Volunteer Urban Environmental Stewardship, Emotional Economies of Care, and Productive Power in Philadelphia

Abstract

Recent efforts to increase urban forests and greenspaces rely on the volunteer labor of individuals and environmental nonprofits. The estimation of market values has often justified urban greening. These neoliberal approaches to urban environmental governance have been heavily critiqued, revealing the uneven power relationships and urban environments that result. This paper aims to move beyond such critiques by exploring how the reproduction of urban nature can be valued outside of the market. Fieldwork with volunteers participating in environmental stewardship in Philadelphia revealed their participation was motivated by intense emotional attachments to their neighborhoods, other participants, and nonhuman others, leading me to propose emotional economies of care as an alternative framework. The circulation of emotions and affects between participants, places, and nonhuman others forms an emotional economy. The generative power of this circulation makes emotional economies of care collective bodies or multiplicities. Furthermore, these multiplicities produce power from below, in counterpoint to the top down power of neoliberal environmentalities. However, just as these multiplicities come together, they can come apart or change directions. I close with ideas on how emotional ecologies and economies of care can be brought into being and processes of change within them shepherded in progressive ways.