). Yet it is important to reflect on what these mechanisms
RoundupTM herbicide), yet at the same time also cover the whole imply. On the one hand, carbon markets are completely
organisms where such rights in property reside (in this case, the constructed task environments, heavily dependent on the inter-
Roundup ReadyTM canola plants) (Carolan, 2010). vention and authoritativeness of political, economic and scientific
With biotech patents, one may say, discovery becomes a institutions. On the other, what look like calculations are highly
residual, shrinking category, in front of the expanding space of speculative evaluations, not only of underlying biophysical
invention. Nature is what provisionally belongs to the ill-clarified, processes, but also of the stability and evolution of these markets
non-domesticated world lying beyond the boundaries of com- and their supporting institutions and regulations.
modification, as set by commodity producers. Nature and This combination of artificiality and speculation is even more
manufacture become distinctions internal to the manufacturing evident with ‘weather derivatives’. These are products designed to
process (Pellizzoni, 2010). The object of property oscillates hedge and trade securities contingent on unpredictable states of
between material and information. Biotechnology patents are weather, either catastrophic or not. The level, timing and swings of
‘fluid objects’ (Carolan, 2010); their ontological identity ‘flows and temperature, rain or wind, for example, may affect a number of
gently changes shape, bit by bit’ (Law and Singleton, 2005, p. 338). enterprises, from energy companies to food producers. Investors,
This fluidity is doubled by the ‘substantial equivalence’ argument then, make their choice as to whether or not to take ‘risks’ in
central to commercial applications, by which, for any practical subjective terms, that is according to degrees of trust and beliefs
purpose, patented artefacts are indistinguishable from nature, thus (Cooper, 2010). The price assigned to the future depends on the
they do not require any specific regulation. Artefacts are thus expectations of all traders. Derivatives, thus, ‘turn the contest-
simultaneously identical to and different (more usable, more ability of fundamental value into a tradable commodity. In so
valuable) than natural entities. doing, they provide a market benchmark for an unknowable value’
Equivalence of difference; difference of equivalence. The (Bryan and Rafferty, 2006, p. 37). Similar to carbon markets (which
ontological fluidity of nature and culture and of the living and have their own derivatives as well), physical turbulences and
nonliving world transforms virtually everything into a commodity- incommensurabilities are translated from puzzling problems into
in-the-making. The same way that complexities and ambivalences enabling opportunities.
can be translated into manageable contingencies can be found in What is important to stress, then, is that the logic underlying so
the financialisation of climate and weather. different fields as biotechnology patenting and climate-weather
financial markets is the same. Complexities and uncertainties are
5
rendered tractable, first of all by redefining the ontology of
Genomic research has shown, however, that the connection between genes and
traits is often complex, since one gene may be involved in the production of many
6
proteins and there are typically several molecular interactions, cascades and Establishing the baselines for carbon reduction calculations presents similar
feedback loops responsible for the final phenotype. problems (Bumpus and Liverman, 2008; MacKenzie, 2009).
 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803 799

biophysical matter. The latter is not simply decomposed and technological innovation and institutional change focused on
recomposed via abstraction, but conceived as intrinsically unstable decentring, networking, adopting market-based and voluntary
or ambivalent. Genes, carbon and rain oscillate between difference policy instruments, promoting corporate and consumer responsi-
and equivalence, materiality and virtuality, substance and ble self-regulation (Mol and Sonnenfeld, 2002). Much, then, must
information. In this, we are not confronted with a simple depend on how such instruments and styles are applied. Mol, for
reproduction of the venerable capitalist strategy of creating example, stresses that answering today’s environmental problems
fictitious commodities. This latter strategy works at an epistemic and challenges entails rejecting neoliberal solutions, without
level. The ‘neoliberalization of nature’ works, instead, at an embracing anti-globalization and state-centred strategies. Demo-
ontological level. There is more than an ‘as if’ at stake here: there cratic designs for global (including environmental) governance and
is the actual crafting of entities that did not exist beforehand, like global civil society are the best means for controlling unrestrained
the patented gene with its organic-informational ambivalence or competition and neoliberal policies. Rather than refusing globali-
the variably embodied GWP. There is nothing fictitious in these zation, therefore, the task is attacking ‘certain elements or forms of
commodities: they are commodities, their ‘reality’ is nothing else a globalizing world while strengthening others’ (Mol, 2001, p. 10):
than this. for example expanding the arenas for public reasoning and
This point requires attention. Carolan (2008) suggests that the consultation of citizens and NGOs.
