ABSTRACT

The chapters in this section focus on the practices and aspirations of householders in relation to governance for sustainability. Although diverse and innovative in their contemporary lines of inquiry, these chapters are united by an effort to make sense of a venerable question: namely, where does ‘social structure’ end and ‘individual agency’ begin in the conduct of politics? Admittedly these terms are not themselves prominent here, attesting among other things to the waning of neo-Marxian analysis in human geography. And there is running through much material presented an undercurrent of post-structuralist interest in the constitution of power and of the heterogeneity of agency. The themes of governance and citizenship developed nonetheless tackle the familiar ontological problem of how best to conceive of the relationship between individual lives and social worlds. Laudably the authors recognise that this is a problem demanding both rich empirical detail and inclusive normative argument. In what follows, then, I reflect upon the productive encounter of the four contributions to this section with an eye to both new opportunities and perennial concerns.