Extinction Rebellion’s Disobedient Environmental Citizenism

Abstract

We examine the public protest of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in the UK as a specific political practice. We do so through our observation of the plea hearings of activists charged with public order offences during the April 2019 London ‘Rebellion’, focusing on those pleading guilty at the first opportunity. We show how these narratives establish the values and beliefs of these activists, including their relationships to existing state agencies and institutions, the extent and nature of their public duties and the corresponding rights they encode, and the definition of the political community they represent. Drawing on the importance of embodiment in the critical environmental citizenship literature, we highlight how these narratives reveal tensions and inconsistencies between disobedient action and structural critique, as they reveal a ‘disobedient environmental citizen’ whose orientation is primarily based on an individualised civic duty in the service of the localised rights of future generations.