ontological instability of patents seeks to protect and reproduce There is little resemblance between arguments that EM
what Latour (1993) and many scholars in science and technology scholars largely subscribe, such as the idea of an ‘ecological
studies regard as a fictitious divide between nature and culture, citizenship’ based on non-reciprocal, non-contractual, non-terri-
object and observation; it seeks to hide and deny the presence of torial obligations of justice, care and compassion (Dobson, 2003;
hybrid entities, by keeping the threshold between the two realms Spaargaren, 2011) or the case for urgently addressing world
open to ad hoc redefinitions. However, at a closer look, inequalities simultaneously affected by social and natural factors
biotechnology patents, CERs and weather derivatives do not seem (Beck, 2010), and the neoliberal stress on inequality as the engine
to hide at all, but rather to assert the ontological indefiniteness of of competition on which social growth depends (Lazzarato, 2009),
their biophysical referents – nor do experts working in these fields or its account of citizenship as modelled on the self-reliant, self-
look unaware of, or unwilling to admit, this (Calvert, 2007; managing individual owner ideal (Ong, 2006). Yet, in concrete, the
MacKenzie, 2009). Neoliberal governance, thus, seems to entail a extent to which EM approaches can be distinguished from ‘soft’
subtle and novel conceptual move. One pillar of modernity is varieties of neoliberal policy adjustment remains unclear. Consid-
abandoned: the core distinction between inner and outer worlds er, for example, those which Jessop (2002) calls ‘neostatist’ and
disappears in favour of what, to all intents and purposes, is an anti- ‘neocommunitarian’. The former give relevance to regulated
essentialist ontology. At the same time, another pillar of competition, public–private partnerships under state guidance,
modernity, traditionally linked to the idea of objective knowledge, auditing performances, protection of core economy; the latter
is reaffirmed and expanded in scope: human agency as having valorise fair trade, social cohesion, third sector expansion and local
capacity of control. Such agency finds no limits since it includes the governance. These elements, variously combined, are typically
manufacturing of its own task environments. For this hypertrophic included in the recipe for environmental reform proposed by EM
agency any outside (nature) is just functional to distinguishing scholars.
within the inside (manufacture); it becomes an element of endless Neo-Marxists are highly sceptical about the possibility of
and ever changeable internal differentiations, as the controversies effective environmental reform of contemporary market societies.
over the object of patents or the intricacies of carbon markets and This scholarship reads ecological problems in the light of the
weather derivatives testify. Neoliberal governance is not afraid of capacity of capitalism to displace its built-in imbalances across
but feeds itself with contingency. space and time. Today, it is argued, there exists not simply a
renewed accumulation process, but a qualitatively distinct one.
This becomes apparent when Marx’s notions of ‘formal’ and ‘real’
5. Neoliberalism and environmental social theory
subsumption of labour are applied to nature. Formal subsumption
occurs when capital exploits natural resources according to their
It is at the ontological level, then, in a peculiar combination of
features, as with mineral extraction and traditional fishery. Real
tradition and innovation regarding the way the human agent and
subsumption occurs when industries alter the properties of nature,
her operational field are conceived, that one can find the ideational
increasing or intensifying its productivity and consequently
core of the ‘neoliberalisation of nature’. This core is relevant, in
enhancing capital accumulation. The present prominence of
turn, to the confrontation of environmental social theory with
biotechnologies suggests that real subsumption is increasingly
neoliberal environmental governance; this may be illustrated
getting at the core of capitalism (Boyd et al., 2001). Moreover,
through an exploration of three theoretical perspectives from the
Current environmental policies are often read by neo-Marxists
environmental social sciences: ecological modernisation, neo-
according to Polanyi’s notion of ‘double movement’: that is, as
Marxism and post-structuralism.7
counteractions aimed at limiting the socially and environmentally
Neoliberalism does not feature prominently in the ecological
disruptive effects of self-regulating market capitalism. This is
modernisation (EM) literature. When it is mentioned, efforts are
interpreted as a way to protect capital and expand opportunities
made to avoid conflation, which is indeed rather easy. EM
for profits, while offering a ‘discursive and material response to
maintains that economic growth and industrial development
public concern and pressure for regulation’ (Bumpus and Liver-
can be accommodated to environmental sustainability. Market
man, 2008, p. 131).
capitalism can be redirected and transformed ‘in such a way that it
Despite the commonality of analytical frameworks, however,
less and less obstructs, and increasingly contributes to, the
neo-Marxists disagree on a major point. If environmental concerns
preservation of society’s sustenance base’ (Mol and Jänicke,
are regarded as a major source of political opposition (McCarthy
2009, p. 24). This corresponds, to a remarkable extent, to policy
and Prudham, 2004), what such opposition does or should consist
instruments and styles that scholars often depict as neoliberal:
of is not clear. For example, Hardt and Negri (2004) or Virno (2009)
7
There are other relevant perspectives that I cannot consider here, for example
believe that political identities, institutions and processes are
ecology-inspired scholarship. The latter, however, does not seem to express a losing relevance in favour of civil society groups and the flourishing
distinct standpoint in regard to neoliberalism. of ad hoc, ethically minded mobilizations, such as critical
800 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803

consumerism and product boycotts. On the contrary, for Harvey market’’ ideology’ (2005, p. 230) as carbon markets exacerbate
(2005) or Mouffe (2005), traditional politics and the state as a global inequalities and negatively affect climate change mitigation
sovereign regulatory and military entity have lost none of their (Lohmann, 2009). Callon, in his turn, takes a prospectively
relevance, requiring commensurate counter-forces, while the optimistic standpoint: the constructed character of markets leaves
growing involvement of NGOs as policy advisors or delegates room for change and adjustment. ‘The challenge of climate change
‘on behalf of’ the citizens is suspect, being in line with the could be one of the first opportunities on a planetary scale to raise
neoliberal privatising and depoliticizing aims. For some even Open the question of how to better civilize markets, [that is] transform
Source informational networks can be a vehicle for control and unsolvable issues into solvable problems’ (Callon, 2009, p. 547).
subjugation (Suarez-Villa, 2009).
