Environmental Movements

by Timothy Doyle

Environmental movements are amongst the most vibrant, diverse and powerful social movements occurring today, across all corners of the globe. Their global distribution allows the students of these movements to range widely, to experience the multitude of ways in which different cultures engage in their political lives. This book is based on the premise that there is no, one global environmental movement; but that there are many, and that the differences between these movements far outweigh their similarities despite the fact that most share the symbolic nomenclature of environmental movement. was born in most countries. In the nations of the more affluent, minority North, this generally began in the late 1960s and early 1970s; whilst in the majority South, the environmental agenda emerged forcefully in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Without environmental movements there would be no green businesses or bureaucracies; no high level United Nations conferences on global warming and population control; no governments which have created greener legislative frameworks relating to industrial pollution or genetically modified foodstuffs. railing against the extremes of a unifying global ideology based on the god of the western market-place. The concepts of place and community which parts of the movement adhere to are anathema to global market players, as these ideas pose opposition to the liquid flow of atomised trade: the market as a global river. Paradoxically, however, globalization has created the necessity of a counter-response and, at the same time, it has produced a vehicle where environmentalism can also become a globalizing force, also crossing nation-state/ethnic/religious boundaries with relative ease. Whilst accepting the liberating and empowering elements of some of these green movements, this cross-boundary movement can be as invasive of local communities as global capitalism. Local narratives can be understood, but also, ultimately they are colonised by these cross-boundary green traders, a different collection of elites, to pursue their own narratives, their own pursuit of power. forms which make up modern environmental movements.

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2003