ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on the ecological handprint, a metaphor for citizen agency which has emerged spontaneously in discourses of sustainability as various attempts are made to rally citizens to ‘reduce their ecological footprint and increase their handprint’, that is to take action to restore degraded environments, reduce carbon emissions or address ecological and social injustice. This reflection is set in the immediate context of the 8,000 earthquakes and aftershocks which have devastated my home city of Christchurch New Zealand in the months since 4 September 2010. From within our urban disaster, I explore the possibilities for citizens to take action to re-imagine and recreate alternative futures. In discussion I draw on Arendt’s concept of ‘natality’, Honig’s vision of ‘emergence’, and Iris Young’s ideas of ‘decentering’, to offer an alternative vision of a social handprint as the imprint of an embedded struggle for ecological citizenship and social justice.