Post-structuralism in the social sciences includes a number of
6. Ontological questions
interlinked literatures, the common trait of which is a commitment
to deconstructing the modern ontology of the subject, as a full-
As one can see, clarity and consistency feature inconspicuously
fledged self having cognitive access to, and agency on, an
in environmental social theory perspectives on neoliberalism. EM
objectively given world. The governmentality approach represents
has trouble distancing itself from neoliberal styles of governance.
a prominent example. One might expect, again, that commonality
Neo-Marxism is unsure whether counter-forces to neoliberalism
of analytical perspective would entail commonality of evaluative
can find any space outside and beyond traditional politics.
attitudes, yet again this is hardly the case. Nowhere does this
Poststructuralists may be illuminating on the neoliberal way of
appear more clearly than in the way biotechnology policies are
governing, but reach divergent evaluations of the latter’s effects.
assessed. For some poststructuralists, gene technologies are
One might say that current changes resist simplified (or simplistic)
individually empowering, producing ‘an innovative new ethics
judgements, and that a variety of opinions is sign of intellectual
of biological citizenship and genetic responsibility’ (Rose, 2007, p.
liveliness. There are, however, theoretical difficulties in tackling
39), expanding the opportunities for choice, prudence and
the ontological core of the ‘neoliberalisation of nature’, which may
sociality, self-actualization and enterprising, ‘improvement’ or
help make sense of this somewhat problematic picture.
‘correction’ of body and mind vis-à-vis some ideal. Others, instead,
The neoliberal approach to nature can be condensed in a
maintain that geneticisation redirects scarce resources away from
reconfiguration of the biophysical world as not fictionally but
social solutions to social problems, transforming the latter in
actually plastic. The ontological, rather than epistemic, fluidity of
questions of self-care. These scholars also argue that genetic
nature entails an increase in its manipulability and controllability,
research, screening and testing extends disciplinary powers, and
since the limits of the world as manufactured represent also its
that experts, institutions and social norms frame the cognitive and
limits of meaning and salience. World-making deploys its own
moral conditions in which individuals make their choices (Lemke,
contingency, much in the same way as a big-bang universe deploys
2004; Raman and Tutton, 2010). In other words, then, if
its material contents together with its time and space frame.
governmentality implies at the same time processes of subjecti-
Actually, the neoliberal entrepreneurial agent looks similar to a
fication and subjection, some scholars emphasise the former and
god, since the full pliancy of materiality to human designs leads to
others the latter, and the case for an expanding ethical selfhood
depicting agency in terms of an ultimately unconstrained will. A
clashes with the case against a shrinking political agency. The line
marked step in this direction is represented by the recent,
of division largely runs between those whose interest in
influential narrative of a potentially unlimited ‘human enhance-
developing the Foucauldian approach lies, to a major extent, in
ment’ through a synergistic combination of nano-bio-info-cogni-
its capacity to sidestep the limits of neo-Marxism, and especially
tive technosciences allegedly bound to revolutionise not only
structural Marxism (Miller and Rose, 2008), and those who instead
industrial productivity but also and above all human biological and
combine Marxist and Foucauldian insights, with explicit aims of
mental capacities (Roco and Bainbridge, 2002; Nordmann, 2004).
social criticism.
This ontology is troublesome for all the three theoretical
Other examples of post-structuralist approaches relevant to our
perspectives considered.
argument can be found in the field of science and technology
The ontological underpinnings of ecological modernisation
studies. Here again the confrontation with neoliberalism leads to
theory are straightforward: nature and society are seen as
diverging replies. The clearest evidence is perhaps offered by
interacting but distinct realms. The original, more ‘technocratic’
studies on carbon markets. Drawing on actor-network theory,
(Spaargaren et al., 2009) outlook of EM, which most evidently
Michel Callon and associates have made a strong case for analysing
implied this perspective, has been gradually tempered by
markets from the viewpoint of the ‘performativity of economics’:
incorporating aspects of actor-network theory and Beck’s theory
the idea that economics ‘performs, shapes and formats the
of risk and reflexive modernisation. Increasing concerns for
economy, rather than observing how it functions’ (Callon, 1998,
environmental flows (of energy, water, biodiversity, waste, green
p. 2). Markets are a matter of design and construction – selecting
products, etc.) and production-consumption practices have led
what is to be taken in consideration (‘internalities’) and leaving
various scholars to conceive the natural and the socio-technical
outside all the rest (‘externalities’). The basic goal of markets is
dimensions as merging into a material world that impinges on
‘formatting’ the networks that connect human agents with each
human agency. Such hybrid networks, however, are mostly
other and with non-human entities in such a way that calculation,
described in terms of ‘mixed’ ontologies, that is by presupposing
that is the establishment of relations of equivalence, is made
traditional distinctions between what pertains to nature and what
possible. From this viewpoint, carbon markets offer an excellent
pertains to society (Spaargaren et al., 2006; Spaargaren, 2009).8 As
field of inquiry, in that they are built up from scratch based on
for Beck, he highlights the connection between discursive
economic theories, but in an experimental way through the
constructions and materiality of threats. Human appraisal of risks,
‘constitution of collectives comprising large numbers of different
often incalculable yet corresponding to actual events and
actors from diverse temporal and spatial horizons’ (Callon, 2009, p.
