Environmental History, the Environmental Movement, and the Politics of Power

Abstract

AbstractWhile environmental history subsumes much more than the ‘environmental movement’, this movement remains standard, not to mention depressing, subject fodder in environmental history courses. This manuscript examines two emerging patterns in the historiography of environmental politics. The first is a vigorous focus on local, non‐traditional, ‘grass roots’ endeavors. These works spotlight unique and innovative coalitions that challenge the inevitability of class, race, and regional wedges. The second pattern examines the field's new cultural emphasis, particularly its concentration on (what Richard White calls) ‘hybrid landscapes’ and its explicit attack on preservationist ideology. Both patterns offer unique challenges to traditional depictions of the environmental movement as well as to each other.