Presentation short abstract

This paper explores the interface between climate storytelling and corporate governmentality. Focusing on the role of non-state actors in Paris era climate governance, I investigate how initiatives I term 'corporate environmental pacts' use storytelling in the governance of their stakeholders.

Presentation long abstract

There is burgeoning environmental social science interest in how radical imaginaries might chart new modes of being beyond ecocidal, capitalist and colonial structures. This scholarship increasingly carves out a compelling role for storytelling in cultivating emancipatory, utopian visions of the future. Taking this impulse in a new direction, I investigate efforts by business to conduct the conduct of stakeholders through their own techniques of storytelling.

This research is part of a broader project studying a specific type of non-state actor, which I term ‘corporate environmental pacts’. Pacts are initiatives that encourage business members to ‘take action’ to address environmental crises, certify those actions, market those actions and build virtual communities. I investigate two pacts – 1% for the Planet and The Climate Pledge. An ‘analytics of government’ discourse analysis was conducted on interviews held with pact actors and all online content produced by the two pacts.

I argue that pact storytelling techniques can help address the underexplored interface between storytelling and governmentality scholarship. These initiatives explicitly tell climate and environmental stories, attempting to bolster the role played by business in the narratives of sustainability transitions. Specifically, I examine the discourses and rationalities used in pact storytelling practices employed in documentaries they produce, creatives they fund, and narratives disseminated through social media and blogs. I find that the visions of the environment and future projected by pacts are a crucial part of how they seek to intervene on the conduct of stakeholders such as businesses, non-profits, investors and consumers.