phenomena, is mediated by knowledge, perception, value commit-
538). Starkly different evaluations, however, are developed by
ments, and social organization. This means that the intertwining of
adopting this analytical perspective. MacKenzie (2009), for
example, finds no realistic alternative to carbon markets. By 8
On the other hand, EM scholarship that is more inclined to making a case for
contrast, for Lohmann, ‘political activists, physical scientists and ‘proper’ hybrid ontologies is exposed to the same problems discussed below with
technocrats alike have been captured and constrained by ‘‘free regard to post-structuralism.
 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803 801

materiality and construction is located at an epistemic level, with (Suarez-Villa, 2009, p. 15) – a character that includes formal and
reference to the limits of human cognitive access to reality. The informal knowledge and languages, imagination, mentalities,
ontological separation of environment and society, nature and identities, ethical views, and the technical and material means that
artefact, is not questioned (Beck, 1992, 2009).9 By contrast, as we shape and convey symbolic flows. Yet compartmentalisation and
have seen, neoliberalism regards uncertainty as crafted in a systematisation are unlikely to impinge only on corporate-led
‘thicker’ sense. Uncertainty does not depend on human interven- creative processes. If creativity is affected by, or a matter of, social
tions on materiality, but on the extension of human capacity to context, then shaping and influencing such context, its horizons of
manufacture the latter, to build it while appraising it, to give shape meaning, is arguably the primary target of a ‘government at a
to the contingency one is confronted with. Uncertainty, therefore, distance’ the limits of which are hard to assess. Moreover, locating
is amenable to a treatment which is still calculative, albeit not in the fundamentals of human agency in the economic sphere implies
the same way as it used to be. Contrary to Beck, reflexivity does not an involuntary but substantial alignment with the neoliberal case for
mean self-questioning and amending in front of the interpellations a human agency absorbed in, or reduced to, its entrepreneurial
of an unassailable world, but self-assertion in the moulding of such capacities.
world. The examples of biotechnology patenting and carbon The consequences of these problems surface in the controversy
markets are telling in this respect. over neoliberal counterforces, hinted above. If the traditional links
In short, there is a basic discord between neoliberal and EM between economic articulation and political representation lose
ontologies. This discord accounts for the ambiguous implications grip, and if neoliberalism is capable of subsuming under its logic
(contrasting or supportive of neoliberalisation) of the environ- every aspect of humanity, then it is hard and perhaps pointless to
mental reforms advocated by EM scholars. In turn such ambiguity adjudicate which, between conventional political mobilisations
may be regarded as a reason for the latter’s reluctance to engage in and civil society ethical effervescence, constitutes the most
a close confrontation with neoliberalism. effective oppositional instrument.
In line with Marx’s vision of nature as the ‘inorganic body’ to Environmental post-structuralism is at the same time pro-
which humans are inextricably tied, neo-Marxists regard all foundly consonant and dissonant with neoliberal ontology. The
biophysical barriers and opportunities as mediated by culture and governmentality approach shows a ‘radical historicist lean
technology (Benton, 1989). Through their metabolic interaction towards a nominalist conception of actions and practices, [where]
with nature, humans change the latter and change themselves, anthropological universals appear as historical constructs with no
producing ‘new kinds of social relations and new kinds of persons’ fixed contents’ (Bevir, 2010, p. 427). Risks are described as not
(Dickens, 2004, p. 62). Yet this transformative capacity is not seen ‘intrinsically real, but a particular way in which problems are
as unlimited. Natural entities have their own reality and play an viewed or ‘‘imagined’’ and dealt with’ (O’Malley, 2008, p. 57); a
active role in human history. This view is insistently portrayed in technology of government aimed at individuals’ (self-)monitoring
recent literature. Nature is described as ‘recalcitrant’, capable of and (self-)control ‘in the service of specific ends and with definite,
resisting ‘its incorporation into particular political-economic and but to some extent unforeseen, effects’ (Dean, 1999, p. 178). Nature
spatial forms, to shape or reconfigure [in unpredictable ways] the is portrayed as ‘a product of deliberate intervention, [. . .] a locus of
landscape of capitalism’ (Braun, 2008, pp. 668–669). Moreover, artificiality, an object produced by humans’ (Gibbon and Novas,
and crucially, humans cannot entirely transform their own nature. 2008, p. 4). This plasticity includes human nature, in both its
Some core agential and biological elements remain unchanged. agential and biological inflections: norms of responsible person-
This stability is related to Marx’s notion of labour as the hood, enterprising and self-actualising affect and bond together
distinguishing feature of humans, from which their operational personal identity and biological identity, leading to ‘the creation of
ability depends. On the one hand, economic agency, as the subjects’ (Novas and Rose, 2000, p. 489, italics original) in a full,
transformative capacity that represents the condition of possibility encompassing sense. Similar anti-essentialist accounts are provid-
of society, is logically premised on neo-Marxist analyses.10 On the ed by scholars in the science and technology studies tradition,
other hand, the neoliberalisation of nature is seen to draw also, and where fluidity, contamination, inventiveness, instability, perfor-
first of all, on a human ‘biological invariant’: the dearth of mativity and comparable notions are common parlance (e.g.
