Environmental Movements, Market-Based Approaches, and Neoliberalization

Abstract

Market-based approaches have become a prominent strategy of environmental movement organizations. This article proposes that such approaches contribute to neoliberalization and its legitimation. Using a case study of the sustainable seafood movement and its use of market-based approaches, this article analyzes the ways that the movement’s consumer, restaurant, and retailer campaigns contribute to and legitimate neoliberalization. Specifically, in using market-based approaches, sustainable seafood organizations are contributing to and legitimating neoliberal notions of individualism, marketization, and the devolution of regulatory authority. Given such findings, I argue that the sustainable seafood movement is “in the market and for it.” As such, I suggest the movement’s transformative capacity may be limited, and in using market-based approaches it may be facilitating processes of capitalist accumulation that environmental sociologists have widely identified as antithetical to environmental sustainability.