Beyond neoliberal sustainability: the Capitol Hill Organized Protest and local homesteading as sustainability activism

Keywords: Sustainability, 'Adventures in Living'; neoliberalization, bottom-up; ethnography
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The neoliberalization of sustainability is well documented. Responses to sustainability fitting the neoliberal status quo receive a lot of attention from local governments and the media. These same sustainability responses are also usually the focus of critiques levied against sustainability/ sustainable development. I ask, what practices are overlooked when we focus on sustainability examples, without critically interrogating the role of capitalism?
First, I draw on my Seattle research which shows that The Bullitt Center, a top-down sustainability initiative, is more often highlighted in terms of sustainability than other sustainable practices that operate outside of the neoliberal status quo. I compare this with the practices associated with the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) of 2020. Despite both sites engaging in accepted sustainable practices, CHOP was rarely associated with sustainability, whereas the Bullitt Center almost always is. I expand this critique of neoliberal sustainability with a second example. This involves an ethnography of a family in the UK, who have slowly shifted their lifestyle towards sustainability by engaging in certain homesteading practices. I analyze the CHOP and homesteading examples through Gibson-Graham’s ‘Adventures in Living’ model for living in/through the Anthropocene. I argue that more attention should be paid to instances where people change their relationality to the land and their community; and that these relational shifts should be considered a valuable part of a broader patchwork of sustainability activism. Focusing on these two examples reveals the ways that people already practice sustainability outside of neoliberal paradigms, opening possibilities for future sustainability work.