specialized instincts, the lack of a definite environment and the Szerszynski et al., 2003; Braun, 2008). ‘Knowing, the words of
capacity of language, of symbolic communication. A flourishing knowing, and texts do not describe a pre-existing world [but] are
literature on immaterial labour, bioeconomy and cognitive part of a practice of handling, intervening in, the world and thereby
capitalism (Lazzarato, 2004; Fumagalli, 2007; Cooper, 2008) of enacting one of its versions – up to bringing it into being’ (Mol
stresses that the most noteworthy resources today are ‘the and Law, 2006, p. 19). On this view the world takes shape and
biological prerogatives of the human animal: [. . .] the habit not meaning, emerging from an indistinctiveness that constitutes the
to acquire lasting habits, that is the capacity to react promptly to (moveable) border of thinkability, only together with the cognitive
the unusual’ (Virno, 2009, pp. 100–101). The hallmark of current act, and this act is inseparable from history and flesh. Objects come
capitalism is the exploitation of creativity (Suarez-Villa, 2009). into existence together with the discursive formations that make it
What remains mostly unacknowledged, however, is that, if real possible to talk about them. The world, and we who act upon it, are
subsumption of nature lies at the core of the neoliberal appropriative ontologically plastic, as the notion of the ‘performativity of
gesture, human biological ontology is involved in this process first economics’ perfectly synthesizes. Object and subject, nature and
and foremost. Accumulation does not build so much on a ‘biological culture are contingent stabilizations of ‘networks of mutually
invariant’, but regards the features of the species as a mere template aligned materialities, subjectivities and knowledge-practices, not
open to modification and ‘enhancement’. Subsumption of human their given priors’ (Wynne, 2005, p. 69).
nature is also real, and not just formal. So it may be that capitalist This idea of a making-sense-of-the-world that overlaps with
organizations, which appropriate creativity by compartmentalising world-making looks fully aligned with neoliberal ontology. This is
and systematising it, cannot reproduce the latter on their own probably not by chance. In their analysis of the ‘new spirit of
‘because of the fundamentally social character of this resource’ capitalism’, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) argue that the latter has
been able to integrate the criticisms that intellectuals and social
9
On this point cf. also Dean (1999, Ch. 9).
movements had raised between the 1960s and 1970s, using such
10
This despite current criticisms towards traditional views of the ‘economic’ as criticisms as a way to reorganize itself and expand. Often
the essential driver of historical events (Gibson-Graham, 2006). developed in terms of an artistic critique where nature represented
802 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803

a fundamental site of authenticity and aesthetic value, counter- policy-making (as with GMOs) or to call for policy-avoiding (as with
discourses took issue with the Fordist mode of production ‘unwarranted’ restrictive measures related to climate change). The
(bureaucratic, hierarchical, planned, standardized, alienating) in very possibility of appealing to ‘sound science’ either for evidence of
the name of freedom, autonomy and creativity. Translated into no problems, or no evidence of problems indicates the fundamentally
flexibility, networking, communication, and permanent education, anti-objectivist attitude that characterizes present political and
these are indeed the qualities that post-Fordism valorises, while cultural frameworks. Policy promoters share this attitude with their
the authenticity and aesthetic worth of nature are transferred to opponents. Those who ask for ‘precaution’ use the same arguments in
the spheres of green consumerism and corporate responsibility. reverse, requiring action when and where there is no evidence of no
The consequence of the alignment of the poststructuralist and problems.11 This commonality entails that appeals to uncertainty are
neoliberal cases for world fluidity, contingency, ambivalence can devoid of any strategic relevance in current controversies; rather,
be observed in the clash of evaluations of carbon markets and gene they play a tactical role. This is likely to represent a problem above all
technologies, as hinted at above. Such discord points to the for counter-forces to neoliberalism, to the extent that in a tactical
difficult, ultimately idiosyncratic, adjudication of whether nature struggle the most advantaged are those provided with greater
and its significance can be integrally transferred to the ‘flexible organizational, economic, cognitive and legal resources (to say
paradise of neo-liberalism’ (Lemke, 2003, p. 64), or the world nothing of military ones).
