Rethinking the Theory and Practice of Greenwashing

This research project challenges the popular view of greenwashing as a misleading communication that violates the trust of green consumers and can be contained by companies self-monitoring and stricter self-regulating business models. Based on an account of the democratic public sphere that is closer to empirical reality, more sensitive to asymmetries in power relations, and apt to inform normative political theorizing, this project aims to build a new way to conceptualize greenwashing. The starting hypothesis is that greenwashing should be studied from a broader perspective. This means to redescribe greenwashing as a result of distorted justificatory practices and framing mechanisms that on the one hand make citizens lose focus on how green claims are substantiated and, on the other hand, produce barriers in the public engagement with climate change. The research therefore aims at conceptually define, for the first time, a socially situated model of the distributed social responsibility for the wrongs of greenwashing, in order to strengthen ameliorative political action that can monitor and assess companies' green claims. The project has 3 objectives: (1) To develop the first socially situated account of greenwashing that enables a critical scrutiny of the use of misleading green claims; (2) To explore the normative foundations of a new model attributing shared, yet differentiated, responsibilities for monitoring the environmental performance of companies; (3) To develop a set of enabling democratic practices and communicative channels which can mobilise a critical mass of citizens to participate in counteracting the root causes of greenwashing. The project will be implemented by two research units, working in close collaboration with one another via regular joint seminars. Dissemination of the results will be both academic and non-academic, involving not only articles in peer-reviewed international journals, contributions to online magazines and newspapers, workshops, conferences, and a website, but also panels at key climate conferences, and staging events featuring activists and policy makers at national public festivals.