Environmental Activism and Ecological Citizenship: An Examination of Vibrant Matter and Distributed Agency

To tackle the climate crisis, we need global change. But global change does not come about without local change: the collective does not exist without the individual constituting it. This chapter examines the notions of distributed agency and vibrant matter in posthuman and new materialist theory. It considers the extent to which these notions recognize and empower environmental activism in an age of planetary degradation and explores the sort of ecological citizenship that might emerge from this discussion. This chapter uses as case studies two recent environmental movements, namely, Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, to expose the limits of the posthuman and new materialist concepts of distributed agency and vibrant matter. It also examines environmental acts of attunement, listening, and walking, put forward by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Abram, and Timothy Morton. The aim is to consider whether these small acts, especially as practiced by many Indigenous communities around the world and playing a key role in their longstanding sustainable relationships with nonhuman others, have any place in posthuman and new materialist theory.