retains an irreducible surplus or overhang in its material and In short, we are today in front of a refashioning of the symbolic
symbolic scope. Alignment, for sure, does not mean overlap. If order of society vis-à-vis its biophysical underpinnings. In this
everything is intimately related, poststructuralists typically argue, change, neoliberal discourses, policies and practices are at the
human agency has a limited reach and everything is to be treated same time a powerful driver and a result. Disorder becomes order
carefully, respectfully. If everything is invented, the neoliberal to the extent that uncertainty, contingency and instability are
reply goes, everything can be redefined, commodified and regarded not as disabling by-products of governance but as
appropriated. On the one hand, world-making means affecting enabling ways of governing. In the public realm, this ends up
and being affected; on the other, it means building, crafting, and constituting a sort of shared horizon of meaning: not only is no
manufacturing. On the one hand, nature is inventive and new ‘order’ (in the traditional sense) in sight, but anti-essentialism
recalcitrant, on the other it is fully pliant. Yet the differences are overflows from intellectual avant-gardes to become a widespread,
subtle and hard to articulate using the same conceptual categories. albeit often implicit or negotiable, worldview.
Uncomfortable that this may sound to many scholars in govern- This sets a challenging research program for social theory.
mentality and science and technology studies, neoliberalism and Neither of the three frameworks discussed above seems fully
poststructuralism inhabit the same cultural fold of modernity, capable of making sense of current trends in neoliberal environ-
which makes their critique intrinsically problematic. mental governance. Still essentially faithful to a traditional
ontology, ecological modernisation perspectives advocate market-
7. Conclusion and innovation-oriented reforms, yet find problems in dealing
with the ambivalent implications of such reforms. Neo-Marxism
This article started out with two aims: first, to identify at the makes a strong case against a further submission of nature to the
deepest, ontological, level the underpinnings of widespread exploitative logic of capitalism, yet the scope of the latter’s
environmental policy approaches often associated with neoliber- understanding of human transformative and self-transformative
alism. Second, to show that different socio-environmental capacity remains basically unacknowledged. Post-structuralism
theoretical perspectives have had difficulty confronting these may offer an enlightening access to the neoliberal ontology of the
underpinnings, which affects their capacity to interpret the latter’s biophysical world, yet accounting for the latter’s radical but
implications for the governance of the biophysical world. selective anti-essentialism proves troublesome for both govern-
Neoliberalism draws on established traditions in political mentality and science and technology studies scholars.
liberalism and market capitalism, yet is characterized by a novel The necessary point of departure for renewed socio-environ-
understanding of the ontological quality of nature. ‘Nature’ is no mental theoretical elaborations, I believe, is the hyper-modernist,
longer conceived as an objectively given, though cognitively post-calculative, disembodied, entrepreneurial agent that repre-
mediated, reality, but as a constitutively fluid entity, a contingency sents the theoretical engine of neoliberalism and the primary
purposefully produced and controlled for instrumental ends. responsible actant for the conflation of manufacture or assemblage
Governance through uncertainty, instability or ‘disorder’ thus and proprietorship in its politics of nature. This agent penetrates
seems to be the distinguishing feature of the ‘neoliberalisation of the governmental machinery involved in green reforms and
nature’. This ideational core may be considered the first reason for weakens from within neo-Marxist and poststructuralist critiques.
the sense of unity often felt when contemplating the array of This agent, therefore, constitutes a common issue, addressing
sectors, approaches and cases characterizing current market- which may offer an opportunity for strengthening existing
oriented environmental governance, and at the same time for the theoretical cross-fertilizations – as between neo-Marxism and
sense of uneasiness towards neoliberalism that environmental post-structuralism, and between post-structuralism and EM – and
social theory conveys. for rearticulating long-lasting controversies, such as the divide
Whatever the judgment, it is important to grasp what is at stake between EM and neo-Marxism on the possibility of reform of
with neoliberal governance of nature. Browsing social science books market-oriented societies. This agent finds today its promissory
and journals, one realizes that much critical energy has been focused materialization in the image of an unlimited, technology-enabled,
on questioning the objectivist account of nature that allegedly biological and mental ‘enhancement’, in front of which major
dominates current policy narratives and practices. Only a discerning theoretical efforts are required. What is arguably needed is a
scholarship has begun to realize that objectivism and anti- notion of the biophysical world and humanity as carriers of a
objectivism are losing relevance as categories capable of distinguish- fundamental alterity to human agency itself; an unattainability
ing intellectual and stakeholder positions, and that they increasingly that prevents their full reduction to the status of commodity and
become claims usable in power games over the biophysical world. that allows for criticism of the neoliberal celebration of will in the
Attention, for example, has been recently paid to the instrumental
use of uncertainty (Freudenburg et al., 2008; Jacques et al., 2008), 11
This argument has notoriously disparate applications: from GMOs to weapons
which, depending on the circumstances, is used either to ask for supposedly hidden in some foreign country.
 L. Pellizzoni / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 795–803 803

name of a humbler, historically and biologically embedded, Kay, J., 1999. In the beginning was the word: the genetic code and the book of life. In:
Biagioli, M. (Ed.), The Science Studies Reader. Routledge, New York, pp. 224–233.
account of human autonomy. Latour, B., 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press, Cam-
bridge, MA.
Acknowledgments Law, J., Singleton, V., 2005. Object lessons. Organization 12 (3), 331–355.
