Abstract

The green economy is a new economic paradigm, which has become increasingly popular in light of recent UN publications and the 2012 Rio + 20 summit. But what are the implications of this development? In order to answer this question one must re-think "the economy" as social construction rather than the self-evident object (Mitchell, 2006). While economic experts and the state perform the economy they simultaneously define what is considered "non-economic": a status that makes life precarious for those human and nonhuman factors that are valued in this way (e.g. the environment) (Mitchell, 2010). Since 2008 the Quebec government has been developing their own green economy. The major result of this initiative has been the creation of an organization called "Ecotech Quebec" (otherwise known as Quebec's clean-tech cluster), which is responsible for defining and promoting Quebec's green economy. Through twenty five semi-structured interviews, a document review, and visual analysis this in-depth case study examines the process by which Quebec's green economy is being constructed. More specifically, this research sheds light on the ways in which Quebec politics and economics are performing the green economy; exposes the socio-technical mechanisms that have contributed to this project; and reveals what has been excluded from this representation. This research will therefore contribute to the debate about whether or not the green economy initiative will center on the appropriate transformations necessary to ameliorate the contradiction of capital and ecology, or if it will result in technological fixes and business as usual.