Resisting the Green: Political Culture and Environmental Activism

Abstract

In every research project there are ‘defining moments’ when something is said or done that gives direction or focus to the whole investigation. Looking at that advertisement and listening to the pastor was one of them. We were both strangers to this town, but we knew enough of its reputation to believe that we would need to look closely at the role of the churches in the structuring of social relations and the exercise of power. We wanted to know about these matters because, in our wider project, we were attempting to explain the highly varied responses of different communities to some broadly similar environmental issues that they confronted. What we had learned so far, told us that, in this city of Abbotsford, environmental problems had been the focus of much public commentary but that efforts to mobilise citizens around these issues encountered not only apathy and indifference, but active resistance. Our intuition was that understanding the role of religion in the community would be vital for our analysis of almost any aspect of its collective life. That lunchtime interview turned the hunch into a conviction, for it made plain the intimate connection between religion, economics and politics. It opened up questions about networks and structures, but it hinted too at norms, perspectives and practices that we should try to grasp. Most of all, it reinforced our determination to find ways in which we could examine the interface of ‘culture’ and ‘politics’, incorporate some of the interests in ‘political culture’ being explored by a number of our colleagues, but somehow surmount the limitations of the traditional uses of that concept. In essence, we needed to find out whether a distinctive form of conservative, Christian culture really served to structure political and all other aspects of social life in the town, as many insisted it did and, if so, to show how that worked. When it appeared a few months later, a paper by Margaret Somers (1995) pointed to a ‘rejuvenated’ concept of political culture that captured neatly much that we were struggling to articulate: rather than a collection of internalised expressions of subjective values or externalised expressions of social interests, a political culture is now defined as a configuration of representations and practices that exists as a contentious structural social phenomenon in its own right. … By existing as something apart from either the economy or the state, a political culture, when acted upon, will shape the outcome, meaning, and the very course of political action and social processes. (Somers, 1995: 134) KeywordsEnvironmental ConcernCommunity ActivistSocial MovementEnvironmental ActivismPolitical CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.