Lazzarato, M., 2004. Les révolutions du capitalisme. Seuil, Paris.
Lazzarato, M., 2009. Neoliberalism in action: inequality, insecurity and the recon-
A first version of this article was presented at the World stitution of the social. Theory, Culture & Society 26 (6), 109–133.
Congress of the International Sociological Association, Göteborg, Lemke, T., 2003. Foucault, governmentality and critique. Rethinking Marxism 14 (3),
49–64.
July 2010. I wish to thank the editors and two anonymous referees Lemke, T., 2004. Disposition and determinism – genetic diagnostics in risk society.
for their comments and suggestions, that allowed me to rework Sociological Review 52, 550–566.
several aspects of my argument. Lohmann, L., 2005. Marketing and making carbon dumps: commodification, calcu-
lation and counterfactuals in climate change mitigation. Science as Culture 14
(3), 203–235.
References Lohmann, L., 2009. Towards a different debate in environmental accounting: the
cases of carbon and cost-benefit. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34,
Arrighi, G., Silver, B., 2001. Capitalism and world (dis)order. Review of International 499–534.
Studies 27 (5), 257–279. Luhmann, N., 1993. Risk: A Sociological Theory. De Gruyter, Berlin.
Beck, U., 1992. Risk Society. Polity Press, Cambridge. MacKenzie, D., 2009. Making things the same: gases, emission rights and the
Beck, U., 2009. World at Risk. Polity Press, Cambridge. politics of carbon markets. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (3–4),
Beck, U., 2010. Remapping social inequalities in an age of climate change: for a 440–455.
cosmopolitan renewal of sociology. Global Networks 10 (2), 165–181. McCarthy, J., Prudham, S., 2004. Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism.
Benton, T., 1989. Marxism and natural limits. New Left Review 178, 51–81. Geoforum 35, 275–283.
Bevir, M., 2010. Rethinking governmentality: towards genealogies of governance. Miller, P., Rose, N., 2008. Governing the Present. Polity, Cambridge.
European Journal of Social Theory 13 (4), 423–441. Mol, A., Law, J., 2006. Complexities: an introduction. In: Law, J., Mol, A. (Eds.),
Birch, K., Mykhnenko, V., 2009. Varieties of neoliberalism? Journal of Economic Complexities. Social Studies of Knowledge Practices. Duke University Press,
Geography 9 (3), 355–380. Durham, pp. 1–22.
Boltanski, L., Chiapello, E., 2005. The New Spirit of Capitalism. Verso, London. Mol, A.P.J., 2001. Globalization and Environmental Reform. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Boyd, W., Prudham, S., Schurman, R., 2001. Industrial dynamics and the problem of Mol, A.P.J., Jänicke, M., 2009. The origins and theoretical foundations of ecological
nature. Society and Natural Resources 14, 555–570. modernisation theory. In: Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld, D., Spaargaren, G. (Eds.), The
Braun, B., 2008. Environmental issue: inventive life. Progress in Human Geography Ecological Modernisation Reader. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 17–27.
32, 667–679. Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld, D., 2002. Globalization and the transformation of environ-
Brenner, N., Peck, J., Theodore, N., 2010. Variegated neoliberalization: geographies, mental governance. American Behavioral Scientist 45, 1318–1339.
modalities, pathways. Global Networks 10 (2), 182–222. Mouffe, C., 2005. On the Political. Routledge, London.
Bryan, D., Rafferty, M., 2006. Capitalism with Derivatives: A Political Economy of Nordmann, A. (Ed.), 2004. Converging Technologies. Shaping the Future of Euro-
Financial Derivatives, Capital and Class. Palgrave MacMillan, New York. pean Societies. High Level Expert Group ‘Foresighting the New Technology
Bumpus, A., Liverman, D., 2008. Accumulation by decarbonisation and the gover- Wave’. European Communities Official Publications, Luxembourg.
nance of carbon offsets. Economic Geography 84 (2), 127–155. Novas, C., Rose, N., 2000. Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual.
Burchell, G., 1996. Liberal government and techniques of the self. In: Barry, A., Economy and Society 29, 485–513.
Osborne, T., Rose, N. (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason. UCL Press, London, O’Malley, P., 2004. Risk, Uncertainty and Governance. Glasshouse, London.
pp. 19–36. O’Malley, P., 2008. Governmentality and risk. In: Zinn, J. (Ed.), Social Theories of Risk
Callon, M., 1998. Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in econom- and Uncertainty. Blackwell, London, pp. 52–75.
ics. In: Callon, M. (Ed.), The Laws of the Market. Blackwell, London. Ong, A., 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception. Duke University Press, Durham.
Callon, M., 2009. Civilizing markets: carbon trading between in vitro and in vivo Peck, J., Theodore, N., Brenner, N., 2009. Postneoliberalism and its malcontents.
experiments. Accounting, Organizations and Society 34, 535–548. Antipode 41, 94–116.
Calvert, J., 2007. Patenting genomic objects: genes, genomes, function and infor- Pellizzoni, L., 2010. Risk and responsibility in a manufactured world. Science and
mation. Science as Culture 16 (2), 207–223. Engineering Ethics 16 (3), 463–478.
