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Abstract:
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This dissertation explores a new form of CSR-related phenomenon: Companies that
educate society about ecological sustainability and responsibility. In order to study
this phenomenon, a new analytical framework is developed, as most existing studies
of CSR are deemed ineffectual for the examination of educating companies. The
proposed framework consists of two analyses: A diachronic analysis examining the
emergence of the educating company and a synchronic analysis that identifies and
studies the actual corporate government of citizens. In the first discursive analysis, it
is shown how a political ideal rooted in ecological sustainability combined with a new
concept of ‘green economic growth’ has made the Danish state include the business
community in the education and government of ecologically responsible citizens. In
continuation hereof, it is argued that companies have become politically sanctioned
‘vessels of societal change’ and that they are therefore enabled to act accordingly.
The term ‘climate education’ is coined in order to conceptualise the phenomenon of
this act of corporate education and through Michel Foucault’s concept of
governmentality and the analytics of Mitchell Dean the second synchronic analysis
examines how this climate education creates governable individuals. Using Dean’s
concept of ‘regimes of government’, we look into the empirical domain of climate
education through four dimensions: Visibility, technologies, specific forms of expert
knowledge and the forming of subjects or selves. By means of three case examples,
the second analysis studies the practice of climate education in the very instances they
occur. Thus witness how a new form of ‘privatised ethical government’ seeks to
foster engaged, rational and sustainable individuals using sophisticated governmental
techniques of steering. However, this privatised climate education is not seen
exclusively seen as voluntary and altruistic. Instead there is a double benefit from a
corporate perspective: Firstly, the education seems to legitimise and immunise
companies from accusations of greenwashing. Secondly, the companies reap profits
from selling sustainable products to consumers who wish to achieve a ‘green
lifestyle’. Thereby, the companies prime or groom their own market by giving
citizens a way to become sustainable through consumption. Finally, the dissertation
addresses the possible implications of this development from a corporate and
democratic perspective |
