On the politics of Responsibilization : diverting and diffusing responsibilities at the intersection of food and the climate crisis

Sammanfattning: Transformative ways of addressing the climate and socio-ecological crisis remain scarce despite a flurry of attempts to organize for ‘sustainability’. Organization and management research has shown how climate responses are often viewed with scepticism and how powerful actors contribute to climate inaction and the maintenance of business as usual of high-emitting sectors. However, little attention has been paid to how responsibilization discourses, the construction and shifting of responsibility, might delay action on addressing the climate and wider socio-ecological crisis. This thesis studies responsibilization discourses, analyzing their construction and contestation by different actors in the context of ‘sustainable’ food and climate change. The thesis consists of one introductory part and four research papers that each make individual contributions. Drawing from governmentality studies, Papers 1 and 2 contribute to our understanding of the construction of responsible consumer subjects and how consumers collectively contest consumer responsibilization. Papers 3 and 4 study shared responsibility discourses. Paper 3 builds on framing research and shows how policy framesare disbanded in the quest for consensus in the United Nations (UN). Paper 4 explores a discursive struggle over an UN-orchestrated multi-stakeholder event and shows how the dominance – the hegemony – of multi-stakeholder governance and business inclusion therein is maintained. Overall, the thesis illustrates how responsibility is often framed as shared or individualized, redirecting responsibility away from major polluters or those with more leverage for transformative change. While consumer responsibilization tends to divert responsibilities to the individual, shared responsibility discourses diffuse responsibilities to the collective. I argue that this dual redirection of responsibility contributes to the reproduction of business as usual, hindering transformative action on addressing the climate and socioecological crisis.