Carolan, M., 2008. From patent law to regulation: the ontological gerrymandering of Polanyi, K., 1944. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press, Boston.
biotechnology. Environmental Politics 17 (5), 749–765. Raman, S., Tutton, R., 2010. Life, science, and biopower. Science Technology &
Carolan, M., 2010. The mutability of biotechnology patents: from unwieldy pro- Human Values 35 (5), 711–734.
ducts of nature to independent ‘object/s’. Theory Culture & Society 27 (1), 110– Reddy, S., 1996. Claims to expert knowledge and the subversion of democracy: the
129. triumph of risk over uncertainty. Economy and Society 25, 222–254.
Castree, N., 2008. Neoliberalising nature: the logics of deregulation and reregula- Roco, M., Bainbridge, W. (Eds.), 2002. Converging Technologies for Improving
tion. Environment and Planning A 40, 131–152. Human Performance. National Science Foundation, Arlington, VI.
Cooper, M., 2008. Life as Surplus. University of Washington Press, Seattle. Rose, N., 1996. Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In: Barry, A., Osborne,
Cooper, M., 2010. Turbulent worlds. Financial markets and environmental crisis. T., Rose, N. (Eds.), Foucault and Political Reason. UCL Press, London, pp. 37–
Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3), 167–190. 64.
Dean, M., 1999. Governmentality. Sage, London. Rose, N., 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Dickens, P., 2004. Society and Nature. Polity, Cambridge. Sonnenfeld, D., Mol, A.P.J., 2011. Social theory and the environment in the new
Dobson, A., 2003. Citizenship and the Environment. Oxford University Press, Oxford. world (dis)order. Global Environmental Change 21 (3), 771–775.
Dupuy, J.-P., Grinbaum, A., 2004. Living with uncertainty: toward the ongoing Spaargaren, G., 2009. Sustainable consumption: a theoretical and environmental
normative assessment of nanotechnology. Techné 8 (2), 4–25. policy perspective. In: Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld, D., Spaargaren, G. (Eds.), The
Foucault, M., 1991. Governmentality. In: Burchell, G., Gordon, C., Miller, P. (Eds.), Ecological Modernisation Reader. Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 318–333.
The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Spaargaren, G., 2011. Theories of practices: agency, technology, and culture. Exploring
London, pp. 87–104. the relevance of practice for the governance of sustainable consumption practices
Freudenburg, W., Gramling, R., Davidson, D., 2008. Scientific certainty argumenta- in the new world order, Global Environmental Change 21 (3), 813–822.
tion methods (SCAMs): science and the politics of doubt. Sociological Inquiry 78 Spaargaren, G., Mol, A.P.J., Bruyninckx, H., 2006. Governing environmental flows in
(1), 2–38. global modernity. In: Spaargaren, G., Mol, A.P.J., Buttel, F. (Eds.), Governing
Fuller, S., 2008. The converging technologies agenda: the stakes and the prospects. Environmental Flows. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1–36.
Newsletter 3, 1–3 http://www.converging-technologies.org. Spaargaren, G., Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld, D., 2009. Ecological modernisation: as-
Fumagalli, A., 2007. Bioeconomia e Capitalismo Cognitivo. Carocci, Roma. sessment, critical debates and future directions. In: Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld,
Funtowicz, S., Ravetz, J., 1993. Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25 (7), 739– D., Spaargaren, G. (Eds.), The Ecological Modernisation Reader. Routledge,
755. Abingdon, pp. 501–520.
Gibbon, S., Novas, C., 2008. Introduction: biosocialities, genetics and the social Stewart, T., 2000. Uncertainty, judgment and error in prediction. In: Sarewitz, D.,
sciences. In: Gibbon, S., Novas, C. (Eds.), Biosocialities, Genetics and the Social Pielke, R., Byerly, R. (Eds.), Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature.
Sciences. Routledge, Abingdon. Island Press, Covelo, CA, pp. 41–60.
Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2006. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It). University of Suarez-Villa, L., 2009. Technocapitalism. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Szerszynski, B., Heim, W., Waterton, C. (Eds.), 2003. Nature Performed: Environ-
Hardt, M., Negri, A., 2004. Multitude. Penguin, New York. ment, Culture and Performance. Blackwell, Oxford.
Harvey, D., 2005. A Short History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Virno, P., 2009. Natural-historical diagrams: the ‘new global’ movement and the
Hay, C., 2007. Why We Hate Politics. Polity Press, Cambridge. biological invariant. Cosmos and History 5 (1), 92–104.
Jacques, P., Dunlap, R., Freeman, M., 2008. The organization of denial. Environmen- Weinberg, A., 1972. Science and trans-science. Minerva 10, 209–222.
tal Politics 17, 349–385. Wynne, B., 1992. Uncertainty and environmental learning. Global Environmental
Jessop, B., 2002. Liberalism, neoliberalism and urban governance: a state-theoreti- Change 6 (2), 111–127.
cal perspective. Antipode 34, 453–471. Wynne, B., 2005. Reflexing complexity. Theory, Culture & Society 22 (5), 67–94.