Ethical Conjunctures, Globalised Environmental Discourses and the Quest for a Better City (Mexico City)

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Drawing on the results of the subproject on environmental ethics and cultural practices in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, this subproject extends the focus of research to Mexico City. It aims to investigate the power of global directives that aim to create a better city at work in a conjuncture of ethics, including the opponents of and barriers to this agenda. Within the urban ethics research group, it addresses the perspectivations of governance and subjectivation, and aims to develop them further through an emphasis on responsibilisation and care. This subproject uses the contested practice of cycling as a lens to investigate visions of both a better and more just city, and of a healthy and responsible citizen (subjectivation processes). It researches the impacts of cycling as a new mobility in Mexico City and asks how it shapes citizens’ everyday lives and their relationship to urban space. Like the city council in Auckland, the city government in Mexico developed a plan of action to deal with their environmental pollution problems (techniques of governance). This green agenda is strongly influenced by references to global summits, agreements, and guidelines and international urban role models with regard to pollution control and sustainability. This conjuncture of ethics as well as the regulation of urban citizens, linked to calls for care for the environment and for citizen fitness and health, points to shifting processes of responsibilisation. But Mexico City is a fragmented governance space with many interest groups. In addition to the city council, civil organizations take initiatives to address urban environmental issues and to better urban life. Their visions of a better city, however, include socio-political claims, such as notions of social justice, inclusion and social cohesion. The subproject also investigates the opponents of these processes, who, as “unethical” actors, take part in the discursive negotiation of a better city. The project applies ethnographic methods with participant observation, including interviews with experts, group discussions and cognitive methods.